What The People Want

I happened to see some clips last night from the recent Democratic debate in which Hillary and Obama savaged each other.

It was great television. The two sparred like alley cats. Obama tossed out barbs about not knowing which Clinton he's running against. As well as reminding everyone that Hillary was, for the most part, just a lawyer in Arkansas who happened to be on the Wal-Mart board.

Hillary, for her part, shown a spotlight on Obama's many 'present' votes in the Illinois Senate, as well as his involvement with a Chicago slumlord now under indictment.

What was really entertaining, though, was watching two Democrats, a self-styled female 'strategist' whose name I can't recall, and NPR/Fox News pundit Juan Williams, go at it on Bill O'Reilly's program about the clips and catfight.

The woman called it mudslinging, and said that Obama won, because he got Hillary down in the mud, where only Bill, her husband, is supposed to be.

Juan Williams claimed that Obama lost, because he got dirty, when his overall message is supposed to be about positive, sparkly-white change.

Williams inadvertently tipped his loyalties when he used a word like 'unfortunately' or 'regrettably,' to describe Obama's mistake. O'Reilly pounced on this immediately, but Williams was backtracking at warp speed. Not credibly, mind you, but he tried to gracefully extricate himself from the very partisan gaffe.

That said, the woman decried this 'mudslinging,' saying that voters don't want this.

Actually, I think we do. We love it. It's the very bone and sinew of American politics, and, Goddammit, it's our right to see it on display every four years.

In fact, it's gotten better during this election cycle. With these overly-ambitious egotists out running for President a full year earlier than last time, voters get a thorough look at them for much longer than we've been able to in the past.

With the internet, blogs, and YouTube, no gaffe goes away. No errant, honest admission dies silently. It's available on YouTube forever.

I think we all want to know about Hillary's taking Wal-Mart money then, and now trying to crucify corporate America.

Or that Obama smoked pot as a kid, and maybe sold it. Defended slumlords in the Chicago ghettos, and essentially skipped taking positions on an awfully lot of Illinois Senate votes.

The politicos- candidates, their handlers, the party operatives- all want voters to think they want to know only about 'the issues.'

But we know it's about character as much as, if not more than, issues. What did these candidates do for the past decade or two? How did they make their living? Who do they owe? Who have they taken into their confidences, their lives, and their campaigns?

How do they behave under stress? The stress of a heated exchange with a rival candidate?

That's what is most interesting. Watching Hillary and Obama fence directly with each other in that debate earlier this week. Trading blows in front of a catcalling crowd, while Edwards watched from an ever-more distant perspective.

I think this is what American voters want to see. Counterpunching up close between candidates, where we know they will unveil what they believe their opponents' worst secrets and greatest weaknesses are.

How better to know these things, than to let an opponent expose them for us? For free? We want total information. We don't want any more Jack Kennedy secret administrations, in which the press failed to print what it new about his affairs, mob contacts and health issues. Or the hidden secret of FDR's near-total immobility.

The political class don't want this, because it's easier to control campaigns that only focus on 'the issues.'

But, being America, in an era of unbridled, unmatched communications and access to information, that hope is long gone now. I'm not even sure Bill Clinton could have backed, filled and covered up sufficiently in this modern era to win the Presidency, if it were him running in 2008, instead of his wife.

Long live the mudslinging and investigative efforts of the rival candidates. It's the only chance we voters have to learn the total truth about him, or her, to whom we would entrust our most powerful office for the next four years.