{"id":3823,"date":"2008-10-08T15:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T21:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/10\/presidential-candidates-need-to-answer-the-questions\/"},"modified":"2009-08-22T14:16:40","modified_gmt":"2009-08-22T20:16:40","slug":"presidential-candidates-need-to-answer-the-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/10\/presidential-candidates-need-to-answer-the-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential candidates need to answer the questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Bill McCamley <\/span><\/p>\n

Stephen:<\/span> If I risk my neck for you, will I get a chance to kill Englishmen?
Hamish:<\/span> Is your father a ghost, or do you converse with the Almighty?
Stephen:<\/span> In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God. [Heavenward] Yes, Father. [To William Wallace and the others] The Almighty says don\u2019t change the subject; just answer the f****** question.\u201d
– \u201cBraveheart\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

OK, I admit it. I am sick and tired of the debates. I want answers to the questions the moderators are asking. No more sound bites. No more background explanations that take up the full two minutes. No more cheap shots at the other guy. Answers.<\/p>\n

I had a whole other column written for this week, but had to change it after Tuesday\u2019s debate. Here\u2019s an inside political baseball trick that won\u2019t surprise you: When you go to media training as a politician, the first and most regular thing you\u2019re told is, \u201cNever answer the question you are asked. Always answer the question you wish you were asked.\u201d It isn\u2019t even a secret now, since Sarah Palin<\/a> blatantly refused to get off talking points last week. But it\u2019s also been evident in the presidential debates, specifically in three critical areas of discussion.<\/p>\n

In the last debate, Jim Lehrer tried hard to ask John McCain<\/a> and Barack Obama<\/a> what priorities they would cut to pay for the bailout. It was a great question, one that Americans, who are making tough choices for themselves, want to hear a clear answer to. Neither candidate gave one.<\/p>\n

One of the town hall questioners yesterday asked what sacrifices the president would ask Americans to make in helping our nation get back on its feet. Once again, no specific responses. The last question at the town-hall debate was, \u201cWhat do you know, and what do you not know?\u201d Great question, and one that neither answered.<\/p>\n

Tough situations<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not naive. Questions like this put candidates in tough situations. If you stay on message, only answering with a planned, memorized statement, you\u2019re safe. All that will be heard is the point that you have no doubt polled as something that people will accept.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, answers to most political questions cannot be simply answered. The world is a complicated place, and solutions to its problems can be just as complicated. Sometimes, when you try to give an answer realistically, a short statement can be taken completely out of context. Therefore, you run the risk of having a 30-second attack ad on TV within an hour saying that you are a bad person. <\/p>\n

Mostly, this is OK. People have to win before they can make reality out of the policies they propose, and getting that position is important. And the truth is that if we, the voters, didn\u2019t fall for the TV ads and sound bites, the candidates wouldn\u2019t use the no-answer answer as a strategy. If we clamored for real answers passionately enough, the pros that work for the politicians wouldn\u2019t instruct them to stay on message; they would say to tell the truth.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that isn\u2019t the case most of the time.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t most times<\/span><\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t most times. We are facing one of the biggest economic crises in our history. I\u2019m scared, and I\u2019m not the only one. States, including New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state>, are worrying about how they will provide services with decreasing revenue. Businesses are worrying about how they will get loans to keep their operations going and make payroll. Workers are worrying about basic things like gas, food and a mortgage. And it isn\u2019t just the United States<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>. Iceland<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region> is facing national bankruptcy. The Japanese stock market lost 9.2 percent. Today. I listen to an Australian rock station online and they talk about the Wall Street financial crisis just as much as we do. Whether we like it or not, we are not just electing a president for our country.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re electing the most powerful person in the world.<\/p>\n

Times of crisis demand leadership, which sometimes means saying what people may not want to hear. That\u2019s reality. It\u2019s time to treat us like adults and tell us the truth.<\/p>\n

I voted for Obama in the February primary, but didn\u2019t truly become a supporter until the last week of March when Obama responded to the comments of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with his \u201cA More Perfect Union\u201d speech<\/a>. I loved it. It wasn\u2019t talking points or poll-driven messages. He gave a true take about race in this country, how he viewed it and the solutions that he saw for all of us. I felt like an intelligent adult who was being asked to think.<\/p>\n

Where is this forthrightness now? If we can discuss race this way, can\u2019t we do the same for the economy? I want Obama to win and hope that after he is elected, without the political pressure of an upcoming election, he will become a true leader in the mold of JFK taking blame after the Bay of Pigs fiasco<\/a>, or FDR with his fireside chats<\/a> asking all Americans to sacrifice so that everyone, working together, could rise out of the depression. But Obama has one more chance in the next debate to do it now. I think we would all be in a better position if it happened.<\/p>\n

McCamley<\/a> is the District 5 Do\u00f1a Ana County commissioner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bill McCamley Stephen: If I risk my neck for you, will I get a chance to kill Englishmen?Hamish: Is your father a ghost, or do you converse with the Almighty?Stephen: In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God. [Heavenward] Yes, Father. [To William Wallace and the others] The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mccamley-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}