Welcome to the un-debate between Hillary Clinton and.... nobody. Hillary accepted the invitation to appear with Barack Obama from WJLA-TV ABC7 and News Channel 8 in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. This appearance can be streamed on Politico.com, and is on POTUS '08, XM Radio Channel 130. The appearance was initially intended to be a joint appearance by the candidates sponsored by The Politico and ABC7, but Sen. Obama refused to show up. Oh well.
Here is the original announcement, back when Obama had agreed to show up...
(ARLINGTON, VA) – ABC 7 News and POLITICO announced today they will be interviewing Democratic presidential candidates Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama on Monday, February 11, 2008, one day before voters cast their ballots in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia... ABC 7’s Leon Harris and POLITICO’s editor-in-chief John Harris will conduct the interviews... |
So get your popcorn and follow me...
For you youngsters, weep bitter tears that you weren't born early enough to watch the President of the United States debate a chicken. It was 1992, and George H W Bush was seeking re-election, but a little hesitant to mix it up with the Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton. Talks between the campaigns broke down when the Democrats refused to play into a cozy arrangement set up to favor the Republicans, and everybody leaped at the chance to pin the blame for this lack of debates on the other party.
That's when the chicken appeared.
As George H W Bush campaigned in Michigan, a Democratic operative in a giant chicken costume appeared with a sign saying "Chicken George, Afraid to Debate". That was bad enough.
And then the president started talking to the chicken.
According to all reports Bush found the chicken quite funny and at the end of stump speech would hunt down the chicken, generally to tell it jokes about fish. The President's amicability charmed many of those inside the costume and others in the immediate vicinity. However, that day after day the President deliberately placed himself next to the chicken meant that the chicken appeared on television newscasts far more often, and the argument that George Bush was scared of meeting Clinton got wider publicity. The image of the leader of the free world conversing with a giant chicken was felt by some observers to not be in keeping with Bush's desired image.
The only other time that Bush took notice of the chicken was at a rally at a Wixom, Michigan plant where the President went off-topic and started rambling on, and began directly attacking the Chicken who was standing on a platform about two hundred feet away. The President berating a man in a chicken suit was viewed as undignified and was reported in Time Magazine, the New York Times and across the country. |
Rule for candidates: never, EVER talk to a chicken.
But on to tonight's debate soliloqy/whatever.