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Toledo Blade, OH
Oct 19 2007
Klein wants real conversation
By TAHREE LANE
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Americans might be ready, journalist Joe Klein suggested hopefully,
for a presidential campaign that's got genuine conversation about
essential issues: how we can best deal with radical Islam, global
warming, and health care, for example.
If the United States hopes to continue being the greatest country on
earth at a time when 70 percent of its citizens believe it's moving
in the wrong direction, there has to be deep discussion, and some
solutions won't be popular.
"This may be the time when the only way to have credibility as a
candidate is to tell people something they don't want to hear," said
Klein, Time magazine columnist and author of six books, including
Primary Colors. He addressed an audience of about 400 at last night's
Authors! Authors! lecture in the Great Hall of the Stranahan Theater,
sponsored by The Blade and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library.
"We're going to have to sacrifice, we're going to have to change,
we're going to have to get tougher, we're going to have to think
harder."
Klein's talk drew on his 38 years in journalism, most covering
Washington politics.
Not only did the 2004 presidential election lack depth on issues, he
said, it boiled down to one simplistic, defining idea per candidate:
John Kerry waffling on his support of the Iraq war; George Bush
promoting the idea that "you may not agree with me, but you'll always
know where I stand."
"How did America decide such an important election on such a shallow
basis?" he asked. He attempted to answer that question in his 2006
analysis, Politics Lost, about how the people who handle candidates
steer dialogue away from deep problems and thorny solutions.
President Bush could have, on Sept. 12, 2001, told the nation that
the price of fossil fuel had to increase as a security measure to
help the United States become less dependent on foreign oil, he said.
But sacrifice wasn't requested.
The greatest threat to the United States is what Klein termed "viral"
power, meaning terrorism, global warming, and unscrupulous
international corporate actions. "You don't treat a virus with a
sledgehammer; you treat it with a vaccine."
Klein noted the United States generated good will by helping the AIDS
crisis in Africa and sending Marines to tsunami victims in Southeast
Asia.
Responding to a query about a proposed resolution to label the
century-old deaths of Armenians in Turkey as genocide, he said those
experts he's interviewed in Iraq are more concerned about stability
in Turkey, where a secessionist movement in the Kurdish area is
possible, than other countries in the region. "This is a matter of
tremendous concern and we need to have the best possible relationship
with Turkey."
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dl l/article?AID=/20071019/ART02/710190344
Oct 19 2007
Klein wants real conversation
By TAHREE LANE
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Americans might be ready, journalist Joe Klein suggested hopefully,
for a presidential campaign that's got genuine conversation about
essential issues: how we can best deal with radical Islam, global
warming, and health care, for example.
If the United States hopes to continue being the greatest country on
earth at a time when 70 percent of its citizens believe it's moving
in the wrong direction, there has to be deep discussion, and some
solutions won't be popular.
"This may be the time when the only way to have credibility as a
candidate is to tell people something they don't want to hear," said
Klein, Time magazine columnist and author of six books, including
Primary Colors. He addressed an audience of about 400 at last night's
Authors! Authors! lecture in the Great Hall of the Stranahan Theater,
sponsored by The Blade and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library.
"We're going to have to sacrifice, we're going to have to change,
we're going to have to get tougher, we're going to have to think
harder."
Klein's talk drew on his 38 years in journalism, most covering
Washington politics.
Not only did the 2004 presidential election lack depth on issues, he
said, it boiled down to one simplistic, defining idea per candidate:
John Kerry waffling on his support of the Iraq war; George Bush
promoting the idea that "you may not agree with me, but you'll always
know where I stand."
"How did America decide such an important election on such a shallow
basis?" he asked. He attempted to answer that question in his 2006
analysis, Politics Lost, about how the people who handle candidates
steer dialogue away from deep problems and thorny solutions.
President Bush could have, on Sept. 12, 2001, told the nation that
the price of fossil fuel had to increase as a security measure to
help the United States become less dependent on foreign oil, he said.
But sacrifice wasn't requested.
The greatest threat to the United States is what Klein termed "viral"
power, meaning terrorism, global warming, and unscrupulous
international corporate actions. "You don't treat a virus with a
sledgehammer; you treat it with a vaccine."
Klein noted the United States generated good will by helping the AIDS
crisis in Africa and sending Marines to tsunami victims in Southeast
Asia.
Responding to a query about a proposed resolution to label the
century-old deaths of Armenians in Turkey as genocide, he said those
experts he's interviewed in Iraq are more concerned about stability
in Turkey, where a secessionist movement in the Kurdish area is
possible, than other countries in the region. "This is a matter of
tremendous concern and we need to have the best possible relationship
with Turkey."
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dl l/article?AID=/20071019/ART02/710190344