Pancake City

8:07: I admire Clinton’s ability for tailoring her opening statement to the audience, but I think she took it a little too far when she commemorated former Cowboys coach Tom Landry.

8:09 Four minutes in and still mud-free!

8:10. Obama’s opening statement. He’s using a lot of the same phrases he used in past speeches. No one’s accusing him of plagiarism this time!

8:11 I call this opening remark pander-off a tie. A good pandering to the both of you.

8:12. Obama: “What we are lacking now isn’t good ideas.” He introduced this line a week ago, I guess it’s a swipe against Clinton’s wonkiness, but I actually don’t agree with him. Political strategy is critical to implementing legislation, but what you are trying to implement is important as well. This line is anti-idealistic, and it’s strange coming from a campaign partially based in idealism.

8:14: First question is from the soccer game announcer at Univision. “Senator Clinton, what are your GOAAAAAAAALS for America?” Actually, it’s a good opening question: “Would you be willing to meet with Raul Castro or whoever leads the Cuban dictatorship?”

8:15 Clinton’s response: not until Cuba changes first. This is the same argument Bush uses for not talking to countries. It’s based on the idea that America is the popular kid in school and Cuba is a socially awkward nerd that will do anything to please us. We’re like 0 for 13 in countries we tried this policy against.

Another ridiculous policy: embargoes. When have they ever worked? We had a trade embargo against Cuba for 40 years, and all it did was make the Cuban people poorer. We would have got rid of Castro faster by sending over some of our potato chips. Try living past 70 after eating a bucket of Lays, Fidel.

8:17: I can’t say if Obama’s position on Cuba is ideal, but it’s worlds better and more forward thinking than Clinton’s position.

8:22 Obama makes a good argument for active diplomacy–to undo some of the damage caused by Bush.

8:23 Q: “How are you different from Clinton on economy?” Are they different?

8:25 Obama avoiding differences so far, giving stump speech answer.

8:28 Clinton wants a “trade timeout”. No X-boxes for 2 weeks.

8:30 Pleasantly pleasant so far. I wonder if at 9:00 they will give Clinton and Obama battle sticks and send them into the Octagon. (Note: I swear I wrote this at 8:30, and not after watching what happened around 9:00)

8:30 I like Clinton’s “War on Science” line. I also like the passionate, positive Clinton. There is an argument to be made that her only chance is to ferociously attack Obama, but I personally like and admire Hillary more when she’s arguing for herself and not against Obama.

8:31 Today’s group to pander to: Hispanics. The Kanaka Maoli got totally left out when their wasn’t a debate in Hawaii.

8:33 The path to citizenship for illegal immigrants sounds like a huge pain in the ass. Are any illegal immigrants really going to do this?

8:34 Obama: We need to tone down the rhetoric. Fits in with his campaign well. “We need to fix legal immigration process.” Clinton nods in agreement, looks like she’s thinking “I wish I said that.”

8:36 Snide question from me: How can we help the Mexican economy when we have trouble with our own? It’s probably one of those ideas that ends up helping both of us, but people become more protectionist when they’re fearful for their own economic future.

8:37 Border fence question. Question I would prefer: “Is a border fence as stupid as it sounds?”

(Side note–the audience seems slightly pro-Hillary. Not sure if it’s her performance or their predisposition)

Clinton’s argument for why she and Obama voted for a border fence: Bush tricked both of us. Again! Damn you, Bush.

8:39 Clinton mentions “smart fencing”. Is that like those ultrasound electric dog fences? Overall, she gave a good response.

Obama agrees with Clinton. Clinton nods in agreement, looks like she’s thinking “Yeah, I’m the one who said it.”

8:43 Obama mentions the “Dream Act”. I don’t know what that is, but Obama is dreamy, so I support it.

8:43 Get this Univision guy back for another debate. He asks good questions. “Is there a downside to a bilingual nation?”

8:46 Obama: I want kids to learn a second language. Woah, hold on there, Barack. I don’t like learning new stuff. And I don’t want to raise a race of super kids that are smarter than me. Let’s keep our kids the way they are now: unilingual and dumb.

(commercial break) If this is what debates will be like, Obama should be fine with one every week. Both candidates are coming off well, which favors Obama slightly.

8:50 John King: Will you fight. Please? Come on. I’ll help you out. Obama is a _____.

8:52 Bye Internet. I was watching the debate online. Come back soon.

8:56: Obama says something that gets a lot of applause. What is it? I don’t know, INTERNET.

8:57. Campbell Brown: Seriously, you have to fight. I mean, Senator Clinton, you are sitting next to a plagiarist.

8:58 SILLY SEASON! I love it, Obama! I want to put Silly Season on my popcorn.

8:59 Clinton must have been crushed when that line bombed. “…lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in; it’s change you can Xerox.” It’s a good line, but the timing was horrible, especially after Obama’s strong response against the charges of plagiarism. First boos of the night.

9:00 Number of licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop: three. Number of questions it takes to get candidates to fight: two.

9:03 Where is this debate, next to a wind turbine? A gust of wind has been blowing their papers around for the past 10 minutes.

9:06 Obama: openness vs. closedness. Closedness is why Hillary’s health care reform in the 90s failed. Plans needs to be explained to people. A philosophical difference between the two candidates.

9:11 More fight questions!

9:13 Obama gives a better-than-usual rebuttal to Clinton’s health care claim.

9:15 It’s an attack question, but it’s from the Univision guy, so I like it.

9:22 Good question on the surge: Were you wrong in opposing it?

9:22 Very good answer by Clinton–goal of surge was about political progress. Goal still hasn’t been met. Completely true. The whole point of the surge was to create a safe enough environment for political progress to take root and flourish. The security part worked, but the political process is still stalled. We need to do something else to motivate the many power-holders in Iraq to figure out a political solution.

9:24 Clinton: “Last night in Brownsville, you know, a woman grabbed my hand and said, ‘Please, my husband’s there for the third time. Bring him home.’ ” There are a lot of people grabbing Hillary’s hand. Where is she holding rallies, Zombie Conventions? “Last night, in Gaisnville, a young zombie mother of two grabbed my hand and said, “BRAAAINS!” And I tell you, when one of her daughters started biting my ankle, the tears welled up in my eyes.”

9:33 Questions on their records on earmark spending. Obama mentions a “Google for Government” bill he co-sponsored with a staunch conservative. I like the bill, and I like his point–it’s not earmarks that are bad, it’s the secrecy behind them.

9:35 Hillary: Remember the good times with Bill? I’m a Clinton too.

9:36 Univision guy asks his first bad question. Super delegates: yawn.

9:39 “Describe the moment in your life when you were tested the most?” I think Oprah submitted that question.

9:43 Awwww…. (Hillary gave a nice closing response. They shook hands. You had to be there.)

* Clinton’s campaign is setting the stage for a protracted battle, at least publicly. In the link, her campaign manager claims she will have a delegate advantage by around June 7th, the end of primary season. The campaign is also fighting a battle in the media about the role of superdelegates, both arguing that they should exercise their own judgment (i.e. not mirror the wishes of voters, who have given Obama an edge so far) and that they shouldn’t be called superdelegates but rather “automatic delegates” because…I honestly forget.

I agree in principle with them that superdelgates should exercise their own judgment. That’s the whole raison d’etre for superdelegates. In the “should have though of this beforehand” category though, if the superdelegates actually selected a party candidate with significantly less popular support, the rift would severely damage the party, making one wonder why superdelegates exist in the first place.

* People have an intuitive but misleading idea that you can’t be a good orator and knowledgeable about policy at the same time. It’s the same thought process behind the idea that a gorgeous woman can’t be brilliant, or a professional sports player can’t be intelligent. What’s the basis for this idea? I believe it’s primarily two concepts: limited focus and necessity.  Expert skill takes many years to develop, so we assume that the star running back doesn’t have the time or resources to become well-read, and since he’s already successful in one area, what’s his motivation anyway? If you are gorgeous, the thinking goes, sure you can become thoughtful and well-read, but you don’t need to because you can get by on your looks. So why bother?

A third reason is that there is no overlap between the skills of policy wonk and orator, so it’s more difficult to believe the same person can possess those two skills.  In contrast, it would be easier to picture a construction worker skilled working on cars rather than one talented in writing poetry, although if you think about it, are there really any skills in common between building a house and working on a car, besides being able to lump both of them in the category of “manual labor”?

Related to all of this is the Academy Awards.  Seriously. Comedies almost never win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, if one is even nominated at all. For most people, moments of happiness or light-heartedness are fleeting, and the rest of the time is spent in a neutral or negative emotional state. We then engage in temporal reasoning and conclude that because pleasant moments are rare and fleeting, and make up a small fraction of our experiences, they are outliers and not “real life”. In other words, anything that makes you feel good can’t have lasting meaning, because we can’t help defining “meaningful feelings” as the ones that stay with us the longest.  If one believes that a Best Picture needs to say something meaningful about life, it becomes easy to dismiss any comedy solely for being a comedy.  Here’s some advice for any comedy trying to win a Oscar for Best Picture: don’t be too funny, and make sure to include some depressing moments as well.

The dynamics of inspiring rhetoric are different from those governing movies like “Juno”, but what they face in common is an almost insurmountable suspicion of the value of anything that is fleeting and makes one feel good. It’s a justifiable suspicion in many cases, like eating junk food or a juicy hamburger, but not always, and that’s what most people don’t get. Something can make you feel good and have deep value as well.