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Piling on the African-American Sunday, Apr 20, 2008 By John Brummett The vaunted conventional wisdom declares that Barack Obama lost the debate on ABC the other evening because he stayed on the defensive. That's an interesting concept, basing the outcome not on a debater's performance, but the line of the questioning. How are you supposed to get off the defensive when the two questioners and your opponent are so thoroughly offensive? How are you supposed to get off the defensive when the moderators have gone into cahoots with your hyper-negative rival? How are you supposed to get off the defensive while everyone blasts away at you for an array of imagined sins, from not wearing a flag pin on your lapel to having served on a board with a fellow who has a history of violent leftist extremism? Obviously, ABC News is biased against Obama because he is African-American. You think I've overstated? I'm just following the pattern established by Clinton. Weeks ago, when she got more challenging questions in a debate, Hillary's people said it was because those mean men were picking on the woman and because the media people were biased against her. It could not possibly have had anything to do with her being the front-runner, one awash in political vulnerability. I remember when that foul-humored woman, Geraldine Ferraro, declared that no one would dare pick on a black man in a debate the way those men had picked on poor, brave, pioneering Hillary. Black people get all the breaks, you know. So now we can dismiss yet another Geraldine pronouncement. That leaves approximately nothing from her, as best I can tell, in the way of accuracy or reason. If turnabout is fair play, we should now see a "Saturday Night Live" skit with Charlie Gibson massaging Hillary's feet while George Stephanopoulos demands of Obama, "Do you even know the words to the Star Spangled Banner? Prove it. Sing it right now." Alas, as usual, the conventional wisdom is superficial and wrong-headed. Obama won the debate by rising above all that negativity while his opponent reconfirmed her own pervasive unpleasantness and desperation. She was, in fact, living up to the morning poll finding that a solid half of the electorate cannot stand her and does not trust her. Barack even said, most generously, to give her a break for lying - my word, not his -?about nearly getting shot dead in Bosnia. Stuff happens. He said it amounted to unhealthy and unproductive political discourse to extract and obsess on momentary gaffes from the millions of words the candidates have spoken. His point was that, yes, he said something stupid the other day in San Francisco about working people's attitudes, but that a momentary brain disengagement didn't actually mean that he was insensitive to working people and wouldn't decline to champion them in his presidential policies. Seriously, now: Do we think he's going to lower taxes on high incomes and eschew regulation of business and concede American working-class jobs? No, that'd be the Republican, remember? Anyway, Hillary lost the debate by contradicting herself merely on her central point, which was that Obama would be vulnerable to Republican attacks in a general election because of his pastor and his shared board membership with this extremist and his having spoken with momentary condescension about working people's religion and gun nutness. Never mind that she's essentially conceding Obama's defeat without a fight by assigning credibility and effectiveness to any coming attacks on him by the opposing party. This, by the way, would be the same party that harassed and demonized her and her husband. No, the contradiction occurred when she got asked directly whether Obama could be elected president. "Yes, yes, yes," she said quickly and dismissively. Oh, OK, then. No further questions, your honor. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
