John McCain has had some trouble recently in breaking through the news — given the still fiercely pitched Dem primary fight — these days (and the fundraising is pretty anemic — $15M?) too. But there are interesting bits that are being reported here and there that we ought to take a good hard look at as examples of that prized quality of McCain’s — maverickyness. Of course, McCain abandoned any pretense to being a maverick when he decided to start pandering to the Christian Nationalists and neocons of the wingnut right as his path to the White House. This does mean, of course, that he has set himself up to run for the third term of BushCo, of which something like 28% of Americans are ready to buy again. So join me for a quick survey of the maverickyness here:
Well, I didn’t do it, that’s for sure. Even if I wasn’t working, I’m not sure how much more of the neocon-job I can take anymore.
Both Tom Ricks from the Washington Post and Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent did live-blog today’s hearings (Ricks will be doing so tomorrow too). Ricks was in the hearing rooms (taking comments too!) and Ackerman saw it all on CSPAN. I just read through both of them and they are certainly more information rich than the evening (NPR) news (the Ackerman is out-right funny in places). Neither is a real replacement for reporting, I think, but as a replacement for watching several hours of this stuff and knowing what generally happened certainly helps to see how the traditional media creates its narrative.
The Presidential candidates seem to be acquitting themselves well (although McCain — predictably now — loses the details when talking of the affiliation of AQ in Iraq) and their input (as well as the media focus) is a welcome change from the usual campaign trail horserace. Joe Biden as Chairman of Foreign Services Committee evidently did really well — getting Crocker to admit that Afghanistan is probably the better focus area AND reminding Petraeus and Crocker that they cannot bind the next President’s hands in this thing without coming to Congress first.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YqrAfSpn28[/youtube]
The Health Care debate between Jack Markell and John Carney started abit late on Friday morning — a good thing, since I was running really late. The auditorium was pretty much full (but not as many folks as at the Education debate), and this crowd was abit more sedate.
The News Journal has written this event up, so I won’t go over all of that ground, but it was interesting to me that Markell was abit more aggressive in this round. He started right out noting that Carney had served on health-care related commissions and task forces for almost a decade, but coverage of Delawareans continues to deteriorate, and costs continue to spiral upward. Markell set up his theme — that the health care situation in DE needed to be dealt with quickly and decisively, and that the era of incremental changes on the way to a larger goal was no longer a functional approach. Carney, then, spent the rest of the debate trying to tell the audience that his plan was not incremental steps — but he couldn’t avoid the step-by-step narrative that he’d already set up. In my opinion, Markell ended up looking like the guy ready to take some political risks to get to long-term solutions, and Carney was extending the work of his commissions and committees. Carney had the advantage, I think, of having many of his colleagues from some of these commissions and committees in the room.
Who Wants to Be a Republican?
This article in today’s NJ documents the increasing weakness of the DE Republican party, noting the serious shift in voter registration from R to D this year. It seems that much of the reasons for the shift are a perception of more excitement on the D side (both for President and Governor) and certainly some R fatigue.
Attendees of the debate tonight between Democratic gubernatorial Jack Markell and John Carney on Education pretty much filled the lower space of the Grand and there were some folks who ventured up to the (cordoned off) area upstairs. Markell supporters were very visible – ranging from the kids outside with signs and cheers (having some fun with folks going into the building, I might add) to a fair number of attendees wearing their Markell pins. If I am judging reaction to applause lines correctly, though, there were plenty of Carney supporters in the house.
It was a very civilized event – the candidates certainly were friendly and gracious to each other. The format was very focused (I really liked this), the moderators kept it all moving (and the candidates themselves were good about sticking to the rules) and the audience was polite and engaged. This was the first time that I’ve seen either of these candidates in person and both did well in this format – although I kept getting the impression that Markell might have been happier moving around on the stage.
