doodledee

The other night while I was painting the nursery, I listened to an MPR rebroadcast of some talk that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich had given. (In case you don't know which one Kucinich is, he's the older white guy who always wears a suit.) It was interesting in a wacko progressive kind of way, and I was digging parts of his message and laughing off others. Hey, I thought, this guy is kind of fun. He's gonna shake some stuff up and get some new ideas out there.

Then I saw him on the Daily Show the other night. What a frickin' stiff. It's like he was under orders to only produce one word answers that were evasive and non-committal. And it's not like he has to be funny or anything, just be a little easy going, a little relaxed, a little less old-white-dude-in-a-suit-y.

So the interview bombed, but the host dude Jon Stewart did ask one neat question. It was along the lines of "does your message make you a long shot, or does you being a long shot make your message?" I forget exactly how it went, but you get the idea. It gets to the fact that once a candidate becomes 'viable' or a 'contender', their message tends to become more centrist in an attempt to appeal to the middle majority.

I suppose it's kind of a mean question to ask a presidential candidate - "why are you losing so bad?" - but I dug it.