More Debate Ramblings

This photo, copyrighted by The Associated Press, shows an amicable Tommy and Tammy shaking hands before their last “debate” Friday night at the Marquette Law School Library.  Moderator Mike Gousha’s hand is just visible in the lower left of the photo.

I think it’s safe to say Tammy and Tommy won’t be shaking hands again in the near future, if they can avoid it.  This Senate campaign has ended up in the muck, and both are throwing it.

Some people who’ve known Tommy for a long time say he reluctantly went along with Karl Rove’s attack ad on Tammy’s 9-11 Patriotism; some who’ve known Tammy a long time say she had no option but to counter Tommy’s 9-11 smear with one of her own.

This is what politics has become: both candidates with their own sets of facts, who refuse to directly answer questions about specifics, and simply repeat whatever lines their handlers have told them to use when talking about the subject.  You can’t pin them down; even when a competent moderator like Mike Gousha asks Tommy directly about his pandering to the tea party with his remark to the tea people “who better than me to do away with Medicare and Medicaid?”  Tommy just pivots and says “I’ve been a moderate conservative all my life”.

Both Tommy and Tammy could benefit greatly by hiring an elocution coach; Tammy more than Tommy.  Tommy’s tortured pronunciations and shattered syntax are part and parcel of his very well-known public persona, and a well-spoken Tommy Thompson might even be a net negative.  We’re used to his bluster and his dropped g’s and his repeated mispronunciations (“Ahmadeenajon”) and constant flubs like “Gulf of Hormuz”.

Tammy’s not nearly so well-known in Wisconsin, and her halting answers and constant interjections of “ahhh…” make her responses to debate questions seem uncertain.  In the closing moments of Friday night’s debate, when Gousha got to the 9-11 (non)issue, Tommy launched into an obviously well-practiced response about not questioning Tammy’s patriotism, but her judgment.  Tammy’s “I am outraged that Governor Thompson would make a political issue of a national tragedy” speech, no doubt also calculated and practiced, came off as stilted and rehearsed.  Unfortunately, this is the kind of stuff – style elements, not substance – that tend to stick in the mind, and play too large a role in the decision-making process about who’s the better candidate.

Mercifully, the “debates” are now over; no more Tammy and Tommy; no more Barack and Mitt; and a creature named Sandy will take center stage on the national news reports for the next couple days.

The cynic in me buys into the assertion that we get the kind of government we deserve.

Tea-ing it up...

I’m so confused.  Is Tommy a tea person or not?

The shot above, captured by Politico.com, shows Tommy a few months back, Tea Party flag proudly flapping in the wind behind him, whipping up the crowd in Madison.

Yet when I asked someone who’s supposed to know about these things, he told me Tommy is the antithesis of everything the Tea people stand for: big spending, big government, mass transit, yadda yadda yadda.

Last week Tommy and his pals Scotty and Becky put on a show at the Leach Amphitheater in Oshkosh, drawing a crowd (?) of nearly 200 people, and giving speeches about what they consider to be important things.  Scotty, of course, said he deserves to win the recall because he’s doing great things for Wisconsin.  Becky said pretty much the same thing.

But Tommy can’t just stand behind the lectern (although, nearly everyone in the media calls a lectern a podium – which is something you stand on, not stand behind) and give a talk.  Tommy gets out from behind the lectern and paces up and down the stage, giving his patented fire-‘em-up speech about ‘sconsin and all the good things about ‘sconsin like the Packers and the Badgers.  Man, there’s some real cutting-edge stuff: let’s cheer for the Packers and the Badgers!  Yay

Anyway, I digress, as usual.  In the most recent Oshkosh talk, Tommy let the cat out of the bag: he said he’d been talkin’ (Tommy usually drops his g’s) with a bunch of business people the past few days, and they’re tellin’ him that they’re just rarin’ to go with more hirin’, spendin’, expandin’ their inventories, and pumpin’ up the state economy, but they’re not gonna do it until after Scotty wins the recall.  Tommy didn’t say what would happen if Scotty loses, but it’s fair to assume that if that Barrett fellow wins, there’ll be no hirin’, spendin’, expandin’, or pumpin’ up.

If I were still working in the nooz biz up in the Fox Valley, I would have called Tommy’s people after the speech and said something snotty like “certainly you can provide me with the names of the business leaders Tommy has been talking to about these expansion plans that will happen after Scotty wins, because I’d hate to think that Tommy just made that stuff up….and I don’t want to go over his itinerary for the past few weeks and try to make educated guesses about who the secret job-creators are.”

I guess we’ll just be left to wonder who those mystery job-creators are, until after the 5^th of June.  And as to the question of whether Tommy is a tea person or not: I guess the answer depends on who’s askin’.