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Out of her hands: A wink, but no nod for Palin |
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Saturday, 04 October 2008 |
In the game of basketball, it is easier to run out the clock than to make the big play, especially if the other team doesn't press you for the ball. "Hold the damn ball if they don't come at you," a coach may shout to his winning team with the clock running down.
But if your team is down by three points with a few seconds to go, someone has to shoot from beyond the arc. If the defense is keying on your best shooter, then you draw up the play to give it to someone else to shoot. You need the three points or the game is over.
What an odd situation both the McCain and Obama strategists found themselves in this week. The economy has put Obama in the commanding position in the race; it is his now to lose, and his team is going to defend vigorously against any shots from long range. McCain, on the other hand, needed a game changer, to throw one the length of the court to someone just beyond the three-point line for the tying, last-second bucket that sends the game into overtime.
That someone might have been Governor Sarah Palin at the VP debate this past week. But the Republican strategists decided against the Hail Mary pass and opted instead for the freeze play. They had been stung by the governor's wobbling through a series of interviews with Katie Couric and by conservative columnists raising doubts about the governor's suitability for the second highest office in the land,
Ironically, Biden had the same instructions. His team is ahead, so his game plan was to defend at all costs and run out the clock. Even moderator Gwen Ifill played along, acting as if a game clock was governing the contest. (Rarely did she ask for clarification of non-answers to her questions, an anemic performance on her part.) It was as if all three had taken the same Hippocritic (sic) oath before the game: "Do no harm."
Governor Palin played the game well. She showed the confidence of an experienced competitor (high school basketball star, successful gubernatorial debater). But her handlers should have known that Biden would play Gentleman Joe, and that she could have gone for the bomb, confident that Biden's instructions were to avoid at all costs responding in kind.
But instead, her handlers had drilled her in the fine art of the four corners offense. First corner: Disarm the opposition, as in "Can I call you Joe?" Second corner: Stick to the script, no free-lancing permitted. Give her credit. She was able to refer to her many notes without appearing to refer to them, but that was not quite enough to make the answers seem her own. Third corner: Project the hockey mom, small-town mayor, I'm-just-like-you folksiness that appeals to blue collar women. And fourth corner: Use gestures -- a magnetic smile, gaze directly ahead at the camera, and wink -- to raise the likeability factor (especially among men, as it turned out in post-debate polling).
Sarah Palin has game, even if she may lack the worldliness and intellectual curiosity necessary for high stakes global politics. Those who tuned into the debate to watch a train wreck were sadly disappointed. She did fine and held the ball effectively. But when you hold the ball you cannot score, and she needed the big score to help put the McCain train back on the tracks.
She needed a three-pointer to win. At best, she scored an uncontested lay-up.
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Higher-ed, lower drinking age? |
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Wednesday, 24 September 2008 |
The Amethyst Project, initiated by a group of university presidents, has gotten a lot of press lately. More than a hundred of these smart academic leaders have signed on to encourage our government to begin an open discussion about lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.
As a parent of two teenagers, one in college, I have some skin in the game in discussing whether this makes sense. As a former university officer who was debriefed at Monday morning meetings about drinking related consequences over the prior weekend, I can understand why university leaders support lowering the age.
The parent in me says keep the age where it is. I don't want 18 year olds - many of them still high school students - buying six packs for their 16 and 17 year old friends (my daughter is 16, we trust her, but who knows?). If the national consensus ultimately is to lower the legal drinking age, then make it 19, not 18.
The (former) university officer in me sees a rock and hard place choice between legalizing drinking on campus or enforcing rules against it. Once at a Monday morning meeting, I half-seriously suggested the university simply ban any alcohol on campus and expel anyone under the legal age who was found drinking (as well as their suppliers). My fellow officers looked at me as if I were from another planet. "No student would even apply here," they said in unison, if in slightly different words.
Okay, I get it; it comes down to money. A university can't survive without income, and what high school kid would opt for a campus that was totally un-cool? But there may be a larger point to the debate than university income or parental protectiveness. I met by chance a few weeks ago a North Carolina university professor who teaches graduate students about substance abuse. His students go on to careers as counselors. He argued that alcoholism is more learned behavior than genetic. Most adults do not have a natural predisposition toward excessive drinking; drinking as a teenager, he reasoned, sets the stage for excessive drinking later. He acknowledged that kids under 21 may always find a way to drink, but by making it legal to drink at 18, we encourage more non-drinking teens who would not otherwise drink before they were of legal age. That sets the stage for greater personal and societal consequences, which successive generations will inherit.
For now, the parent part of me prevails. Keep the drinking age where it is.
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Tuesday, 23 September 2008 |
Welcome to my personal blog. You may already know me from my Golf Community Reviews blog, where I post daily articles about golf communities and review their golf courses.
Occasionally, however, I have something to say that is off-topic for the Golf Community Reviews blog. That's what you'll find here. I encourage your comments and participation and, of course, if you want help finding the perfect home on the (golf) course, I'm your man. I will never charge you for the service and there is absolutely no obligation.
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