GAIL COLLINS: Hillary Fries the Waffle

NYT

It’s remotely possible that some of you missed the very important and very lengthy Democratic debate this week. Perhaps you started watching it but had to switch off during the section on trade relations when you discovered your children had grown up and wanted to say goodbye before they left for college.

We feel your pain. For your convenience, a Democratic debate cheat sheet:

MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT “My health care policy is bigger than your health care policy.”

Right out of the box, Wafflegate reared its ugly head. Prompted by moderator Wolf Blitzer, Barack Obama complained that Hillary Clinton refuses to give “straight answers to tough questions” and listed her now-infamous wishy-washy positions on Iran, immigration and Social Security.

What was Hillary going to say in response? Provide a new explanation for the Iran vote? A paean to the virtues of political nuance? No, she whipped around and told Obama that his health care plan “would leave 15 million Americans out. That’s about the population of Nevada, Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire.”

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

Now, kudos to Hillary for finding a new way to remind us that nothing makes any difference in this campaign unless it can be directly linked to the states that vote first. And although her response was totally unrelated to the issue at hand, it worked really well. Obama was put on the defensive and instead of talking about Clinton’s aversion to specificity, the two of them launched into a spirited and utterly incomprehensible discussion of whose health care plan is better.

You see, it turned out that we didn’t really want Hillary to unwaffle. We just wanted her to look tough! If she had said: “Yeah, and your tie has funny stripes,” it might have worked out just as well.

THE ISSUES There is a good reason we don’t talk more about them.

The bottom line on that health care argument, which required some outside reading to comprehend, is that the Obama plan does not force people who aren’t covered by their employer or the government to buy health insurance on their own. The Clinton plan does require that they do so. This is an extremely important distinction, and Hillary will let you know how it is actually going to be accomplished right after the election.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS An amazing number of people seem to have had recent conversations with a leader in Pakistan. “I have made it clear to Musharraf personally, when he called me, and I’ve spoken personally to Bhutto ... " said Joe Biden. This triggered an avalanche of name-dropping by candidates who said that they had recently met with/talked with/sternly lectured somebody very, very important. Wolf Blitzer shared the news that he had been chatting up Benazir Bhutto “earlier this week.”

Clearly, some people in Pakistan have too much time on their hands. Perhaps it was a hint about events to come that nobody said: “When I was on the phone with a little-known and hot-tempered general ... ”

LESSONS LEARNED The waffle is stale.

Having taken down Obama, Clinton eviscerated John Edwards by accusing him of “throwing mud,” a tactic that works particularly well before a very noisy audience that is packed with your supporters. Everything else was more or less anticlimactic, and you could draw three possible conclusions from the entire evening:

A) Hillary proved that she is the one with the strongest positions and the best answers.

B) All Hillary proved was that she’s best at changing the subject and stacking the audience with her supporters. Barack/John/JoeChrisBillDennis had the best answers.

C) All these people believe pretty much the same thing, and when it’s time to take on the Republicans, I would prefer the candidate who knows how to change the subject and stack the deck.

AN AGENDA FOR THE FUTURE Shorter debates.

Just because an audience is composed exclusively of citizens so responsible that they are engrossed in the presidential race a year before the election, it doesn’t mean there’s no limit to the abuse they’ll take. CNN’s event ran over two hours — more than twice as long as the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, which occurred in 1960 when we had much more robust attention spans.

True, the Lincoln-Douglas debates ran for three hours each. But Abraham Lincoln did not have to wedge his points in between Dennis Kucinich and Chris Dodd. Taking into consideration modern American sensibilities, we should really try to keep these things down to 45 minutes, unless they include a car chase.