While the long series of presidential debates have sometimes acted to ratchet up tensions among the candidates, the faceoff Tuesday night among the three remaining competitive candidates for the Democratic nomination had the unusual effect of quelling a recent controversy. The first question asked at the debate in Las Vegas – a prelude to Nevada’s presidential caucuses scheduled for Saturday – enabled Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards to cement a nascent truce over recent remarks that spurred critics to accuse the Clinton camp of injecting race into the campaign.
The three candidates agreed that each has been a strong and unflagging supporter of civil rights for African-Americans. This appeared to be an effort to set aside the distracting flap that stemmed from Clinton’s recent statement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the legendary civil rights leader, needed the strong assistance of President Lyndon B. Johnson to turn his goals into the law of the land.
That remark was spurned by a number of black political figures – including some supporting Obama’s bid to become the nation’s first African-American president – who said the New York senator and former first lady had derogated King’s leadership in overcoming racial barriers and depicted him as dependent on the solicitude of white Washington political insiders.
The backlash came on the heels of the comment by Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, who labeled as a “fairy tale” the claim by Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois, that he has been a consistently stalwart opponent of the Iraq war.
Tuesday’s debate was viewed as a key final chance for potential Nevada caucus participants to see the candidates face off against each other. But the timing was complicated for a national audience. The candidates held their discussion while vote returns were coming in from Tuesday’s presidential primary in Michigan.
Republicans held a full-blown contest in Michigan, in which former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at least temporarily steadied his previously stumbling campaign by outrunning Arizona Sen. John McCain, the winner of the New Hampshire Republican primary exactly a week earlier. The Michigan Democratic contest provided a much less clear-cut verdict, as a scheduling dispute between the national and state party organizations had prompted Obama and Edwards to pull their names off the ballot. Clinton, the only top-tier candidate who remained on the ballot, won the contest, but her only serious competition came from an “uncommitted” line.
The Nevada Democratic debate, which was televised on MSNBC, was notable in that it was the first such candidate gathering since the critical New Hampshire Democratic primary, also held Jan. 8, in which Clinton scored a come-from-behind victory to defeat Obama. This came just five days after Clinton finished a disappointing third in the precinct caucuses in Iowa; Obama won easily in Iowa with Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, in second, narrowly ahead of Clinton.
It was the smallest debate to date. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson withdrew from the race Jan. 10, after a poor fourth-place finish in New Hampshire, ensuring that the two-hour affair would focus exclusively on the three Democrats who have been in their party’s first tier of candidates since the campaign began one year ago.
The run-up to the debate included some unusual legal proceedings pursued by Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, a longshot presidential candidate who filed a complaint against NBC to include him in the debate. Kucinich was invited to the debate on Jan. 9, then excluded two days later after NBC revised its debate criteria, limiting participation to candidates who finished in the top three in either the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. Kucinich did not come close to meeting the new criteria.
A Nevada district judge sided with Kucinich on Monday, saying he would bar the debate from going forward without his participation. But the Nevada Supreme Court vacated that ruling and sided with NBC on Tuesday evening, not long before the debate began at 9 p.m. eastern time.
The following are some of the standout moments selected by CQ Politics from Thursday night’s debate, which was moderated by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, with assistance from Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News and host of the Sunday public affairs program “Meet the Press,” and Natalie Morales, a national correspondent for the “Today” program.
- Most Predictable First Question: Williams began Tuesday evening’s gathering – which was co-sponsored by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic political committee IMPACTO and 100 Black Men of America Inc. – by addressing the issue of race. Williams alluded to the fact that the three candidates were debating on what would have been the 79th birthday of King, who was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968.
Williams then referred to the racially tinged controversy that flared over the past week between the Clinton and Obama campaigns. Both candidates had indicated Monday that they wanted to put the imbroglio behind them, and they reiterated those sentiments in Tuesday’s debate.
“We both have exuberant and sometimes uncontrollable supporters. We need to get this campaign where it should be,” Clinton said. She added later, “I know that Sen. Obama and I share a very strong commitment to making sure that this campaign is about us as individuals.”
“As Hillary said, our supporters, out staff, get overzealous – they start saying things that I would not say,” Obama said. “It is my responsibility to make sure that we’re setting a clear tone in our campaign.”
Edwards said it was a credit to the Democratic Party that a woman and an African-American were serious presidential candidates this year.
The debaters spent sufficient time on this matter to elicit shouts from one audience member, “These are race-based questions!”
• Most Interesting Debate Twist: The candidates were afforded an opportunity to question one other. This would have been unrealistic in a debate with more candidates. But with the field culled to just three competitive candidates, the debate format allowed each to ask one question of an opponent.
Edwards asked Obama and Clinton if they thought that pharmaceutical and insurance industries expected anything in return for the political contributions they have made to the campaigns of his two rivals. Obama said that he doesn’t take money from federal lobbyists or political action committees and also promoted his work to overhaul lobbying laws and advocate a system of public funding of federal campaigns.
“What happens is, if you’ve got a mid-level executive at a drug company or an insurance company who is inspired by my message of change, and they send me money, then that’s recorded as money from the drug or the insurance industry, even though it’s not organized, coordinated or in any way subject to the problems that you see when lobbyists are giving money,” Obama said.
Clinton asked Obama if he would co-sponsor her legislation to “rein in President Bush” on Iraq policy, saying that the Bush administration has said it could enter into agreements with the Iraqi government without the approval of Congress.
“We can work on this, Hillary,” Obama responded. “You’ve got unity in the Democratic Party on this. … I have opposed this war consistently.”
- Most Light-hearted Moment: Obama sought to have Edwards clarify his own position on Iraq policy, but then caught himself mid-sentence, realizing that he could be assessed as having used up the one question he was allowed to ask an opponent.
“John, are you saying that you’re – I don’t know if I’m using my question here,” Obama said. “I think you are,” Williams replied, drawing laughter from the audience. “I gotta be careful … instead of phrasing it that way,” Obama began, before Williams interrupted to say that Obama’s words “sounded like the start of a question to me.”
As the audience continued to laugh at the exchange, Russert chimed in, “You’re half-pregnant.”
- Most Personally Revealing Moment: Russert asked the candidates to identify their greatest strength – but also their biggest weakness. Speaking first, Obama said that he had an “ability to bring people together from different perspectives.” As for his weakness, Obama drew some laughs in the audience when he acknowledged that he keeps an unkempt desk and that he never asks his staff to give him an important piece of paper until “two seconds before I need it – because I will lose it.”
Edwards and Clinton sought to turn what might be viewed as weaknesses into strengths. Edwards said that he sometimes has a “powerful, emotional response to pain that I see around me,” noting the example of a veteran mill worker in South Carolina Edwards met a few months ago who is about to lose his job. “I feel that in a really personal way and in a very emotional way, and I think sometimes that can undermine what you need to do,” Edwards said.
Clinton said she had been working over a 35-year public service career, particularly on behalf of children, and has “tried to create opportunities” and “make changes” to improve the lives of people. She said she gets “impatient” and “really frustrated” when people “don’t seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other.”
“I get very concerned about pushing further and faster than perhaps people are ready to go,” said Clinton, who as first lady spearheaded an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to overhaul health care policies.
- Most Parochial Issue: The Las Vegas debate took place about 100 miles southeast of Yucca Mountain, the site of a long-pending and controversial bid to store high-level nuclear waste. So it was not a surprise that Williams asked a question about Yucca Mountain – and that all three candidates said they oppose the Nevada repository.
“I will end the notion of Yucca Mountain because it has not been based on the sort of sound science that can assure the people of Nevada that they’re going to be safe,” Obama said, adding that he would want to convene experts to determine the best way to store nuclear waste.
Clinton noted that she voted against establishing a repository at Yucca Mountain and held a hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee that demonstrated that the federal government’s selection of the site was unsupported by science. She also accused of Obama of having taken campaign contributions from individuals associated with Exelon, an energy industry corporation whose chief executive officer, Clinton’s campaign said, supports the Yucca nuclear repository. She also charged that Edwards twice voted to establish the repository.
Edwards was one of 64 senators who voted in 2000 to override President Clinton’s veto of a bill aimed at allowing completion of siting and licensing activities for a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, and establishing a timetable for the development of the proposed site. Edwards in July 2002 again voted to effectively establish a Yucca Mountain repository.
But Edwards said that he, too, would oppose storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, saying that recent scientific evidence and other documents have “revealed that this thing does not make sense, is not good for the people of Nevada and it’s not good for America.”
Edwards used the question to maintain that only he among the Democratic candidates was vigorously opposed to nuclear power – including the construction of new nuclear power plants. “I am not for it or agnostic,” Edwards said. “I am against building more nuclear power plants,” which Edwards said were dangerous, expensive and targets for terrorists.
The debate then segued into a broader discussion about energy policy, which revealed a rare difference between Obama and Clinton in their voting records during the three years they have served together in the Senate: a 2005 overhaul of energy laws that Obama supported and Clinton voted against. Obama said that he voted for the bill on grounds that it made investments in alternative energy sources. Clinton, referring to the 2005 bill as the ” Dick Cheney lobbyist energy bill,” said it had “enormous giveaways to the oil and gas industries” and was “the wrong policy for America.”
- Most Obvious Display of Political Pragmatism: All three Democrats said they opposed implementing a national gun licensing registry and effectively acknowledged that establishing strict gun controls is unworkable and a political minus for Democrats, who by and large have in the past been more supportive of gun control measures than Republicans.
Clinton said she opposed illegal gun ownership and supported a reinstatement of a ban on certain semi-automatic assault-style weapons. But she also noted, “I also am a political realist, and I understand that the political winds are very powerful against doing enough to try to get guns off the street, get them out of the hands of young people.”
“I don’t think that we can get that done,” Obama said, but added that he would work as president for “common sense enforcement” such as facilitating efforts to trace guns used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers.
Turning to Edwards, Russert said, “Democrats used to be out front for registration and licensing of guns. It now appears that there’s a recognition that it’s hard to win a national election with that position. Is that fair?”
“I think that’s fair,” Edwards responded, “but I haven’t changed my position on this. I’m against it.” A product of the rural South, where gun ownership is widespread, Edwards said that it is “enormously important” to protect gun owners’ rights. Edwards did say he supported reinstating the so-called “assault weapons” ban.
3 Comments
January 20, 2008 at 7:49 AM
“Anyway, I’m tremendously encouraged that Obama has indicated that African-Americans will support him over the “establishment” candidate. THAT, should play big. Particularly when it sinks in that the Atlanta Constitution endorsed Obama, today.”
That is what I wrote yesterday. Now, I ask the leaders of the African-American community who shied away from Obama because he could not win-what you gonna do?
It should be abundantly clear, by now, that with your support he can win. What you gonna tell your grand kids, years from now, about what you did when a legitimate African-American asked for your help to get elected President of the United States.
We have a bonafide opportunity to be a part of history. CEASE it…
The struggle continues, until we succeed-and we shall,
Hank
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