Softball Politics
Once again the internet rears it’s ugly little head in the 2008 presidential election.
Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19 year-old sophomore at Grinnell College has come out and stated that she was given a question to ask Hillary Clinton after the one she proposed on comparing energy plans wasn’t up to snuff.
“‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the staffer said, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, “because I don’t know how familiar she is with their plans.”
It gets even better. The staffer then opened a binder with about eight questions on it, one of which was specifically marked in brackets as “college student”. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who was picked to ask the question, “As a young person, I’m worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?”
This is a presidential campaign, not T-Ball. Has this happened before on both sides of the fence? Surely. Can campaigns be run like this in the future? Not if the unbiased eye of the internet is going to continue to roam freely.
Here’s how it all works:
- I found this story on CNN and blogged about it. I’m assuming more than a few others have done so already or filed it away mentally for later use. These people physically tell two others, or thousands (millions?) happen across it on the web. It no longer originates from one source.
- Campaign staffers forget about this incident and decide to bait the audience six months from now (who would remember such a thing?) because they are at a crucial corner in the campaign and can’t risk a wild-card.
- A few audience members doing their due diligence decide to look up past questions posed to the candidates and run across this post or the CNN story. The wheels start turning.
- In the middle of a Q&A session in the most important state for the candidate, Joe Average decides to flush the suggested question down the toilet and go for the throat on something he knows the candidate is going to have a hard time with. In public, on live TV, with no net.
- This nervous, flip-flop answer gets replayed on YouTube and their opponent’s websites for the rest of the campaign. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’ll be curious to see if anyone on the campaign trail “gets it” in 2008. I fear that most are kept so insulated they can’t see past the next debate.