Quote:
Originally Posted by KSig RC
This is grossly disingenuous at best, and nonsense at worst - and, to boot, you're entirely missing the point.
If Obama's 384 pg. missive gives a platform-style plan that explains his plan as President, great - why is that information not given in a condensed fashion on his website or given as outline to his plans when he speaks?
The milquetoast descriptions or sunny descriptions without substance do not do this - why?
Right - so if I've exhausted every reasonable avenue (a 384-pg book seems like a stretch here), and I'm not making a judgment but rather an observation, I should probably suck up my couch-potato gut, quit everything and get myself informed? Right.
Ad hominem here is ridiculous - again, it's my responsibility to seek out information, but putting that info in a book released in '06 seems an awful lot like the facts are being relegated to the back page, which is my entire problem and screed to date, if you'll recall.
He doesn't have the opportunity? I disagree that in this digital age of unlimited server space and instant web access, he can't find time to put up where he'll balance the budget against his tax credits. This seems MUCH more likely, given the comparative resources, than having each American who is interested read his book.
There is no reason for the candidate to be the limiting factor in the flow of information from candidate to voter - after all, the candidate has much more wide-ranging control of this flow. Once again, this is not specific to Obama - in fact, it's pretty much the status quo for American politics over the last 20 years. That's the frustrating part - even the guy who is supposedly doing things differently is falling into the same trap.
A book? Seriously?
|
First, I am being completely genuine in thinking that someone who has a question that can be answered by reading a book should read the book or stop asking the question (maybe not the whole book, necessarily, but flip to the part discussing the issue you care about... there's this thing called an index...)
And there are limitations as far as putting so much detail in the media. First, if you go to much into detail in a speech (or debate answer), you risk having a single detail be taken out of context and that 10 second blip becomes the clip that gets played over and over for the next two days. It is easier to control media spin to simply summarize your position, without details. It is just too risky sometimes to do it, and it is a shame that it makes for a less intelligent discourse.
As far as not putting details on a webpage, I honestly don't have a good answer. I honestly think he should be more detailed.
As I'm thinking about this issue though, I'm remembering an experience I had designing my sorority chapter's website. Someone from HQ wanted me to use all the weird sorority-specific words to describe something and then define all those words and wanted all sorts of detailed paragraphs on the org's this or that. I ended up only moderately incorporating her advice because while it was well-meant, I thought that putting a small novel on the internet diluted the more simple message that the chapter wanted to portray. Maybe (I have no idea on this) but just maybe that was a strategic call on the part of the website designer for Barack to keep the message simpler. I see many flaws in this logic applied to a presidential campaign website (as opposed to a sorority website), namely because people who want to hear detailed plans of a candidate are more likely to be on a website and the more detailed parts could easily be put into downloadable PDF files so that it wouldn't be distracting to others. So, in the end I agree with you that this info
should be on a website.
And yeah, maybe it does seem like Barack shouldn't play into the status quo of politics+media by keeping his surface message fairly simple since he is the candidate purporting to be for a new type of politics, but I think he has preserved his commitment to change in other respects that he's more likely to make a difference with. And you do have to play by some of the status-quo rules if you want to be a viable candidate. If you don't, at best you can have a Nader candidacy... but I don't think he's in the position right now to change the way the media covers political campaigns so I don't really judge him too harshly for not being a better example in this particular arena.
But I have to say this: characterizing your comments as "observations" instead of "judgments" is really just a semantics game. Why observe something that isn't true? Would it be fair for me to "observe" that Ron Paul hasn't laid out specific enough plans simply because I haven't passively heard the information? That's not really an observation, or at least not a meaningful one. I don't know if Ron Paul has specific plans, but that isn't because he has failed in his duty as a candidate to educate me, that is because I have failed to be interested enough to see if the info is out there. What I know of him (mainly from an article I read in the Economist) is enough for me to know I wouldn't vote for him. However, I'm not out there complaining that the reason why is because he doesn't have a plan (simply because I haven't seen him on TV articulating it). I think if you like the surface of what a candidate says, but you want to hear something more detailed, then that's when you go out and actively search for the answers. If you're not interested enough to go out and look for it, then just call a spade a spade and say that -- that you just don't find the candidate interesting enough to pursue further.