presidential election – Page 36

Focusing election coverage

Buried in an interesting analysis piece in today’s Washington Post on demographic trends among voters in the Democratic primaries is this comment from U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) on what this election is about.

“Voters in my state will not care about who won Iowa, New Hampshire, or this Washington Post-created Potomac Primary that is supposed to be a microcosm of America,” he said. “Political momentum doesn’t much matter to a middle-class family that’s struggling.”

While he was talking about the candidates and what they need to focus on, I think it could stand as a reminder to political journalists of what is important and what they should focus on in their coverage.

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How green is McCain?

Centrists and independents are likely to take a close look at the candidacy of John McCain in the coming months, especially once the GOP attack machine gets revved up and starts painting the Democratic candidate as some kind of raving socialist.

Independents and centrists with a green bent, however, would do well to read this piece from The Nation, which should stand as a primer on McCain’s environmental credentials.

A sample:

The media touts McCain’s stance on climate as evidence of his straight talkin’ maverickosity. Conservative stalwarts assail McCain for his heresy (Romney attacked McCain’s climate bill in Michigan and Florida). The public hails him for reaching across the aisle. Even Democrats and greens seem inclined to give him a grade of Good Enough on climate.

This is a classic case of what our president calls the soft bigotry of low expectations. Judged against his fellow Republicans, McCain is a paragon of atmospheric wisdom. Judged against the climate and energy legislation afoot in Congress, he falls short. Judged against the two leading Democratic presidential candidates, he is a pale shadow. Judged against the imperatives of climate science — that is to say, judged against brute physical reality — he isn’t even in the ballpark.

It’s time to stop grading McCain on a curve.

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Here come da judges

An interesting piece in Slate on how the two Democrats, Barack Obama in particular, would pick judges — an important, if underreported aspect of this year’s election given the damage done to the Constitution by President George W. Bush with his own judicial picks.

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Questions on the environment

John McCain is considered to be a Republican with a strong environmental record. Both Democrats are, as well. This, as The Nation points out, creates the potential that we could have a useful conversation on the topic.

An easy place to start would be with the California emissions plan, which requires a waiver from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The Bush-run agency has refused to issue the waiver. What would the candidates do? Would McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton tell the EPA to grant California its exemption — and by extension, grant similar extensions to the dozen or so other states waiting to find out the fate of the California plan? (Obama and Clinton both told the California League of Conservation Voters they support California; McCain did not answer the group’s survey, but he did endorse the California plan during the GOP California debate — though it was on federalist grounds that allowed him also to endorse Louisiana’s right to drill off its coast.)

The answer to this question would go a long way toward understanding which of these candidates would actually move the country forward on the issue. McCain, for intance, has a lifetime score of 26 percent from the League of Conservation Voters, with a 2005 score of 43 percent and a 2006 score of 29 percent. Obama’s lifetime score is 96 percent (95 percent in 2005 and 100 percent in 2006) and Clinton’s is 90 percent (95 percent and 71 percent).

Depending on how the political press plays this, McCain’s reputation as an environmental-friendly candidate could neutralize the environment as an issue in November. Reputation, however, is meaningless. What has he actually done and what does he actually say? And what the records of the other remaining candidates? How do they compare?

This raises a larger question of narrative and the roles in which the press cast candidates. It is not the meddia’s responsibility to pigeonhole those running, but to explode the myths the candidates use to sell themselves, to force them to do more than use vague words like “maverick,” “change” and “experience.”

John McCain may indeed be a maverick, but within what context? And does that make him an environmentalist? I’m hoping we’ll get some answers between now and November and, assuming we do, I think it will become eminently clear which of these candidates is greenest.

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A not so dynamic duo?

Juan Cole touches on something I had been thinking while watching the talking heads speculate last night on a McCain-Huckabee ticket. The idea is to solidify McCain with the evangelical base, which has so far been hostile to the Arizona senator. But, as Cole says,

if evangelicals react to the top of the ticket, they aren’t going to be energized by McCain, and it isn’t clear that a weak Huckabee VP in waiting will be enough to change their minds.

And, there are lots more Huckabee gaffes and weirdnesses out there, like saying that Mormons believe satan is Jesus’ brother or saying that Pakistani illegal aliens are second only to Mexicans in numbers or saying that the Palestinian state should be established in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, or saying that Saddam’s WMD is now in Jordan (a US ally), etc., etc. Yes, he comes across as likeable on t.v. But all it would take is for the press to start paying close attention to his bizarre pronouncements, and the likeability quotient could fall rapidly. And, he could take McCain down with him.

Then again, the press would have to start paying close attention to both of these guys and stop treating them with kid gloves.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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