Let’s take a quick presidential campaign pop quiz:
1. Which candidate refrains from wearing a U.S. flag pin on his lapel?
2. Which candidate has taken more shots in a Pennsylvania bar than she ever took in Bosnia?
3. Is Barack Obama an elitist or just simply out of touch when he says some Americans are bitter and thus “cling” to religion and guns?
4. Is Hillary Clinton an elitist or just simply out of touch when she postures as a regular gal in the same week she and her husband claim more than $100 million in earnings over the past seven years?
5. In more than five words, can you describe either candidate’s plan for Iraq?
If you answered: “Obama,” “Clinton,” and “yes, both elitist and out of touch” to questions 3 and 4 then, well, congratulations, you’re fully engaged in this year’s Democratic race for the presidency.
If you answered No. 5 with a shrug, you’re not alone.
Forty minutes into last Wednesday’s debate — surely the “most important debate” of what surely will be “the biggest election of our lifetime” — moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos already had queried the candidates on whether Hillary really, truly believes Barack can win; why Barack won’t wear a flag lapel pin — apparently he’s now like Kramer from “Seinfeld,” who refused to wear the AIDS Walk ribbon out of spite — and whether Obama’s “bitter” comment will hurt his chances in November.
And these are the most pressing issues of our time?
Another bad night for the media. Another bad night for democracy.
It’s true that voters can glean a truer sense of the man (or woman) by getting to know their personalities and all of their quirks. For example, we’ve learned that Obama had no trouble throwing his grandmother under the bus during his speech on race, yet he couldn’t disavow an acquaintance from the Weather Underground — a group that once bombed the Capitol?
For some voters, that’s all they need to hear. But didn’t Al Gore invent the Internet, which eventually led to YouTube (the meanest political force since Lee Atwater) for just such pablum?
I expect more (and I don’t know why) from a major television debate.
Just a week ago, NBC’s Tim Russert was in town to be honored by the Denver Press Club as this year’s Damon Runyon Award winner. He delivered an impassioned defense of the media in front of an audience of more than 700, including some politicians.
He not only defended the right to demand to know where the presidential candidates stand on Iraq, or energy, or the environment, he called it an obligation. It’s good for democracy. Yet we haven’t had many of those debates that are good for democracy lately, whether in front of television cameras or at the office water cooler.
The rest of the world is watching us and learning about democracy as Hillary and Barack go toe-to- toe, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told us last week. (For more on our talk with Albright, go to the back page.)
Hopefully, they don’t get ABC. Or YouTube.
Conventional wisdom suggests Americans are to blame for the vacuous chatter that substitutes for debate in this country. Our attention spans are too short to digest anything of substance. We prefer sexy over substance, glib over glum.
But when we asked Albright about Iraq, she offered up a possible solution — and a better explanation of Hillary’s plan than the candidate has mustered — in about five minutes.
Five minutes. We’re not asking for much.
Our democracy depends on it.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
