Holes In Thoughts: Irritating Media Hiccups: Where's the Beef?

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Irritating Media Hiccups: Where's the Beef?

"At the end of the day, you want someone who knows what they're doing on day one"

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend on MSNBC with Brian Williams, 12 Feb 08 (video).

"What he doesn't have is the old, you know the old Mondale: "what the beef?" What are the details, and what is it going to cost? Which I assume one day we'll learn."

Bob Dole on MSNBC with Brian Williams, 12 Feb 08 (video).

This is beginning to irritate me. When Barack Obama was initially criticized for having too much content, a tone too professorial. People have noticed his soaring rhetoric in the last six months not because nobody cared before, but because he didn't use it as much before. When he made the shift, the New York Times devoted an entire article about the shift to more pointed rhetoric.

I don't know why this is the case. Obama has posted an absurd amount of information on his campaign website. Take environmental and energy reform. Senator Obama's page has twenty pages in PDF format detailing environmental and energy reform, and several very specific plans to cap carbon emissions, solutions for green energy, and so on. Senator Clinton has a little less, and it's not as well-presented, but the plans are equally robust.

Thankfully, this is beginning to get some attention. Just a few days ago, Matt Yglesias (who's working for the Atlantic just like my favorite blogger Andrew Sullivan) posted a great rundown of why it's ridiculous, and Carpetbagger followed up, although I think he Googled the wrong thing: he should've been looking for all the Hillary proponents who parrot the meme.

On the other hand, John McCain's website has a video of his stances on the environment (great Republicans were environmentalists, his belief in global warming, his concern with China and India, and oil independence). These are sensible stances, and ones he shares with Obama. Compared to the Democratic side, it's paltry. Even on issues that McCain ought to have a world of information (such as national security), there are no numbers. His positions are clear, but the means to accomplish them are not. That's not to say McCain doesn't know or understand his own positions, but how am I as a voter supposed to find out, if he doesn't put it on his own website?

So John McCain has some work to do, if he's going to try to convince the American people that Obama truly is trying "to encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas [and offering] not a promise of hope, [but] a platitude," well, he better get his own ideas out there.

Labels: Internet, Obama, politics

posted by Steve @ 4:05 AM

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