Opinion: Attack lines, and a good quip, from the trail
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Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales’ resignation and the scandal that enveloped Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho overshadowed a relatively busy campaign day on Monday -- and obscured some fiery rhetoric, as well as a memorable crack from Dennis Kucinich.
The Ohio congressman joined three other Democratic presidential contenders -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson -- in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for a forum on the fight against cancer. At the event, sponsored by famed cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, there was predictable bashing of President Bush. Clinton charged that the administration ‘has literally called a halt in the war against cancer,’ while Edwards termed Bush ‘the most anti-science president in history.’
Clinton and Edwards also made crystal clear the difference between them on the part that insurance and pharmaceutical companies would play in their respective healthcare plans.
Edwards rejected any role for the industries, continuing to burnish his populist persona by saying, ‘I think if you give drug companies and insurance companies and their lobbyists a seat at the table, they’ll eat all the food. I think you need to take them on.’
Clinton, who some would argue tried to do just that in devising the healthcare plan that ended in political disaster for her husband, the president, early in his first term, buttressed her new image as a conciliator by saying, ‘I believe in working with everybody and being influenced by nobody.’
Richardson won the pander award by pledging that as president, he would name Armstrong the nation’s ‘cancer czar’ (who knows, maybe the retired athlete has medical school on his horizon).
The Kucinich line, one of the better ones uttered on the trail of late, came after he asserted that if he became president, his own healthy lifestyle would prod others to do better (he’s long been a vegan):
‘I’m 60 years old, my wife’s 29. Draw your own conclusions. Diet helps.’
Clinton and Edwards traveled later in the day to New Orleans to join in a forum on the rebuilding process, post-Hurricane Katrina. Once again, there were barbs aplenty directed at the Bush administration, and even Republican White House contender Mike Huckabee caught the spirit.
Huckabee, who was governor of Arkansas when the storm struck and oversaw the accommodations his state provided for some of those displaced by the disaster, noted that he was among those less than impressed by the response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
‘We came to believe FEMA stood for Forget Expecting Meaningful Answers,’ Huckabee quipped.
Not bad. Not quite up to the standard Kucinich set, but not bad.
-- Don Frederick