One of my Top 5 quotes of the season here in first-in-the-solar-system primary land comes not from a candidate but from retired CNN financial news guru Myron Kandel who is spending time up here trying to lasso candidates into televised discussions about their policies on good corporate governance and investor protection (Kandel is the president of the N. H. Initiative for Corporate Responsibility and Investor Protection: find out more about Kandel's quest here).
Kandel has invited all the candidates to sit down with him for a taped television program to be shown on N.H. Public Television; only one, Republican Mike Huckabee has found the time in his schedule to do it (the program will take place tonight at Daniel Webster College in Nashua and is open to the public.)
When I caught up with Kandel yesterday, he was excited about the potential of getting candidates to talk about these economically important issues and underwhelmed by their lack of response. He told me: “I’d hate to believe that some of the candidates are reluctant to discuss these issues publicly because so many campaign contributors are from the business sector. If that were true -- and I hope it isn’t -- it would be a sad commentary on the integrity of the candidates themselves.”
My mother would call that an example of making a point politely but rather forcefully.
4th place anyone?
Gotta love Democrat Joe Biden and his method dealing with the expectations parlor game that journalists and campaigns are beginning to play (after all, talking too much about issues can be a fruitless enterprise). I mean, just keep lowering them until you’re a winner of something, especially when rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to set fundraising records (not exactly Biden’s forte to this point) and suck up all the front running media oxygen.
Biden’s solution was brilliant. In a move only a U.S. Senator like Biden could pull off, he revised and extended his remarks from early September when he said a third place finish was required to keep his boat afloat. Not anymore. When Biden was in Boston Tuesday to raise cash and secure a few Massachusetts endorsements, he told the AP that finishing fourth place in Iowa would be a job well done. “If I finish in the top three or close fourth, I’m in the game coming into New Hampshire. If I don’t, I’m gone,” Biden said.
In my daily link, Dem Bill Richardson went the blog route on Huffington Post to see that he, as Governor of New Mexico, was going to take George W. Bush to the courthouse woodshed over the SCHIP funding controversy. Nothing like merging local, state, national and primary politics into a one sweet bundle with the extra added emotional boost of children's health care at stake. That's a multi-fer that no candidate can resist.
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