Last Wednesday on a humid night, I found myself plastered to the Dartmouth Green watching a bright pink pig mobile driving through town protesting pork spending. Nearly stumbling over the draft Al Gore sign holders, the Bill Richardson musical pickup truck, I turned to face ‘the cage’, the area reserved for free speech. The Hillary cheerleaders were outshouting the “Be a part of something great, Obama in oh-eight,” crowd. Freshman Taylor Campbell carried a first amendment sign and pointing out the obvious. Caged people aren’t exactly free. I believe he called it an, “outrageous Orwellian euphemism.”
Walking back and forth to the oppressively hot media center after the media dining room a feast of salmon, sliced roast beef and chocolate mousse, I spied blue chalk pies with uneven helpings drawn on the sidewalks. I ran into Campton residents Gayle Hannan and her kids Gabrielle and Luke Robins who were carrying red nylon Frisbees with pictures of these same pie charts. Gaby even walked across the ‘forbidden no man’s land’ behind Chris Matthews and the MSNBC crew to end up on national television, holding one of these Frisbees with the pie chart.
Back at the cage of free speech, Rumney and Wentworth voters, Barb McElroy and Dan Dunfey were standing with signs supporting the NH Priorities organization that puts out these pie charts. McElroy says, “It’s time we changed our priorities and get candidates to address these issues. We could take that discretionary military budget and allocate it to healthcare, education and kids.”
So who are these Priorities people and why do they matter at the debate? The national group and NH group claim they are non-partisan and advocate allocating Iraq war spending debate on domestic issues. They are friends and sponsored by Ben and Jerry who provide the pig mobile, the cookie mama vehicle and a topsy turvy school bus that show up at community and political events, distributing Frisbees and cookies and a hopeful future.
If you take the pie chart as a metaphor for the debate itself, how much time Tim Russert and the candidates spent arguing over the minutiae of the Iraq war, who has better leadership, how many combat troops after 2009, etc., this ratio is approximate to the time and money we as a nation spend putting budgetary priority to issues of healthcare, the environment, social security, education. Pentagon spending took up more than half of the budget in ’07 and is predicted to do about the same in ’08, this is an old argument. And it took up nearly of the discussion at the debate.
In the most unscientific method, I calculated the dimensions of the debate pie, approximately how much time on each issue. I removed the God and country question of the favorite bible verse which must’ve sat particularly well with our Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan and all other Americans that this is not in fact an official Judeo Christian country. I also removed the ‘hellos’ and ‘goodnights’ and the crucial question of allegiance to the Red Sox or Yankees.
The war in Iraq, potential war in Iran, Syria and Israel was 15 pages of debate transcript, roughly 30-35 minutes. The next most time consuming issues were Social Security and Medicare at 14 minutes, a topic that glazed over the bleary sweating eyes of the students at the un-air-conditioned debate watch party. Issues like health care and gay rights and the boy scouts were covered in a section where Russert ever so politely lambasted each candidate for a total of 20 minutes with his or her personal failings like bankruptcy, beliefs about homosexuality, healthcare debacles or bankruptcy of an electric company.
The environment got in with a wide discussion on gas/carbon tax and nuke debate at 5 minutes. Torture and Guantanamo were discussed for six minutes, political contributions for 5, immigration 12, and the all important presidential issues of drinking ages and smoking bans at 11. Clue to Russert and MSNBC, it’s a college debate, yes but college students are more sophisticated than 11 minutes wasted on these issues. At Dartmouth, one of the oldest educational institutions in the country, Russert and Co. couldn’t muster one question on education policy.
If you’ve checked my math, I’m sure it doesn’t add up, but to the folks at NH Priorities who are now counting the amount of tax dollars NH taxpayers are spending on the war at $1,866,901,047 and growing every second, neither does the budget. Priorities.org claims the NH figure could provide us with 7,912,799 school teachers or more crucial to students at PSU, 22,134,153 four year scholarships.
As I walked out of the spin room at nearly 1:00 am, I caught up with a tired Bill Richardson, noticing one of these pie charts pinned to his collar. I asked him about the lack of debate questions devoted to the domestic agenda. He said he was disappointed and before he could give me a minute or two, a slice of his domestic agenda, someone else had pulled him away. So, who had the largest serving of questions, Hillary Clinton, by far, followed by Edwards, Richardson, Obama, Biden and Dodd? Kucinich and Gravel were left with the crumbs. And as VOTERS, as a country so were we.