The candidates got a little edgy with other in Sunday night's final debate.
The 'Brown and Black' forum in Des Moines dealt primarily with issues of race, and Al Sharpton attacked frontrunner Howard Dean over his record of appointing minorities to his cabinet while he was Governor of Vermont.
"It seems as though you discovered blacks and browns during this campaign," the always-entertaining Sharpton said. With Iowa's voters overwhelmingly white, the remarks were probably intended more for consumption in South Carolina, another early battleground state, which holds its primary on February 3rd.
Dean's responded by returning to his key messages, for instance: "We need to talk about health insurance, because there are 102,000 kids with no health insurance in South Carolina; half of them are white, half of them are black".
While Dennis Kucinich recalled images of Ross Perot by holding up a pie-chart at every opportunity - something he inexplicably did on an NPR radio interview ast week - John Kerry tried to invoke the spirit of Bill Clinton by striding purposefully from behind his podium to make a point, but succeeded only in walking out of the spotlight. No metaphor there, then....
On a serious note, while most of the exchanges were on domestic policy issues, there was more fallout from former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill's claims that the Bush administration had decided almost as soon as the inauguration was over that Saddam Hussein would be removed from power. When the issue was raised - by Kucinich - it drew applause from the audience.
Similar enthusiasm greeted Kerry's, closing remarks on foreign policy, when he said:
"We have to prove to America that we can keep this country safe, because George Bush plans to run on national security.
I know something about aircraft carriers for real, my friends.
And if he wants national security to be the centerpiece of this campaign, I have three words for him that I know he understands: Bring it on."
The White House's response to the O'Neill story?
'We're not in the business of book reviews'.......
The 'Brown and Black' forum in Des Moines dealt primarily with issues of race, and Al Sharpton attacked frontrunner Howard Dean over his record of appointing minorities to his cabinet while he was Governor of Vermont.
"It seems as though you discovered blacks and browns during this campaign," the always-entertaining Sharpton said. With Iowa's voters overwhelmingly white, the remarks were probably intended more for consumption in South Carolina, another early battleground state, which holds its primary on February 3rd.
Dean's responded by returning to his key messages, for instance: "We need to talk about health insurance, because there are 102,000 kids with no health insurance in South Carolina; half of them are white, half of them are black".
While Dennis Kucinich recalled images of Ross Perot by holding up a pie-chart at every opportunity - something he inexplicably did on an NPR radio interview ast week - John Kerry tried to invoke the spirit of Bill Clinton by striding purposefully from behind his podium to make a point, but succeeded only in walking out of the spotlight. No metaphor there, then....
On a serious note, while most of the exchanges were on domestic policy issues, there was more fallout from former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill's claims that the Bush administration had decided almost as soon as the inauguration was over that Saddam Hussein would be removed from power. When the issue was raised - by Kucinich - it drew applause from the audience.
Similar enthusiasm greeted Kerry's, closing remarks on foreign policy, when he said:
"We have to prove to America that we can keep this country safe, because George Bush plans to run on national security.
I know something about aircraft carriers for real, my friends.
And if he wants national security to be the centerpiece of this campaign, I have three words for him that I know he understands: Bring it on."
The White House's response to the O'Neill story?
'We're not in the business of book reviews'.......
posted by Steve at 6:04 PM
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