November 22, 2003
PLAIN WHITE TOAST:
Spoiling (Carefully) for a Fight (MATT BAI, 11/23/03, NY Times Magazine)
The general consensus this fall is that there are too many candidates and too many debates, and that they sound about as spontaneous as a George Foreman infomercial.''They're not debates,'' Paul Begala, one of the party's leading debate strategists, said. ''You have a collection of people with their canned lines, some of them good and some of them not good, and they just recite them in random order. In fact, maybe we should just do that. 'Senator Kerry, could you please give us your line on Medicare?'''
Begala said the best way to fix this mess would be to somehow winnow the field, giving a smaller number of candidates more time to answer each question. When I repeated this suggestion to Sharpton, who has clearly been the most agile debater thus far, he scoffed. ''What are we really talking about?'' he asked. ''A minute or two? It's not like some of them were on the verge of brilliance and then somebody cut them off!''
I asked Sharpton to rate the debating skills of his rivals. Gephardt and Kucinich show the most passion, Sharpton said, while Lieberman is the most sure of his convictions. ''He don't care if they heckle or boo, that's who he is. I respect it.'' Dean, he said, ''can come off as arrogant or even mean-spirited.'' Sharpton likened Kerry to a prizefighter who scores well in every round but never lands the knockout punch.
I asked him about Edwards. ''He suffers from his handlers maybe building something up that he couldn't live up to,'' Sharpton said, sympathetically. ''I don't blame him for that. I think sometimes you can be overpromoted, and it can hurt you in the end.''
Some Democratic insiders, including at least one friend of the senator's, suggested to me that Edwards might have something to gain by remaining tepid. The 50-year-old candidate, who has already said that he will give up his Senate seat, would be a natural pick for vice president should he lose the nomination, and his chances will be better if he doesn't savage the eventual nominee.
Nothing fires up the faithful like positioning yourself as the most tepid option in the race. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 22, 2003 3:27 PM
Given the Democratic Party's apparent lust for Hillary as a presidential candidate, if she doesn't end up running in 2004 it's hard to see what good Edwards would do getting the vice-presidential nomination next year, unless he wants to follow the lead of Joel Hyatt and set up a chain of personal injury law offices around the country in 2005 while serving as his own TV pitchman.
Posted by: John at November 22, 2003 6:52 PMSomething like that - It would leave him with a national connection to Dem movers and shakers. Combined with his Senate time, it should allow him to charge a pretty penny for his lobbying or consulting time.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 23, 2003 12:51 AMBegala is a leading debate strategist? God help the poor s.o.b.s.
Posted by: Chris at November 23, 2003 7:21 PMRe: Edwards and the V-P job. A former occupant did call that office a bucketful of warm spit.
It seems many of the nine are campaigning for it. But except for Gore probably boosting Clinton in '92, how many V-Ps have actually helped the ticket in recent years? And even those thought to be nitwits didn't seem to hurt all that much. So perhaps tepid is best.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 23, 2003 11:23 PMChris:
I agree. Paul Begala's come so unhinged, he blames bad weather on Bush.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 24, 2003 6:12 AM