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Business, economic issues take back seat at debate
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
In the end, the Monday’s Democratic presidential candidate debate lived up to the hype of a groundbreaking event co-sponsored by Google and YouTube and presented by CNN.
The event, which featured all eight Democratic candidates and a total of 39 questions posted by members of YouTube’s video-posting community, will be remembered as home run for The Citadel and the city of Charleston.
Although the debate was unlike any that viewers had ever seen, with two hours of questions being conveyed by a series of homemade videos, none of the candidates seemed put off by or uncomfortable with the format.
Mo Elleithee, a senior spokesman for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign, said while the candidate did watch some of the videos in preparation for the debate, she mainly did what she always does to prep for such events—fielded questions from staff.
"The interesting thing is that while the format of the debate was unique, the vast majority of questions were the same or similar to questions she's gotten in her town hall meetings on the campaign trail," Elleithee said.
"In that sense, the Internet is really sort of a 21st-century version of a very traditional element of a political campaign."
Similarly, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said before the debate that while they too viewed a small sampling of the videos, they largely kept their debate prep to a minimum.
Biden said he prepared for the event in Charleston by talking to staff about his objectives for the debate, and then went off by himself to consider what questions he might be asked.
In fact, Biden's off-the-cuff style was very much in evidence late in the debate, after one YouTuber asked about gun rights while stroking an assault weapon he called his “baby.”
Biden used no uncertain terms to suggest the man might be unbalanced, then quipped, "I hope he doesn't come after me" as CNN's Anderson Cooper, the host of the event, moved on to another question.
Much of the debate was taken up with questions on social and domestic issues, ranging from whether the United States should pay reparations to blacks for slavery to whether they'd support gay marriage.
While "pocketbook" issues such as health care were discussed, the topics of the state of small business in America and economic policy were left largely unexplored.
Democratic national Committee Chairman Howard Dean later told the Charleston Regional Business Journal, that given the current size of the Democratic field and the need to move quickly from one question to another in order to show as many videos as possible, the Charleston debate was not a very good format for those topics.
"To me, it seems a far better way to get into those issues would be community forums hosted by the candidates as their campaigns move forward,” he said.
One question that seemed to broach the subject tangentially was when Clinton was asked whether she considered herself a liberal. She said she preferred to think of herself as a "modern day progressive."
That response caught the attention of W. Earl Walker, dean of The Citadel's School of Business Administration.
"In a sense I think her response to that question, and really all the economic-related comments made by the candidates, fell into the realm of fairly standard responses," Walker said. "They talk about big oil and big business in a negative light, and seem to overlook the fact that all interests deserve representation.”
The problem with many of the candidates’ proposals is that they aren't viable in the real world, Walker said.
"Take universal health care. It sounds great. But how are you going to pay for it? And then there's the question of raising the minimum wage," he said. "They all talk about that, but not in the context of what it will mean in terms of small business's ability to hire more employees and in terms of the pressure it would put on prices for goods and services to climb higher."
After the debate, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich said if elected he would revive President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration program to create millions of jobs and stimulate economic activity across the nation.
"We could build libraries, roads, ports…and it would put many of our under-employed workers back to work,” he said.
"I also think we need to refocus our economic life in this country to make the aerospace, steel, automotive and shipping industries our central industries, and I think NASA should be revamped to take the lead on innovation and new technology," Kucinich said.
Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel also weighed in on economics. One of the first things he'd do to help stimulate business is create universal health care based on a voucher system, he said.
"All these other universal health care plans you hear about just want to saddle American business with the costs,” he said. "But if you do that, you just make them uncompetitive and they will fail."
More importantly, he said, "we have to completely remake our tax system in this country, doing away with the federal income tax and the Internal Revenue Service and replacing it with a retail sales tax.”
Eliminating corporate taxes would be a magnate for investment by international companies in the United States, Gravel said
"Make no mistake, the world would pour money into us," he said.
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