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« At Last, True Bipartisanship | Main | Choices » February 07, 2007A Little PerspectiveI've stayed away from the whole Edwards-bloggers fiasco because, to be blunt, I really don't care. But I do concur with Ezra Klein about the larger picture: what should matter to the Edwards campaign is not what stupid things these two bloggers have said in the past, but are they qualified for the jobs Edwards needs them to do. And he's right. If Edwards hired these two to help with drafting policy, their intemperate words would probably be somewhat relevant. But since he's paying them to do non-policy related jobs, their particular positions on issues say precisely zero about what Edwards believes. I'm not a fan of Edwards, and I hope he goes down in flames during the primaries. But the fact he hired two people who have a habit of saying silly things on their blogs shouldn't reflect on his campaign, and the bloggers shouldn't have to face the threat of being fired from jobs they seem eminently qualified to perform for unrelated issues. Posted at February 7, 2007 01:38 PM
Comment policyI apologize for only allowing authenticated commenters, but comment spam overwhelms the site if I don't use those measures to prevent it. I reserve the right to delete any comment, although generally comments will only be deleted due to use of profanity or personal attacks on people. I have no objection to vigorous argument, but when name-calling begins, I'm putting a stop to it. In the immortal words of Eugene Levy, "People, people, let's stop this before somebody says something untrue!" If you want to call people names, I recommend you get your own blog. Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsI think it's part of a candidate's employee's job to not associate the candidate with nonsense of the sort Marcotte wrote. Now Edwards is caught between her Duke lacrosse team quote ("blindingly stupid" is how it was described at Unfogged) and the hypocrites cited in the NYT instead of getting his health care plan into voters' minds. Maybe she's a fine blog manager, but I at least instantly wondered about his campaign's level of professionalism when I heard about that hire. Posted by: rilkefan Shouldn't there be a difference between what she said prior to her joining the team and what she says now, though? Posted by: Andrew Perhaps, but it was her baggage, now it's Edwards's. Probably there are two arguments here: one is Caesar's wife (what she's said), the other is can one infer from her blogging that she's not a dependable asset for the campaign (what she may say). I'd argue the second, but the first is too strong a real-world consideration to pass. Posted by: rilkefan I don't have a great deal of sympathy for the Edwards campaign here. At this level of elective politics, everything's at issue, whether it ought to be or not. Second, if you sidle up to a firebrand, you might get tagged with her excesses. There are scads of political bloggers who comport themselves properly (you, for example). Just hire one of them and everything will be fine. Posted by: ckreiz Raven, a commenter at Rick Moran's blog, put it nicely: It’s a tough world. Politics is even rougher. When one enters the fray, they have to be prepared to be vetted out. Everyone knows this. Posted by: ckreiz Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |
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