How many debates is too many? With months to go before the first
presidential primaries, and most Americans not paying close attention,
it’s a question worth asking—especially as the number of
scheduled and proposed debates for the Democratic presidential
candidates continues to climb.
All of the Democratic contenders have agreed to attend six
pre-primary debates sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee,
the last of them in Los Angeles in December. But in recent weeks, the
candidates have also been drawn into debates hosted by bloggers, gay
rights activists, and union advocates, with more invitations from
liberal interest groups coming in all the time.
Just before the Democrats’ early-morning, DNC-sanctioned debate in
Des Moines, Iowa, on August 19, Barack Obama said he’d had enough. His
campaign announced that it would no longer be accepting debate
invitations from interest groups, arguing that the proliferation of
these events was preventing Obama from talking to voters. He’ll still
do the DNC-sanctioned debates, and some other debates he’s already
committed to, but no more than that.
In the spin room after the Des Moines debate, I asked Obama’s top
strategist, David Axelrod, what was behind the decision. “We’ve done
eight debates and we’re going to do seven more,” Axelrod told me. “Once
in a while you want to spend time with your fellow Americans, too.”
Obama looked, during the debate, as if he’d also like to spend a little
more time in bed. So did a lot of the other candidates. Clinton even
joked, when the cameras first turned to her: “As soon as I wake up,
I’ll answer your question.”
Still, with a representative from the League of Conservation Voters
prowling the spin room offering a written complaint about Obama’s
decision (the League wants to host a debate on global warming), I
wondered whether Obama’s stand could hurt him, especially since he’s
the only candidate to publicly announce such a policy. Democratic Party
chairman Howard Dean, also in the spin room, told me he doubted there
would be much fallout. At this early date, Dean told me, “the
penetration of these debates is among political junkies and political
journalists.”
* * *
That may be, but it doesn’t mean that the debates haven’t contained
important moments. The Des Moines debate was a dud in the sense that it
didn’t produce the verbal attacks that pundits had been hoping for (and
that moderator George Stephanopoulos seemed to be pushing for), but it
did produce an interesting exchange about the issue that most concerns
voters these days: Iraq.
Up for discussion was how, exactly, the U.S. should pull out of
Iraq. Bill Richardson again pushed his “one-point plan” that would pull
U.S. troops out by the end of this year, leaving behind only the forces
needed to protect the American embassy in Baghdad. But Joseph Biden
called that plan unworkable at best, and dishonest at worst. “It’s time
to start to level with the American people,” Biden said of the
Richardson plan. “This administration hasn’t been doing it for seven
years. We should… If we leave Iraq and we leave it in chaos, there’ll
be regional war. The regional war will engulf us for a generation.”
Biden supports partitioning Iraq into autonomous Shiite, Sunni, and
Kurdish areas, and favors a slower withdrawal (he says Richardson’s
timeline for withdrawal is a practical impossibility anyway, given how
long it would take to move so much equipment and so many troops).
Hillary Clinton seemed to endorse Biden’s slower timeline, saying, “Joe
is right that this is going to take a while. People say you can move
maybe a brigade to two brigades a month. It is so important that we not
oversell this.” Obama also seemed to agree, but the part of his answer
that received the biggest audience response was when he reminded those
onstage that he’d been against the war in the first place. Edwards, for
his part, offered few specifics and seemed to be trying to blur the
differences between the candidates on Iraq. “Any Democratic president
will end this war,” Edwards said.
* * *
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Ron Paul, who, along with his legions of internet
supporters, had invested huge hopes in the outcome of the August 11 Iowa Straw Poll, now has to find something else to look forward to. Paul finished fifth in the poll (Mitt Romney placed first, Mike
Huckabee second, Sam Brownback third). Not surprisingly for a man whose
presidential ambitions date back to at least 1988, Paul is taking the
long view and claiming to still be on “the right trajectory.”
What trajectory is that? The trajectory, it seems, of a turtle.
“One old friend compared this campaign to the tortoise, and our
opponents to the hare, in the old Aesop’s fable,” Paul told supporters
recently. Fittingly for a slow-moving candidate, Paul’s Northwest fans
were out in force at Seattle’s Hempfest over the weekend, courting the
stoner caucus with reminders that Paul, alone among the Republican
candidates, has been a harsh critic of federal drug laws. 
