Now that the lines are drawn, there is little more to be said or done except to pander to those in the muddled middle. The differences between the candidates are obvious enough for anyone who has spent more than 24 hours' worth of thinking about the past 15 months of campaigns. Now is the time, except for the debates (perhaps), for both candidates to say dumb and obvious things as if they were already the leader of the free world. This weekend it was about Father's Day and Tim Russert.
In death, Russert outshines both candidates in life. As far as I'm concerned there are about five worthwhile journalists remaining in the English speaking world who do television. Charlie Rose is one of them as was Russert. Tim Russert was one of those men of whom it is often said, you cannot cheat an honest man. And so there was little wiggle room on his television show for conniving politicians, and the lot of them knew that. So all this weekend, we got the reflections of Obama and McCain trying to get underneath the skin of Russert as a dedicated father and man of integrity. The better they could trade on his reputation, the better they could prop up their own. It was particularly nervy of them to do so, but then again, this is campaign season.
So I haven't bothered to hear Obama out on 'Fatherhood'. Cosby wrote the best-seller two decades ago and it wasn't all that deep then. Nor am I inclined to hear McCain intone sonorously on any such trope. Blah blah whatever. I'd actually rather hear them tell me what happened to all the tomatoes last week, and why nobody still knows what went wrong.
I expect we'll be hearing more blatherous stentoria between now and then. Maybe a suitably arcane subject will actually arise. Better yet, a crisis.
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