Opinion: Don’t whisper, shout it out.
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The little conspiratorial whispers that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton exchanged after yesterday’s NAACP forum in Detroit, detailed here previously, seem to be developing some legs. And rightly so.
The pair appeared to be discussing the need to pare down the size of these Democratic candidate forums, eliminating some of the marginal candidates who have no chance of winning but do take up valuable TV time spouting their cockamamy platforms and conspiracies and, they hope, potentially embarrassing top-tier candidates with pointed questions.
Truth be told, these forums are the major source of exposure for these fringe folks. That TV exposure appears to legitimize their hopeless candidacies. This morning The Times’ Scott Martelle described the hapless hunt for Republican votes by California’s Duncan Hunter.
Remember Alan Keyes? Before the cameras he was the grenade-thrower in numerous Republican debates seven years ago. Yet backstage he was collecting autographs from his opponents and seeking photographs posing with them. His speaking fees could go up after that ‘campaign’ and he was eventually picked as the substitute sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered in a Senate campaign against an Illinois Democrat named Barack Obama.
Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the loud-mouthed former Cleveland mayor who otherwise would have spent yet another day being ignored on the campaign trail, saw an opportunity for publicity in yesterday’s whispers. Four years ago he and Edwards cooperated together in the Iowa caucuses. But today Kucinich....
lashed out at Edwards for a ‘consistent lack of integrity’ and ‘trying to rig an election, then denying what’s going on and making excuses.’
Neither Edwards nor Clinton wants to feed any furor and give the back of the pack publicity. Edwards denied he was in favor of barring anyone from future gatherings and suggested breaking them into groups of four. Clinton said she enjoyed the forums and added very vaguely that Edwards ‘has some ideas about what he’d like to do.’
The facts are this is the first wide-open election in more than a half-century with no incumbents or heirs-apparent. That’s prompted more to get the bug. The two parties have 18 candidates out there with No. 19, Fred Thompson, set to join the fray after organizing some more and avoiding the expensive fight for another month or so. Of those 19, 17 are not going to be nominees and most of them already know it, or should. The Aug. 11 Republican straw poll in Iowa may thankfully winnow out a couple of contenders.
Television is the lifeblood of these fringe candidates. They may have a right to run and their noisy handfuls of adherents have a right to be noisy adherents. But that doesn’t obligate us to listen or preserve their delicate feelings from the hopeless political reality. Debate organizers should start immediately drawing up criteria to exclude candidates not registering, say, two percent in the polls. Raise it to three in the fall and four or five come January.
It’s been a fun winter and spring watching these wannabes pretend to ponder a race and then jostle for position and attention. But picking a new national leader is serious business. Having them raise hands to show their positions because there’s not enough time for each to speak is a bad joke. The sooner we whittle down these cumbersome fields of candidates the better. And we don’t need to whisper that.
--Andrew Malcolm