• Soul-Searching in Vegas

  Posted Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:21 PM | By Dana Stevens
  
  
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  Dahlia’s right that last night’s debate was conciliatory and eggshell-tiptoeing to an almost comic degree: After you, my dear Alphonse. But it was a relief to have a break from last week’s victim-of-oppression sweepstakes (which was approaching its nadir in the press as well: did you all see Lorrie Moore’s bizarre op-ed scoffing that feminism has had its day in the sun?)
  
  As someone with a really sad-looking desk of my own, I was also charmed by Obama’s admission of an inability to keep track of paperwork without the aid of a staff. But I’m not sure I agree with Melinda that this moment was an unalloyed mark in his favor. Those harboring doubts about Obama’s youth and relative inexperience, or wondering how he’ll flesh out his rhetoric with action, may not be soothed by the news that he’s not a detail guy, no matter how low the stakes. And after eight years with a leader whose “vision thing” has tended to take precedence over the reading-the-newspaper thing, voters may believe that a single piece of paper (like the August 6, 2001 PDB) can be very important indeed.
  
  Clinton leapt at the chance to exploit this moment of candor by pointing to Katrina as an example of a top-down management debacle: “You have to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy.” But I don’t think her own response to the biggest-flaw question was completely disingenuous. Wasn’t her confession that she can be impatient about change, and “sometimes come across that way,” a not-so-veiled admission that her personality can be her own worst political enemy? Wasn’t she saying, in essence, “Fine, I’m pushy”?
  
  Edwards, on the other hand (who I thought performed wonderfully in the January 5 debate) seemed strained and defensive, going out of his way to mention the word “mill” every 30 seconds: “My father was a mill worker.” “I grew up in a mill town.” “I really wish my opponents could be ground up in some type of mill.” His response to Russert’s question about strengths and failings was pure hogwash, the stump-speech equivalent of “I poop rainbows”: “I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to the pain I see around me,” he said, before segueing into a story about, surprise, a laid-off mill worker. Still, all three candidates were Hamlet-like models of introspection compared to our current president, who, asked at a 2004 press conference to name a single mistake he’d made in office, inadvertently revealed more about himself in his answer than any of the three candidates did last night: “I’m sure something will pop into my head here … you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.” Four years later, he still hasn’t thought of anything.
  
  
  Filed under: '08 election, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton', John Edwards
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