Do We Listen To What Politicians Say?

My son, who earns a living by doing something with computers that I don’t understand, sent me an email yesterday after reading my story about how Republic(ans) are never totally worried about the deficit when they cause it to go up, and reminded me about Bill Clinton’s signature comment about ‘I share your pain’ during the 1962 campaign.

But what provoked my son to send me his email was not Clinton’s brilliant comment per se, but the question Clinton was asked by a black woman in the audience who wanted to know whether Clinton understood how the national debt had affected everyone’s personal lives.

Stop and think about this woman’s question it for a second, which nobody did at the time it was made because everyone went ga-ga over the response. Here’s Bill Clinton, the redneck, trailer park denizen from some shithole down South, going up against the most patrician, dyed-in-the-wool member of one of the country’s most celebrated political families, and Bill figures out how to project a personal empathy and concern for the poor and woebegone underclass.

On the other hand, what the fuck was this African American woman thinking which gave her an opportunity to engage in a one-on-one on national television no less with the next occupant of the Oval Office and ask him about the national debt?