Will Friday be ancient history by Nov. 6 for Ill. Eighth Congressional voters?

It was billed as the first debate of Election ’12 anywhere in the nation. With just under six full months to go before people cast their ballots, Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., gave Democratic nominee Tammy Duckworth a chance to confront him.

DUCKWORTH: Not the typical challenger



Which strikes me as being strange. Incumbents usually go out of their way to avoid recognizing their opposition, particularly one with as much potential strength as Duckworth.

WHY WALSH WOULD be willing to appear against her on Friday (in an event that CLTV then broadcast live to anyone with cable television) is something I don’t get.

Even if you buy into the idea that a debate between the two has to happen eventually, this is something I would have expected to occur some time in October, with the only real question being whether it would occur just before Election Day, or would there be a chance for more than one debate.

About the only possible strategy I can think of is that Walsh thinks he can “get this thing over and done with now” and hope that everybody forgets all about what was said Friday night.

We’re supposedly going to get “a debate a month” that I think creates many opportunities for gaffes – which is what modern-day political debates have really become about.

WE, THE VOTERS, hope that somebody says something stupid, so that we can justify voting against them. It strikes our lazy selves of having to seriously pay attention to what the political people have to say and where they stand on various issues and put some thought on whom to cast a ballot for!

Then again, the vast majority of people are going to cast a ballot for the candidate of the political party they want to see have a majority in Congress – which really translates into whether or not we want President Barack Obama to have a sympathetic Congress, or a hostile one, for the next four years.

WALSH: Too eager to debate?



So in watching the debate (I’m writing this commentary while the event is taking place), I couldn’t help but wonder if those of us who are bothering to view the event are taking this way too seriously.

For this is the election cycle that many people think has already dragged on too long, and that we’re dreading because we really don’t want to hear all the hostile rhetoric that is going to be spewed by both sides.

IT MAY WELL be a case of a debate occurring way too early (personally, I think early September is early enough) for people to take it seriously.

Most people, I’m sure, managed to find something better to do with themselves Friday night (although I wonder if watching “Good Times” and “Sanford and Son” on the ME-TV channels counts as something more significant).

Most viewers will learn about what happened Friday night by the 30-second clips they view on a newscast – or on the longer gaffes put on various websites by people who are eager to highlight someone’s vacuous answer to some particular partisan question.

And by Monday, many of us will have moved on (such as how did Chicago White Sox slugger Adam Dunn manage to avoid breaking the major league record for the most consecutive games in which he struck out at least once?) to some other issue.



The people who will decide this election come Nov. 6



WILL WE BE all obsessed with the way in which Walsh repeatedly tried to turn every question into a critique (“most anemic recovery,” he calls it) on the national economy? Even though it can be argued that the Republican partisan strategy meant to dump Obama IS the reason that federal officials can’t focus on measures to jump-start our nation into a significant financial recovery!

And personally, I couldn’t help but notice Walsh’s description of the “Tea Party” as being, “the silent majority in this country.” Which to my mind echoes the rhetoric of Richard M. Nixon during his ’68 presidential election bid.

Is “Tricky Dick” really the image that Walsh wants aligned with him in a district with significant Latino and Asian populations to go along with suburban white people – the reason why Duckworth is considered to be the front-runner come Nov. 6?

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Will kids sway jurors?

Rod Blagojevich has had his wife, Patti, at his side throughout his entire legal proceedings. Yet on Monday, he made a point of bringing his daughters to court.

They get to spend a day with Daddy, as attorneys for the prosecution and defense make their last-stand closing statements before the whole case gets thrown to a jury locked away in a back room somewhere until they reach a verdict.

TO ANSWER YOUR question, “yes,” people were aware those were his daughters, Amy and Annie. The Chicago News Cooperative used their website to report that the now-impeached governor made a point of introducing the girls to those people in the courtroom.

Some people are saying it is a cheap attempt to sway the jury. Others think it is somehow cruel and unusual to the kids themselves to be exposed to a courtroom where attorneys will be making a point of saying in graphic detail that their dad is a crook who belongs in prison.

My gut reaction, however, is to say this isn’t a new tactic. I have seen it used once before, albeit under nowhere near as drastic as circumstances.

What I’m referring to is an incident involving Pat Quinn, who back then was Illinois treasurer. Which means his now-grown sons were still kids.

BACK THEN, I was a reporter-type person for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, and one of my assignments that day was to show up at the WBBM-AM radio studios on McClurg Court, where Quinn was supposed to show up to tape the news radio station’s weekend interview program “At Issue.”

I forget exactly what the “controversy” was involving state government that made the treasurer’s office particularly relevant that week. But it meant that Quinn accepted the invitation to appear on that program knowing he was going to get grilled in the questioning, and that there would be people looking for him to slip up in the details so he could be accused of not being fully truthful with his answers. The Blagojevich daughters have been seen in public with their parents before, including this event back when Milorod was still governor. Photograph provided by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Maybe it really was coincidental that Quinn picked that exact date to have his sons with him, allowing them to see “Daddy” at work, while also getting to see the insides of a real live broadcast studio.

What I remember of the event was Quinn sitting those kids in a spot that was between himself and the questioning reporters on the program’s panel. I don’t remember any of the specific questions or answers (we are talking about 18 years ago), but I do remember the tone was rather mild.

AFTERWARD, I STILL remember one of the reporter-types who was part of the panel saying, “it’s hard to grill him when you got those boys looking doe-eyed at us.”

Is that the effect that Blagojevich was hoping to have by deciding that Monday was the day to bring Amy and Annie (the latter of whom, I believe, is only 7)? I almost hope I can have a chance to talk to those girls some two decades or so from now, just to get a sense of what memories they keep from Monday – or if they manage to blank out the entire day from their life’s memories.

Actually, I’d wonder who Blagojevich would be trying to sway. Does he want the prosecutors to ease up on the all-out attack they want to do – to make up for the fact that they didn’t get to do any cross examination of him on account of the fact that he didn’t testify on his own behalf? Or does he want the prosecutors to smack him about like a piñata in front of his daughters – out of some hope that the jurors will see the shock and fear in the girls’ eyes and feel some compassion for him?

For the record, prosecutors said in their closing statements that Blagojevich made claims that were “outright lies,” particularly when it comes to the former governor’s claims to maintain separation between government and campaign activities.

THEY DID, HOWEVER, try to clean up the obscene language that Blagojevich engaged in that was caught on tapes of FBI wiretaps of his telephone conversations. Of course, those of us following the trial have heard the “f---ing golden”-type comments so often that our minds fill in the foul language.

It could just be that Blagojevich wants the jury to see him with his wife and two young daughters to make them realize that there are people who care about him and who will be hurt if they reach a guilty verdict on so many charges that a lengthy prison term becomes mandatory?

Or maybe it truly is just that Blagojevich wants to expose his daughters to the ways of public policy and public service, and Monday truly was the best time for the girls to spare to sit in a courtroom on a hot July day at the Dirksen Building courthouse.

Nah!!!!! Even I’m not so gullible as to believe that.

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