
The Debate and Spiderman 3
Others have weighed in at length, so this will be brief….30 seconds at best, yes or no at most.
We’ve become a world of snippets — of 30-second sound bites — so I guess we could have hoped for no more substance than that, not even when it comes to the most significant issues of the day.
Complex issues and the resulting complex questions are deserving of more than 30 second snippets and Chris Matthews-forced, "I’ll have to ask you to give ayes or no"simple answers.
Yes, I realize that with 10 "debaters" (this was no debate, by the way)and limited time, there may have been few other choices than the format selected. As well, this early in the process, all of the potential players have to be invited, further forcing the format.
Yet, I have no sense now of anything more than before, except each candidate’s ability to package an answer succinctly. There was John McCain, often looking like the only one of the bunch concerned about federal spending, when the record tells differently. There too was Ron Paul, perhaps one of the few willing to address runaway spending from a constitutional… Read More