Notes on the MSNBC debate
Before hearing the commentary, a few notes from the MSNBC parallel press conference. Though it wasn't as good as the French method, it did provide a few salient points of reference.

What I noticed:

1. No questions or answers on education at all. Even Thompson, who deserves to blow his own horn on school choice, didn't see fit to mention it.

2. No questions on nuclear power, and I didn't hear anyone bring it up within the other energy-related questions. Newt wouldn't have let this subject slide!

3. Gilmore, who I must confess I've never seen before, didn't make a good debut. All his answers were weak.

4. Hunter made several big scores. He essentially declared war on Iran, saying the threshold had already been crossed. On "What did Bush do right / wrong" he said "Using precision munitions to kill Zarqawi is right, failing to secure our border is wrong." On the final question ("How would you differ from Bush") he pushed for strengthening our industrial base, paying attention to trade policy, and punishing China. Excellent.

5. Huckabee gave a surprisingly strong answer on corporate corruption: a CEO who gets huge bonuses for outsourcing jobs should be punished .... though it's not clear how that would happen. [This was the only thing in the debate that made me involuntarily clap. Not quite sure why, but it definitely struck a positive nerve.]

6. Tancredo on taxes: the standard "gold-bug" line, which sounds paranoid but in fact is inadequately paranoid. Says we can't enact a consumption tax unless we also repeal the 16th amendment. This is red meat for the Birchers, but they underestimate the all-consuming evil of the black-robed saboteurs. Nothing in or out of the Constitution has ever stopped a judge from making or revoking laws, and the absence of the 16th amendment wouldn't stop Phyllis Hamilton from reimposing the income tax on the nation if she felt like it.

7. Nothing really new from Brownback: still strong on life, still a bit slow on the draw in situations like this. Solid as a rock but disappointing.

8. Lots of meaningless talk about line-item vetos, again relying on changing the Constitution. A gutsy President could enact a line-item veto quite easily: he can simply veto all 'compound' or 'omnibus' bills, and tell Congress to send him single-purpose laws. It wouldn't take long for Congress to figure out how to do this, since they already write plenty of short, compact, single-purpose bills for trivial crap like renaming post offices.

9. Mitt and Rudy spent entirely too much time on clever, cute, cagey, calculated answers. Undoubtedly this fits the Rove/Morris playbook, but I think they're underestimating the national weariness with weasel words. Just tell us what you're doing and why. Give up the electoral engineering.

= = = = =

Listening to the rerun, I find Brownback's answers to be salient and interesting, though certainly undramatic; could be I'm just so familiar with him that his well-known answers were 'swamped' by the newer and more surprising stuff on the first run. Also, the local cable TV interrupted the first run with an Emergency Alert, which turned out to be a custody dispute (aka "Amber Alert") on the other side of the state. This annoyed me so much that I probably wasn't concentrating afterward.
  ¶ 6:58 PM