A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Take Back America conference in Washington DC.  Unfortunately, I was only able to be there for a day, but as it turns out, it was pretty productive.  After their speeches, I was able to briefly chat with John Edwards, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.  The story after the flip...

Richardson was the first to speak and, unfortunately, he took the toughest question.  I actually regret the question now, because there's just no way for a candidate for President to answer this question without getting some shit on their shoes...

Anyway, after he finished his speech I approached him and asked, "Should the United States apologize to Iraq and its people?"  When he gave me that "deer in the headlights" sort of stunned expression, I helped him out a bit, without intending to.  Before he answered, I added, "I mean I know there's always going to be diplomacy, but as part of those efforts, should we apologize?"

Before getting to his answer, let me speak more about the question, because this is still a real quandary for me.  One one side fo the balance you have two compelling facts:  1)  Richardson has spent his career brooking huge divides through the use of diplomacy;  2)  Of the 3,000 participants at Take Back America, I think it's pretty safe to say that at least 2500 of them would like to see the United States apologize for George Bush's war; and 3)  the truth is that it may be something as simple as an apology that keeps Iraq from becoming a truly horror-show of a terror generating country.  If the people of Iraq hear our apology, and we back that apology up with genuine reparation efforts, well, we may keep Iraq from sliding into total chaos.  In fact, genuine apologies are probably in order with regards to several countries, and maybe even the entire UN.  Some genuine humility on our part may be just what the doctor ordered in terms of advancing freedom, peace and stability throughout the world.  So I don't think the question was entirely off-the-mark or out of bounds.

On the other hand, the last thing a second teir candidate (probably for VP) needs is the media-storm that would be created if news of his affirmative answer were to break.  I had my video camera trained on the candidate when I asked the question, and almost surely would have posted the result if the quality wasn't so poor (too much noise - couldn't hear his response; and too much motion - it's very difficult to keep a camera trained on your subject while you are in a crowd and trying to maintain eye-contact with the candidate while you are asking your question).  So really, this is a mine-field of a question for Democrats.  Being confronted with it out of the blue like this, without having time to consider an answer...  well, it's a sort of unproductive "gotchya" question...  especially for an advocacy journalist that would like to see a Democrat elected in 2008.

And that's why I'm not going to criticise his answer.  His reply was, "Diplomacy is the answer.  Diplomacy is what is needed."

Milquetoast and safe, and certainly not particularly newsworthy, but probably the exact tack he needed to take...

Next up was Barak Obama.  Again, we met up after his speech, when he was shaking hands in the receiving line.  He shook my hand and gave me his full attention when I asked, "Senator, John Edwards challenged you to lead on this war.  Can we expect to see any major new initiatives in that regard in your Senate work."

He let me down, in two ways...

First, his answer:

He patted me on the shoulder, gave a dismissive chuckle, and said, "John Edwards didn't challenge me on anything.  He voted for this war."  Then he turned away from me and spurned with his back any sort of follow-up.

Look, the guy is incredibly charismatic.  But that interaction suggested some things...  I'm not going to assume them all to be true; this may have been a bad moment for Obama...  maybe he wasn't well rested (although he gave one hell of a speech)...  or maybe he just thought that he wasn't going to waste his time with an Edwards shill (though I was not; I just believed that Edwards made a great point in the debate)...  So yeah, I'm not treating this as a defining moment, but I was left with certain impressions of the candidate.  Here they are:

1)  He sucks on his feet.  You don't treat a questioner - especially one with a question about the issue that may very well determine the 2008 primary nominee - with disrespect or condescention...  His mocking laugh and shoulder pat exuded a certain level of "holier than thou"ness and he needs to check that.  He is super on stage, but he needs to work on his one-on-one interactions when he is challenged... 

The second impression I got is that he is really scared of the war as an issue.  He simply wouldn't go there with me and beat a hasty retreat the moment it came up in a thought-provoking way.  My advice to his campaign team would be to highlight his plan for redeployment and to find ways of taking a more public stance on the war...  Proposing sure-fail legislation and then not doing anything to push it through the Senate...  well, that's transparent pandering.  Do something!

All that said, Obama gave an incredible speech.  He's got skills and I wish him the best.

Right after Obama spoke, John Edwards took the stage.  Obama had secret service people with him, so my time with him was very brief...  I couldn't follow him and press for more answers.  This wasn't the case with John Edwards.  We actually had a fairly substantive conversation.

First of all, you should know that in Edwards' speech, he pledged to continue his poverty work without regard to how this election worked itself out.  Essentially he said that he and his wife have earned all the money they will ever need, and, together, made the decision to devote the rest of their lives to battling poverty, both in the United States and throughout the world.  I found it to be a really compelling promise.

So, after his speech, he was mobbed and I couldn't get close enough to him to ask anything.  (To be fair, each of the candidates were mobbed after their speeches; it's just that my positioning was poor after Edwards finished, so I wasn't close enough to ask anything.)  Fortunately, I was born with a pretty audacious attitude and as your "man on the street", I felt I needed to chase the story.  I ducked under the tape and followed his entourage backstage.

I was met in the hallway by one of his staffers that I'm friendly with.  That staffer knew my reputation though and did her best to stop me.  She stood in my way and said, "Mike, I'm sorry...  I just can't let you back there."  I begged.  Pleaded.  Whined.  Just as the tears were beginning to glisten my eyes, she relented...  Edwards wasn't fifty feet away and after I promised to behave myself, she let me go.

(An aside:  irony of ironies, the George Allen thing has probably done more to hurt my chances at getting close to Democratic politicians than it has at me getting close to Republicans.  All the democratic staffers know who I am...  They know that I'm not a suck-up; that when I ask questions there will be some substance behind them and that I'm going to really press for answers...  That makes me a potential liability to their campaigns, and, as they should, they protect their candidate.  One word for this dynamic:  ugh.)

More context:  just before he exited the ballroom, he was being peppered with questions for Alex Jones 9/11 crew.  They've paid a coupla young men to go to public campaign events and capture the candidates on video as they are confronted with questions regarding unanswered questions about 9/11.  One of the questions Edwards was repeatedly asked is whether or not he would do anything about the criminals in our government that failed us on 9/11.  He did his best to ignore the questions (because there can be no quicker way for the media to marginalize a candidate than if they could tieyou to a 9/11 "conspiracy group"), but they were loud and repetitive and it was a clear annoyance.

So...  when I got close to Edwards, I shook his hand.  He trained his attention on me and as we walked, I told him how impressed I was with his poverty pledge and that I would be interested in learning more about it and maybe working with his poverty organization after I completed law school.

After that, I explained that criminality in politics was an importonat issue to many of us.  That whether it was "lost emails" as destroyed evidence, warrantless wire-tapping, habeas evisceration, torture memos, lying to Congress or any number of other things, corruption has become a problem that is seen as a cancer on the system.  I went on to note that corporate corruption is also alive and well...  Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, Tyco...  they all undermined confidence in the system and cost millions of people billions of dollars, collectively.  I pointed out that we have a DEA, INS and ATF:  all enforcement agencies that have been tasked with a specific purpose and in so narrowing their mandate, have been able to develop a level of institutional competency that gives them an edge in pursuing their mission.  We might need a similar sort of agency tasked with prosecuting corporate and public corruption.

At first, when I mentioned criminality in politics, he seemed to throw up a bit of a wall; the Alex Jones guys had left their mark.  But by the time I got done explaining the idea, Edwards was engaged.  He told me that he thought it was a good idea and that it would be something he'd give some consideration to...

So that's it...  One day, three candidates, three questions, three answers...  Hopefully, I'll be able to do more in the future...