2007-11-16

Plant a tree or plant a question?

Senator Hillary R. Clinton's campaign chose to plant at least one question at a recent Iowa town hall meeting. It's fair to say that many campaign managers have done this over the years. Issues are complex, and candidates need an opportunity to put the questions that they've been working hard to answer out there in the public venue. However, this should never be at the expense of listening to the questions that Americans are genuinely asking.

I'm not a political strategist, but I can't help that thinking owning up to it would be a smart move, dispelling the haze of distrust that is still over her from her days with slick-Willy. It would be easy to say that she had no knowledge, but it doesn't get her anywhere. Instead, she could take a Ron Paul approach and say that we need to focus on this (or any other issue) instead of being distracted by Xxx issue.

I wish it had turned out a little better for the Clinton campaign. I think she would have preferred something like this. That would have been more enjoyable. I dunno....whatever happened to the days when being an environmentalist meant that you planted a tree and not a question?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Planting questions on the campaign trail was made into an art by G.W. Bush as well.

Politicians these days....

And look what Obama did when he was confronted with a testy questioner in Iowa...he snapped! Clearly these people who want to run our country can't handle real people with real issues.

But, I bet Huckabee can: If he can handle a Baptist congregation, he can handle anyone!

Stushie said...

Hi Chris, you might enjoy my cartoon on the subject

http://stushietoon.blogspot.com/2007/11/political-cartoons-planting-season.html

feel free to use it...

will said...

Its begin to appear that not only are questions being planted that are favorable to Hillary, numerous questions were also posed at the CNN debate that were intended to be hostile to Republicans. The thing is, these were asked by people who lied about who they were and who they supported.

Seems most of this is only theater.