I just set the DVR to record Obama’s half-hour, blanket-the-airwaves infomercial, since I’ll be out when it airs. It’s a good reminder that I wanted to blog about a woman-bites-candidate story I saw on CNN.
I first became aware of the existence of Campbell Brown when she questioned the significance of Sarah Palin’s role as commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard. It struck me as a fair line of questioning, albeit certainly aggressive, but the McCain camp reacted by canceling McCain’s appearance with fellow CNN talking head Larry King. That’ll fix ’em!
To her credit, this week Campbell proved she can jump ugly in both directions:
One year ago, [Obama] made a promise. He pledged to accept public financing and to work with the Republican nominee to ensure that they both operated within those limits.
Then it became clear to Sen. Obama and his campaign that he was going to be able to raise on his own far more cash than he would get with public financing. So Obama went back on his word.
She even quoted an Obama supporter using the word “hypocrite” in describing the situation. You go, girl!
After a lively conversation in the comments of an earlier post, I’m tempted to go through Campbell Brown’s commentary line by line and look for anything that might be interpreted as “racial code,” but I suspect both she and her editors did that beforehand. If she were commentating on Fox News, people would be straining to find dog-whistle language in it.
And speaking of dogs and strained metaphors, my “woman-bites-candidate” reference is not racial code — it’s poking fun at left-leaning media.
Kirk — I totally agree. No dog whistles from Ms. Brown. By the way — I agree with her. I understand the strategic decision to forego public financing, but I fear we may seeing the end of a noble idea — removing the corruption of oceans of money from our political system.
Its a bit ironic to me that the idea of public financing is getting the one-two from a conservative Supreme Court (money = speech) and a liberal presidential candidate (only chumps pass up more money for less). Trust me, many of us will be watching Mr. Obama, whether he’s in the White House or the Senate, to see if he keeps his word(s) . . . 🙂
carol, I don’t think there’s really any way TO remove the “oceans of money” from the political system. There may be better ways to regulate it, but I think the oceans of money are always going to be there in one form or another. When you get down to it, money DOES = speech — people and companies need to be able to advocate for their positions. And through his success Mr. Obama has undermined the traditional Democratic argument that common people can’t hope to compete with big business.
Man, I HATE to concede points to conservatives. What can I say, I’m a competitive sort of girl. But I think you are right. I need to shift from trying to limit the money to trying to regulate the money — at least to make sure there is real transparency, on both sides, about who is giving money to whom. Then perhaps I need to rely on the blogosphere to point out when elected officials are acting to benefit large donors. And I agree that Obama’s success shows that the small donations of us little folk, in sufficient numbers, can compete with a smaller number of high rollers.
By the way — tell the Web Goddess that I liked the pix on her website. You must be a nice guy, even though conservative, if a creative blue-tinged gal like her watches political TV with you. OK, maybe that’s the Friday evening martini’s talking, but Happy Halloween to you and yours.
carol, the Web Goddess and I agree on more than we disagree, even though we wound up with his-and-her candidates. Thanks for checking out her site.