I want to recommend the whole transcript of Michael Gordon's interview with John Edwards. Gordon asks him a bunch of tough, skeptical, well-informed questions. And Edwards answers them well. It's not just an interesting interview that casts Edwards in a good light, but really in a lot of ways shines a light on how political reporting could be made about a thousand times more useful to readers -- Gordon knows what he's talking about and eschews softballs, but at the same time he's respectful like he and his audience would actually like to hear John Edwards explain why he's changed his mind about Iraq over time rather than use the question to nail him to the wall.
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Rising to the Occasion
02 Jan 2008 01:44 pm
Comments (21)
There's been lots of positive commentary about Edwards lately... so why is everything still noted with this odd tone of reservation? why's everyone still hung up on Obama?
because edwards had a shit record in the senate? I mean, everybody loves a come to jesus story but obama's been walking the walk for 20 years.
I appreciate Edwards' calm tone in this interview and hope it will rub off on his supporters.
obama's been walking the walk for 20 years.
I like Obama, but can you point to a single accomplishment other than he talks a good game? He's only been talking the talk.
"I think that currently the only group whom journalism majors can truly claim to be smarter than is education majors."
What does this even mean? Can you back this up somehow? And saying all newspapers suck doesn't count.
If you're referring to his three years in an extremely disfunctional senate, there's not much, though the obama-coburn public lobbying database isn't bad. But everything he did in Illinois (and I'm a longtime Chicago resident) is legit. Look it up.
Pug, um, some of us aren't lazy and don't talk out of our hindquarters without knowing what we're talking about.
Obama's legislative accomplishments:
-healthcare for +150,000 in Illinois
-passed tax credits for middle class Illinoisans
-reformed death penalty system in Illinois
-passed first ethics reform in Illinois in 25 years, barring use of campaign finances for personal use
-passed a bill requiring all police interrogations be on tape in Illinois
-passed most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate in the U.S. Senate
-passed a bill with Republican Tom Coburn setting up a searchable database to track all wasteful spending and earmarks
-passed a bill sending millions in aid to relieve the civil war in Congo
-passed a bill with Republican Dick Lugar to secure loose weapons in the former Soviet Union
-serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Homeland Security Committee, and the Veterans Affairs Committee
-has been on congressional junkets to over 30 countries
It is notable that Hillary and Edwards have done almost nothing in their time in Congress. Hillary has passed pretty much exclusively ceremonial bills to name libraries, government buildings, etc. Edwards did not pass a single bill of his own.
I mean, honestly, Obama is the only one of the top 3 whose done anything more than "talking a good game". The fact that few people have realized this goes to show how misinformed so many Edwards and Clinton supporters are.
Well--it also goes to show that too many of my fellow Obama supporters get caught up in the oratory of Obama and neglect to focus on the substance of Obama. It also reflects the fact that Obama keeps his white papers on his website and out of his speeches and that's what fuels the "he's an empty suit" lazy bums who don't do their research.
I also wish Obama would talk more about his exceptional plans for open source democracy--shame.
Obama:
Campaigns with homophobes.
Non-universality of health care proposal.
Attacks Krugman.
GOP talking points on SS.
Weakest of energy policies.
Oprah!
etc, etc.
Edwards won in and represented a Red State.
If someone wants to be president, and their policies show they aren't qualified to be president (at least of the U.S.), there's nothing disreputable about asking them questions designed to point that out ("nailing them to the wall"). It can still be done in a respectful manner.
bg -
It means that education majors are epsilonishly close to being the stupidest people walking the planet. And journalists are, I think, just a step behind.
Awhile back I looked at some numbers on education. You can check the journalism side, and see if my order pans out.
http://sherifffruitfly.googlepages.com/educationdoesn%26%2339%3Btmixwiththegre
(The excel sheet at the bottom)
I prefer nailing Edwards to the wall. He voted to murder 3,800 brave American servicemembers in Iraq. And it was perfectly obvious AT THE TIME that the war was a dumb idea.
So either he was a complete idiot or he was a murderous hawk. Neither one suggests a plausbile transformation narrative.
John Edwards doesn't really care about Iraq one iota, except to the extent taking a position on it can get him elected President.
. . .chasing the nomination like it's an ambulance.
I, and the rest of the country, could also do with out Edwards's negative pregnants. That is, he says he's a fighter for the working class and therefore the others aren't. At least the Republicans are smart enough to reject style over substance, as seen by Mitt Romney's poll numbers.
That was an excellent interview, and I'm happy that I read the whole thing.
63% of US deaths in Iraq have occurred since Obama became a Senator. Obama in July of 2004, "There's not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush's position at this stage." So is Obama a murderous hawk or a complete idiot? It didn't take much to transform Obama from anti-war state politician to war enabler in the Senate.
Obama was against the war before he was for continuing it.
MTP, 11/11/07
MR. RUSSERT: But you have changed in your support now of withdrawal. You have changed now in your support of cutting off funding.
SEN. OBAMA: But I haven't changed in my opposition to the war.
Congressional junkets and committees assignments listed as accomplishments. Please.
Obama has been the primary sponsor of one bill that became law - S.2125 (co-sponsored by Clinton)
The bill with Lugar (S.2566)had 26 cosponsors while Coburn's bill (S.2590) had 47 cosponsors.
S.2125 and S.2590 were so groundbreaking they passed on unanimous consent.
Congressional junkets and committees assignments listed as accomplishments. Please.
Obama has been the primary sponsor of one bill that became law - S.2125 (co-sponsored by Clinton)
The bill with Lugar (S.2566)had 26 cosponsors while Coburn's bill (S.2590) had 47 cosponsors.
S.2125 and S.2590 were so groundbreaking they passed on unanimous consent.
>So either he was a complete idiot or he was a murderous hawk.
Or he was a Senator with Presidential aspirations who bought into the conventional wisdom that a No vote would be fatal. Obama was lucky enough not to face that situation. And let's be honest-the Bush administration would have gone ahead with its war no matter what Congress did.
As for Obama, his appeal has always escaped me (of Hillary, Edwards, and Clinton he is last on my list; actually just on the merits I'd pick Dodd) but if he gets the nomination I will, of course, support him.
How telling is it that prominent Americans, especially those in private life in the running to be our next president, have to wheedle and plead with our Executive Branch leadership in order to visit the nation of Iraq, to see with their own eyes what the hell our government and military are doing over there. And further that, thus far, despite such formally proffered wheedles and pleads, John Edwards has been denied such access to Iraq and to its Green Zone-encircled American nerve center, by his own government, without even being given the courtesy of an explanation for this refusal. The "Iraqi government" apparently doesn't exist at all, in such real world examples of physical access and physical safety in what was formerly known as the nation of Iraq.
Doesn't that tell us as much as anything else, and about all we need to know, about the reality of Iraq today? That is, that what happens in Iraq happens because Americans let it? If our Executive Branch wasn't fundamentally on board with what is happening in and to that nation [in pursuit of unacknowledged objectives that are diametrically opposed to the majority will of the Iraqi people], they'd up and leave - as Iraqis, the Congress and we, the people have long asked them to - numbers of Iraqi civilian casualities or any other catastrophic humanitarian outcomes for non-Americans be damned. The mythology that our Armed Forces stay in Iraq "because we care" - for the lives of Iraqis, for their opinions, for their well-being, and/or for their future as a nation - must be shattered into the thousand points of lies from which that self-serving, ever-benevolent-America myth is fabricated. Anything less is a witting, or unwitting, protection of the undemocratic establishment's status quo agenda about and for our current and future relationship with Iraq. Just as the myth of a "terrorist" threat posed to America by Iraqis was finally retired from the field, its replacement myth to excuse and "justify" our continued domination of that territory must be combated at every turn, until it too can no longer withstand the light of day.
I wish John Edwards would point this out much more clearly, along with the damage we unleashed and have witnessed as a direct result of our invasion. The ominious NIE predictions about Iraq, of a year ago, are outcomes that have already taken place in our presence, and under our control. Michael Gordon may not know this, or care, and John Edwards can't get over there to see for himself, but others have seen it firsthand and do care, and could fill Edwards in on the details (of course, such sources of honest accouting about Iraq don't happen to work for our government, or, in most cases, for large media institutions).
We'll never get Iraq "right" no matter what, if we can't or won't acknowledge the truth [not just privately behind closed doors, but publicly as a nation] about what we caused to happen, what did happen and why, who was responsible, and, absolutely critically, what the people of Iraq want and need going forward, never mind what the American-provided (and kept in line) cabinet and ministerial officials of that territory claim (to the U.N. and the U.S.) that Iraqis want and need.
In other words, John Edwards, don't believe (or pretend to believe) the empty Pentagon and White House-spun rhetoric that is intended to misdirect the world and the American people about our intentions in and for Iraq, and don't parrot or accept at face value the deceitful self-reported statistics about the results of our actions in and for Iraq, as solemnly "reported" by the likes of Michael Gordon and the New York Times. Instead, start focusing on the actions Americans actually take on a daily basis on the ground over there, and on what those actions mean, to the territorial integrity of Iraq as a whole, to the future of Iraq's stocks of its sole natural resource (oil and gas) which hold enormous profit potential and thus enormous temptation for corruption and thievery, and especially - if self-government and its fundamental people before profit wisdom still means anything to Americans - to how our actions conflict with the will of what the majority of Iraqi citizens tell us in polls they wish America would do, if anything, beyond leaving them to find their own way, ASAP.
http://alternet.org/module/printversion/71144
Comments closed January 16, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
But that would require journalists to be, um, *intelligent*, among other things. I think that currently the only group whom journalism majors can truly claim to be smarter than is education majors. And that's about as low a bar to set as is possible.
Posted by sherifffruitfly | January 2, 2008 1:55 PM