Since the Democratic Presidential debate, Governor Bill Richardson has been summarily barbecued on Daily Kos for his answer to the "model Supreme Court Justice" question. Even though Governor Richardson has called his answer a mistake, and said it was the "first name that popped into my mind." Richardson also gets no credit for naming Ginsburg, and for giving a defense of her dissenting vote on the latest attempt by the Supreme Court to erode Roe v. Wade.
Yesterday, Kos seemed to indicate that gaffe was a disqualifier. Does an admitted mistake on an unprepared answer in a debate automatically disqualify a candidate for consideration as the Presidential nominee? Are votes more important than debate answers? Is a vote a gaffe, mistake, error, or cardinal sin? These are my ponderings of the day.
John Edwards gets plenty of love on Daily Kos for his well known mea culpa on the Iraq War vote. Yet, that vote has cost over 4,000 American lives, the lives of tens of thousands Iraqis, hundreds of billions of dollars, and any credibility we still had in the international community. Does Edwards get a pass on his vote with his mea culpa, while Richardson is skewered for his Whizzer White gaffe?
Senator Obama proudly flaunts the fact that he opposed the war from the beginning. But, is that really true?? We know he was not in the Senate to vote on the original authorization, but what has he done since? Let's just look at the most recent vote. Obama (and Clinton and Dodd and Biden and every Democrat in the Senate) voted for the recent conference report, which called for keeping a limited number of troops in Iraq after a substantial withdrawal. Residual forces in Iraq is not ending the war. Obama's position is probably the worst of all - having been against the war initially, he has now converted to timetables and residual forces and benchmarks. Is that a bigger gaffe than an off the cuff response to a debate question? Doesn't funding the war mean you are for the war?
Bill Richardson has made the tearing down of the fence/wall recently approved by Congress a staple of his stump speech; calling the wall idiotic and the antithetic symbol of America. Yet, on the very same issue, Obama and Edwards and Dodd, and of course Clinton, voted yea to build the fence in the first place. Do all of these candidates get a pass on their bad vote, but Richardson is disqualified in the minds of Kossacks because of spontaneous remark? Votes are strategic and well planned decisions, not responses to a question in the heat of a debate.
I guess if Richardson is out because of his debate response, Edwards is gone because of original vote on authorizing the war (you still get the penalty of sin, even with the mea culpa), all the rest of the Senators are disqualified because of their votes to keep residual troops in Iraq and to continue funding the war, as well as their stunning vote to build a fence around America (but only the southern half!), that only leaves Dennis Kucinich. One wonders why we are even going through the Primary process, if all the rest are disqualified.