: What Dukakis should have said…
Sometimes in presidential debates a moment arises that appears to be either the turning point in the campaign or the final nail in the coffin. Examples include: Ford’s assertion about eastern Europe, Reagan’s classic age put-down of Mondale, or Dukakis’ fumbled rape question.
Sen. John Kerry survived such a moment last night after Larry King, normally a competent soft-baller, threw this curve-ball in regard to the death penalty: “A person who kills a 5-year-old should live?”
Kerry’s reply: “My instinct is to want to strangle that person with my own hands…I understand the instincts, I really do.”
Good answer.
Such questions are not designed to draw cogent responses to real concerns about policy. Such questions are purely pathetic attempts to trap politicians into making “newsworthy” errors. Such questions offer us a perfect example of the decidedly non-neutral role the press plays in campaign politics.
Kerry answered pathos with pathos. So his response is “good” in the sense that he did no damage to himself (the way Dukakis did). But we the people are no better off, nor better informed, for the question or the answer.
“But we the people are no better off, nor better informed, for the question or the answer.”
I don’t know if I’m better off, but the remainer of his statement makes me feel that I’m better informed. Following Kerry’s “good” answer, he went on to provide information about some “111 people who have been now released from death row … because of DNA evidence that showed they didn’t commit the crime of which they were convicted.”
Kerry also uses a logical argument about why he is against the death penalty saying that “[O]ur system has made mistakes, and it’s been applied in a way that I think is wrong”. I guess he almost hit the Artistic trifecta on his potential turning point?
Edwards response was also pathetic, but subtler when he said in a passiontate tone that “there are some crimes that deserve the ultimate punishment”. However, Edwards opens himself up for follow-up on the question, to provide a list of the crimes that he believes demand capital punishment, whereas Kerry has answered definitively.
J- yes…my comment is overstated. I was, however, confining my remarks to the immediate answer