Second Presidential Debate

By AMANDA KOCH, Assistant Managing Editor

I’m looking forward to the debate tonight. I have been consummately disappointed in this election year, and I guess I’m hoping they get serious tonight. I’m hoping that the voters participating in the town hall make them answer questions. I’m hoping someone will say something intelligent, or at least interesting.

I am a registered Independent. I am a dedicated fence rider. I don’t want elections to be washouts. I don’t want “my guy” to kick your guy’s ass. I want them to say something that gets my attention, some stroke of wisdom, or flash of brilliance, that makes me think, now that’s the guy (or gal) who could run this country in a way I would appreciate. By the way, that’s another thing about Independents: I don’t think we ever really get excited about politicians. I never get excited about someone becoming president. Would I look favorably on it? Sure, I could. Excited is a little too much to ask.

Which is why I don’t know why I’m looking forward to tonight. If the previous months have taught me anything then it is that no one talks about the issues and everyone is a liar. I guess it just comes down to me depending on my fellow voters.

I want the questioners to bring them back time and time again to the reality of our situation. I am trusting them to pull some sort of actual information from these candidates about their plans for our future. I am speaking of concrete information, please, not vague ideas about where they think the country should be headed. I am counting on the voters to keep personal insults to a minimum.

I know, it’s a lot to hope for. And no doubt, I’ll be disappointed again. It’s politics. I’m used to disappointment.

Amanda Koch can be reached at amandarosekoch@gmail.com.

In the Newsroom with Casey and Eugene (Sept. 29, 2008)

Obama not tough enough? McCain strong on foreign policy? Casey Hynes and Eugene Mulero examine the first presidential debate. (Produced by TakingBackPoliticsTV)

Debate, PARTY!

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

A line of impeccably dressed partiers waited on the red carpet to get in to Bobby Van’s restaurant on the corner of 11th and New York Avenue in Washington, D.C. The bars were open on both floors and near the fountain in the courtyard. Vested waiters in tan uniforms wiped their harried faces of sweat and hustled, pressing their way through the tightly-packed, hot crowd. There were maybe 100 people on the dance floor and 500 elsewhere. It was around one a.m. Apparently the R.I.A.A. party was even better.

Many people were young, some had southern accents, some were from south Jersey. The women were elegant and striking. Most wore black. Some wore pearls. One wore a deep- red blouse and her name was Ashley. I saw Marilyn Monroe. She was leaving. Men towered routinely over six-foot-one. They wore fitted suits, pressed shirts. Some ties remained tight. There wore argyle sweaters. There seemed to be more fraternity lapel pins than Obama Hope ones.

A high-school friend, a 30-year-old commercial real estate lawyer specializing in loss mitigation, introduced me to her friends and acquaintances that she seemed to encounter every other five minutes. She pulled business cards out of a gold container and talked to other lawyers. It was a networking event. Sometimes, she would cut off conversation and eye passing men, who stopped quickly to talk. It was a meat-marketing event. At other times, she tugged at a pin on her shirt strap and showed them the JFK likeness silhouetted behind the face of Obama.

It was a political party put on by The California Project, one of a few parties for the thousands of attendees of the 38th Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus this weekend. The CBC is a group of 43 U.S. legislators who work as a group to promote policy and leadership in Capitol Hill on issues pertinent to African Americans, and D.C. is a site for the black establishment.

Hours earlier, in Mississippi, the first campaign debate of this presidential election had finished in a draw, according to people I spoke with, at this party and others.

At the Republic Garden on U Street, a Washington institution, cuff links were flashed amidst the 400 or so people who had accumulated to watch the debate. One particularly well-informed viewer cried out every time there was a purported misstatement of Obama’s record. The crowd’s volume rose as Obama delivered a series of one-liners questioning the wisdom of assertions by McCain that ended in, “You were wrong.” A woman excitedly pummeled the air from her position on the couch.

At dinner afterwards, an author and a fellow at The Nation Institute, Amy Alexander, called it a draw. She wondered where Obama’s bite was. He always gets framed by McCain and is unable to fight back sharply, she said. But, then, she thought, if he did, he would be characterized as an angry black man “with grievances.”

Then we talked about Florida (where she lived for years), the www.thegreatschlep.com and all of the elderly Jewish Floridians who should, but won’t vote for Obama. “I want fresh, not fresh frozen,” intoned the author imitating the Jewish grandmother subculture, which she became familiar with while reporting in Broward County. The presumption that the Jewish vote would not vote for a black man for President is a “fucking hangover from Farrakhan,” and his view that Jews have been part of the oppressor class in America, despite their contributions to arts and science, according to him and even Farrakhan’s declared genealogical tree.

But other states were of greater concern to Alexander. Michigan, Idaho, Indiana. Militias, cults and the Klan. There are many white people out there, she said, that would be threatened by a black president.

“I don’t think it’s imprudent to worry, or wonder if someone out there is plotting to take him out. Just based on our history, it is not unrealistic,” she said. Assassinations of political figures in her lifetime are numerous. “Wallace, King, two Kennedy’s, Harvey Milk, George Moscony and an attempt on Ronald Reagan.”

“I don’t think you have to be a conspiracy theorist, either,” Alexander added.

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.