By John Brummett
Midway through the non-debate that the Association of Arkansas Counties put on Friday at Hot Springs in the U.S. Senate race — a mere “forum,” not an actual debate, everyone insisted — I noticed that U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln was referring repeatedly to notes.
I wondered amid all her head-bobbing how this could be. How could you have notes at the ready on subjects just so happening to have been asked out of the blue in a joint appearance with your opponent?
So I asked afterward. And here’s how: The questions weren’t out of the blue.
Days before, both candidates had been given the eight subject areas covered by those questions. The queries were all on basic policy points affecting local governments. There was no rebuttal time provided.
The county government people, dependent as they are on good relations with a senator and congressman, weren’t in the business of trying to show anyone up.
Lincoln, uncommonly insecure in these settings, relied conspicuously on her extensive notes. Her opponent, U.S. Rep. John Boozman, appeared to aim for greater extemporaneousness in his rambling answers, which probably was not such a good idea considering that he is not as articulate as he is competent.
He punctuated time and again with this phrase, “like I said,” even if he hadn’t actually previously said what he was just then preparing to say.
Still, through it all, a relevant debate emerged. It was on the margins, in the opening and closing statements.
Lincoln went first and jumped straight on Boozman’s case for having said over the years that we should look at letting people keep a little of their Social Security deductions for personal investment. This would ruin Social Security two ways, by taking away some of its income and leaving the rest to the vagaries of private investment, which sometimes, as we know, can go poorly.
Boozman was left to vow in his most earnest voice that they would take away people’s Social Security only over his dead body.
Then Lincoln popped Boozman for being against earmarks for special local projects. She charged that he was turning them down this year only for political reasons while telling needy applicants in his 3rd Congressional District office to call Lincoln’s office instead because she was still doing them.
Boozman let that slide until his closing statement, when he said that Republicans had agreed to a one-year moratorium on these projects to provide time to try to figure out how to do earmarks, if at all, more fairly and efficiently and with a clearer definition.
We can’t keep spending this way, he said, or there’ll be no Social Security or local projects, period.
He didn’t address Lincoln’s assertion that his staff was telling people to call her office because she was still spending the money he was eschewing. So I asked Boozman about that afterward.
He gave me an answer that began with his saying he couldn’t imagine that his staff was doing that and concluded with his explaining that maybe they were doing something like that. After all, he ended up saying, that’s kind of what a congressional office is supposed to do — meaning, when he can’t help, refer constituents to some other place where someone might.
Boozman is right that we need to reform the way earmarks get done. But it’s a little bit hypocritical to say you’re against them if you refer constituents to a political opponent you intend to criticize if she obliges.
Anyway, here’s the choice: A candidate who answers with a cheat sheet and a candidate who answers clumsily without.
Oh, and then there’s this recurring, indeed embedded, theme: She answers a lot of questions with vows for federal spending. He answers a lot of questions by saying we’re going broke.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
