Sound bite campaigning

For many months, I was enthusiastically supporting Clinton in the 2008 primaries. Although I do not plan on voting for her on Tuesday, I still think she would make a good president.  However, in the process of the campaign, my concerns about Obama have been calmed at the same time that the Clintons have soured me away.

On January 14, Barack Obama said this:

"The Republican approach has played itself out.  I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.  Now, you've heard it all before.  You look at the economic policies when they're being debated among the presidential candidates, it's all tax cuts.  Well, we know, we've done that; we've tried it.  That's not really going to solve our energy problems, for example"

In a Democratic debate shortly thereafter, Hillary Clinton said this:

"He has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote ... They were ideas like privatizing Social Security, like moving back from a balanced budget and a surplus to deficit and debt."

An unfortunate characteristic about the American political campaigns is that candidates cannot say what they believe.  Candidates cannot take the risk of exploring ideas and engaging with the public about policy because their words can easily be distorted and used against them.  Instead, candidates must "stay on message" with 30 second sound bites.  

In 2004, John Kerry, when answering a question about the $87 billion Iraq spending package, infamously said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."  This is actually an accurate way of describing the technicalities of any American legislative body that has a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd vote before legislation is passed out of that body.  Amendments can be attached to the 3rd reading that wasn't on the 2nd, changing the bill substantially.  Kerry offered a reasonable explanation about what the Bush campaign called a "flip flop."  He originally supported the bill, then it was changed and he could no longer support it.

The Bush campaign responded to Kerry's technical answer by playing that quote over and over in television ads, making John Kerry sound like a bumbling fool.  It's the kind of politics that squashes any possibility of having a true debate.  Clinton's comment about Obama really liking Republican ideas plays that exact game.