Bob Herbert: How About the Home Front?

[babylonsister]

How About the Home Front?


By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 15, 2008


It’s fair to say that America’s mayors are not thrilled with the way the presidential campaign has unfolded so far.

Domestic issues? An urban agenda? Rebuilding the nation’s aging infrastructure?

They haven’t drawn nearly as much attention as the two favorite topics in this campaign: foolishness and foreign affairs. We’ve had dueling ads over which candidate is the bigger celebrity; an obsession with a New Yorker magazine cover; in-depth analyses of the Obamas’ fist-bumping moment; the requisite introduction of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton into a conversation that should be geared toward adults, and so on.

We’ve also had a more or less serious focus on the war in Iraq and a handful of other international matters.

What we haven’t had is a deep exploration of problems here at home that are threatening the very vibrancy of the nation, including: the dismal employment picture (there are many more Americans out of work than the official statistics show); the terrible toll that the housing and mortgage crisis is taking on families from one coast to the other; the tens of millions of Americans who are without health insurance coverage; the stunning high school dropout numbers; and a demoralizing problem with violent crime in several parts of the country.

(City officials in Hartford have become so frustrated with the violence plaguing their city that they’ve imposed a 30-day 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for everyone 18 and under. Curfews are constitutionally dubious and unlikely to work, but when nothing seems to stop the gunfire, and you end up with a 17-month-old girl and a 7-year-old boy among the wounded, a sense of desperation sets in.)

This was the campaign that was supposed to chart a dramatic new direction for the U.S., away from the disastrous policies of the past several years — at home as well as abroad.

We’re still waiting.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/opinion/16herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

[bemildred]

1. So the NYT is a potted plant?

They have the chutzpah to complain about the insipid quality of political discourse?

[Captain Hilts]

2. Then Herbert shouldn't have trashed Gore back in 2000.

Oct 10, 2000:

"The vice president's boorishness gets in the way of his message and almost certainly pushes some voters into a more favorable view of Mr. Bush, who benefits from a more conversational tone and the demeanor of an ordinary guy."

[MasonJar]

3. Herbert said that about Gore? Wow! Herbert just shrank to pea size

in my estimation. Has he been happy these last 8 long, miserable years with the smirkish demeanor and the inane and moronic conversation of a babbling idiot?

[MasonJar]

4. Also, Herbert, Al Gore, the Nobel Prize winner, you remember him?

He is the one who has on his own dime for 7 years tried to educate the whole world about global warming...to, you know, kinda save the planet....while your boy, W, has tried to kill off as much of it as can be accomplished in 8 years. Al Gore is not a boor; he is a patrician, who actually learned something when he was at Harvard University and actually went to Viet Nam in person. He can talk in complete sentences and write his own books and does not need a teleprompter. He should never be included in the same sentence with that no good white trash Bush.