There wasn't a lot of news from this morning's debate, which was held at Suffolk University and live-streamed at the Herald's website (you can read my live-blog here, and watch a replay at this link). But a couple of points did stand out for me.
First, the one good answer. The candidates were asked whether they could name anything that George W. Bush did right. By far the best answer was Alan Khazei's. He started with Bush having kept his promise to boost AmeriCorps funding. That's obviously something in which Khazei was directly involved, so only partial credit there. But Khazei went on to mention the large boost in funding to fight AIDS in Africa, and also a program to take the stigma away from using food stamps by issuing them via a sort of debit card. Both good points.
But more importantly, Khazei showed some political guts in saying, you know what, George W. Bush didn't screw everything up. As I'm fond of observing, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Bush certainly had a few of those moments during his eight years in office. By answering the way he did, Khazei showed that he's willing to give credit where credit is due -- even if credit goes to someone on the other side of the aisle who is universally reviled by the very Democratic primary voters he's counting on to show up for him next week. One might actually call such a move "senatorial," if the Senate weren't so sadly dysfunctional right now. Excellent answer.
By contrast, the other candidates handled this one poorly. Capuano, who answered first, said that he gave Bush credit for being someone who "stuck to his principles," and that he "said what he believed, and actually tried to follow through what he believed in." Capuano went on to say that he disagreed with what Bush believed in on just about everything. That's a bad answer for two reasons. First, as I said above, Bush actually did get some things right, and Capuano (having been in D.C. the whole time) surely knows that. Second, Bush didn't stick to his principles, at least, not the ones he ran on. If he had truly been a "compassionate conservative" who believed in limited government, as he claimed he was, things would have gone a lot differently. Sticking up for Bush being a principled guy doesn't strike me as either accurate or a great idea.
Coakley opined that the only thing Bush did right was raise his daughters. Oy. First of all, the daughters weren't exactly models of good behavior. And second, again, not being able to come up with anything positive is a bit hard to swallow -- particularly from someone whose law-and-order tendencies could surely find comfort in at least a couple of the Bush administration Justice Department's policies.
Pagliuca referred to Bush's "supporting public service," which was perhaps an allusion to what Khazei was talking about with AmeriCorps funding -- he didn't elaborate, so it's hard to know. But otherwise, nothing. Again, I just think that's a weak answer.
The exchange begins at about 37:45 in the video.
Unsurprisingly given the venue and the audience, a number of questions focused on student loans and the difficulty of affording college. Capuano's answer to one of them, which begins at about 47:30, started out fine, but went badly off the rails toward the end when, in discussing his family's difficulty dealing with his son's student loans, he said:
My guess is that any student with a student loan, especially if you're middle class, your parents probably had to remortgage their houses, just like we had to do. And I'm the only one on this stage that has has gone through this; I'm the only one on this stage who will probably have to go through this. It's not something I read about. I didn't read a policy paper on this; I'm living it with my family, just like you are.
I have so far resisted joining in the criticism of Capuano coming from some quarters regarding his so-called "class-based anger" and "us-against-them attitude." But I have to say, that's exactly how this answer sounded to me. He was aggressively taking on Pagliuca for being rich, Coakley for not having kids (classy!), and Khazei for I'm not sure what (Khazei made good money as head of City Year for a few years, but he has left that job and at Be The Change he earns about what a Congressman makes, plus his kids are many years away from college). If anyone was looking for Capuano to show some "class-based anger," they weren't disappointed.
