America in Transition

With scarcely a month of campaigning left before the Iowa caucuses, every day now brings new drama, real or media-inspired. Yesterday saw a new sharpness of tone used by leading Democrats and Republicans to describe their chief competitors. Hillary attacked Obama by name, and vice versa. Romney, Giuliani and upstart Huckabee also traded ad hominem attacks. The desperate urgency of these forays stemmed from the realization that, while neither party has reached a consensus on who it wants, in the course of a few short weeks at the start of next year, both parties’ standard bearers will be effectively chosen, once and for all. The vast majority of convention delegates will be selected by the time polls close on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

In other words, if you’re going to make a personal attack, better get at it quickly. So Romney chose to say that “(Giuliani) needs to go back to school” because he had his facts confused when it came to Romney’s record on crime in Massachusetts. Rudy countered that Mitt was very close to Ted Kennedy in his approaches to crime fighting. Hillary charged that Obama  had waffled on coverage in his health care plan, while CBS featured Edwards’ new “no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy” approach.

Meanwhile, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack’s assertion that Hillary had been “the face of the Administration on foreign affairs” when her husband was in the White House, led to a variety of critical pokes, including from Bill Richardson, who of course had an official role as (Bill) Clinton envoy and U.N. Ambassador.

So much for name calling and hyperbole.  When Obama announced that Oprah Winfrey, America’s most successful female celebrity, would campaign for him in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, it came as a relief.  In the midst of the latest name-calling, perhaps calling on Oprah is the best name calling of all.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 7:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.