Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales’ senior counselor, took the fifth and refused to testify before Congress about the prosecutor scandal. It’s a bit surprising, since nobody’s mentioned criminal charges as yet, but as Sen. Leahy (D-VT) said, “The American people are left to wonder what conduct is at the base of Ms. Goodling’s concern that she may incriminate herself in connection with criminal charges if she appears before the committee under oath.”
Horse-race coverage of the upcoming (as in, almost two years from now) election is going on in full force. Clinton brought in $2.6M at a fund-raiser, twice what Obama got at his recent fund-raiser, and this is of course worth being in the papers right now.
Please, in the name of the dog, if we are doomed to have a campaign season that lasts two years, could we at least spend the first part of it — say, the first year or so — finding out something about issues and people’s platforms, instead of watching the daily statistics? (My urge to strike pretty much the entire media in their collective nuts is waxing again, and I suspect it’s going to get pretty high before this is over)
My current take: Edwards, as always, has well-thought-out and well-conceived plans about things like health care, poverty, and so on, far above the rest of the field. I’m not convinced that he has any deep plans for things like foreign policy, though. Times like this, I wish we could have two presidents. I can’t actually tell you what any of the other candidates stand for, because they seem to be carefully avoiding discussing any real issues this far in advance — after all, why alienate potential voters? The media stories about Clinton raking in the money suggest to me that the press may start describing Obama’s campaign as “insurgent” (which is a kiss of death, meaning that it will be popular among younger voters and not have enough support from the party elites — cf. Howard Dean) and coalescing behind something like Clinton / Edwards as “inevitable” early on in the game; which, given the primary schedule, would make it so. It could be worse, I suppose, but I’m really sick of having to say that every election cycle.
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 