On the Campaign Trail with Ed Tibbetts

The field of Democratic presidential candidates came off looking better in their second debate Sunday night in New Hampshire than they did in the first forum a month ago in South Carolina — if for no other reason than the format permitted a wider range of discussion.

A lot of their answers were formulaic, but there also was an opportunity for each to dig into some detail, look a bit less stiff and engage the public. This was especially true in the second half of the debate.

As for the issues, Iraq was tackled early and, throughout, remained the most interesting exchange between the Big Three (Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards).

Edwards stuck it to Clinton and Obama by saying they voted the right way on the Iraq War spending bill a couple weeks ago (”no”) but weren’t leaders in getting out front in opposing it.

Obama’s response was if it was leadership Edwards wanted, he should have shown it four and a half years ago when it came to authorize the war. (Edwards, who voted for it, blunted the attack a bit by saying he made a mistake and even going so far as to say Obama was right and he was wrong. Obama was a state senator at the time.).

Clinton, who’s being pressured by Edwards in Iowa, sought to point out the differences are greater between the Democrats and Republicans than among themselves (which she called minor). She did, though, make a not-so-subtle dig at the former senator from North Carolina (and maybe a bit at Obama, too) by noting she’s been casting votes that “make a difference” rather than criticizing from the outside.

I’m not sure if this pushes anyone forward or backward, but it’s a bit more give and take on the issue by the Big Three than we’ve seen in the past.

That’s good. The debate on Iraq may be getting stale to folks in early states who’ve heard a lot of it before. The more they set themselves apart from one another, the more engaged voters will be. 

Obama had a good moment when he took CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to task for trying to pin folks down on saying whether they would support English as the country’s “official” language. Obama said it was aimed at dividing people. That will help reinforce the image he’s a transformational politician.

Obama and Edwards mixed it up on health care. Biden stood out by saying there ought to be more forceful action, including military action, on the killings in Darfur. Biden, whose passion is what people like about him, showed his strength in this instance, though he had others disagree on his policy prescription.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson suggested the possibilitiy of boycotting the 2008 Olympics in China to try to leverage them into being more cooperative. Sen. Chris Dodd, who didn’t seem to get as much time as the others, disagreed.

Richardson also was the first to talk about education. It didn’t come up til nearly the end of the debate and he may have won some points for that.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Mike Gravel continued being direct in their criticism of the others. Gravel was particularly so, but given his low standing in the early polls, he was ignored.

All in all, it was two hours well spent (okay, maybe 90 minutes).

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 7:08 pm and is filed under On The Campaign Trail. 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.