Two agendas; compare and contrast
The No Agenda Myth
By BILL KELLER, NYT
I feel a rising tide of ennui. America is in the last, numbing days of an excruciating slog to Election Day and some of my tribe — the jaded scribes, the blogging sages and caffeinated cable chatterers — have run out of patience, poor babies. Searching for the source of their malaise, beyond the dubious science of the polls and the mean spirits of the campaigns and the emptiness of the slogans and our own limited attention spans, those of my ilk have come up with this high-minded diagnosis: the candidates have No Agenda.
They say: “It’s a good time to follow the candidates if you like elections about nothing.” And: “Obama’s greatest weakness is that his proposals for the future are nonexistent.” And: “The president did not lay out a second-term agenda ... And that is where he is the weakest.” And: “People say, I want to vote for him, but he hasn’t told me what he’s going to do.” And, by the way: “You don’t get that from Mitt Romney, either.” I’ve heard it countless times and, truth be told, probably said it myself once or twice. No Agenda!
When President Obama’s campaign last week issued a 20-page booklet of its intentions, it was dismissed in my own newspaper for containing “no new proposals,” and in The Wall Street Journal as a “glossy” pitch to critics who say “Mr. Obama hasn’t fully explained what he hopes to accomplish if re-elected.” Romney has made the ostensible lack of an Obama agenda the heart of his closing argument. That’s shrewd politics. The No Agenda meme works nicely for Romney. If Obama has no agenda then he is, by default, the candidate of the status quo, and the status quo is a painfully slow recovery, a hovering debt crisis and a worrisome world. Obama’s retort is that Romney is trying to hide his agenda — dressing a pack of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
But Romney, with or without an agenda, is the candidate who has not presided over a time of national anxiety, and therefore he is the de facto candidate of change. Or as the new slogan has it, “Big Change.”
(More here.)
I feel a rising tide of ennui. America is in the last, numbing days of an excruciating slog to Election Day and some of my tribe — the jaded scribes, the blogging sages and caffeinated cable chatterers — have run out of patience, poor babies. Searching for the source of their malaise, beyond the dubious science of the polls and the mean spirits of the campaigns and the emptiness of the slogans and our own limited attention spans, those of my ilk have come up with this high-minded diagnosis: the candidates have No Agenda.
They say: “It’s a good time to follow the candidates if you like elections about nothing.” And: “Obama’s greatest weakness is that his proposals for the future are nonexistent.” And: “The president did not lay out a second-term agenda ... And that is where he is the weakest.” And: “People say, I want to vote for him, but he hasn’t told me what he’s going to do.” And, by the way: “You don’t get that from Mitt Romney, either.” I’ve heard it countless times and, truth be told, probably said it myself once or twice. No Agenda!
When President Obama’s campaign last week issued a 20-page booklet of its intentions, it was dismissed in my own newspaper for containing “no new proposals,” and in The Wall Street Journal as a “glossy” pitch to critics who say “Mr. Obama hasn’t fully explained what he hopes to accomplish if re-elected.” Romney has made the ostensible lack of an Obama agenda the heart of his closing argument. That’s shrewd politics. The No Agenda meme works nicely for Romney. If Obama has no agenda then he is, by default, the candidate of the status quo, and the status quo is a painfully slow recovery, a hovering debt crisis and a worrisome world. Obama’s retort is that Romney is trying to hide his agenda — dressing a pack of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
But Romney, with or without an agenda, is the candidate who has not presided over a time of national anxiety, and therefore he is the de facto candidate of change. Or as the new slogan has it, “Big Change.”
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home