The Democratic presidential contenders staged the second of their cluster conferences Sunday evening, and it came off slightly better than the first, by virtue, if nothing else, of Chris Matthews' absence.
I'd still like to see a group beating, a real free-for-all, a libertarian dream of a no-holds-barred slugfest, in which one question -- Why; or if you feel so disposed, Why not? -- is asked at 7PM and till 9PM the candidates improvise.
That would better simulate the warring chaos encountered by real political generalship, in which no plan goes as planned, and undoubtedly would reveal whatever real, nonconsensual leadership and ingenuity exist among them.
But all that is merely procedural, not to mention a pipe dream. We have what we have and we'll never get anything better; the outside consultants and staff advisers and organ grinders would never expose their performing primates that way, so it's best to watch what we do have in a state of suspended awareness.
That means witnessing candidate-on-candidate attacks as anything but strategically staged -- calculated, scripted, rehearsed, memorized and played out in a mutual farce. There's always at least one of these in every mass press conference, and Sunday's came in John Edwards' assault on thoroughly suspecting Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
"There are differences between us," said Edwards in his preamble to knifing his erstwhile colleagues for toadyism on the Iraq war. "And I think Democratic voters deserve to know the differences between us. I think there is a difference between making very clear when the crucial moment comes, on Congress ending this war, what your position is, and standing quiet."
The assault itself, of course, wasn't "very clear," but it was clear enough. Like a reformed boozehound, Mr. Edwards was upbraiding others for insufficient temperance.
Obama, there's no doubt, bested Clinton in the comeback department. He noted he had always been sober, even while others -- wink, wink -- were slopping up gallons of bonded opportunism. "So you’re about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue," he told Edwards, while Clinton muttered only small somethings about "casting votes that actually make a difference from the inside."
But that was it; it ended there. Because of the forced gentility of these things, Edwards couldn't charge headlong into Obama and Obama couldn't re-whack Edwards over his nicely coifed head. We were all deprived of what could have been an enlightening moment of primal, undignified, gloriously revealing and honest rage.
What a pity.
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