Trump and Clinton give short shrift to many pressing issues, including the increasing threat of nuclear annihilation.
Richard Bernstein
You want to see what presidential campaigns were once all about, or how much the quality of public discourse has declined? Go on YouTube and spend just a few minutes watching the 1960 debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and you will see two candidates focusing on the issues, speaking in full sentences and in command of the subject matter, from the minimum wage and school construction to whether Chinese offshore islands owned by Taiwan should be defended.
In a campaign dominated by character assassination (or self-assassination), it’s perhaps not surprising that the current candidates, aided and abetted in this by the press, have not risen to that standard. A recent study by Harvard University professor Thomas E. Patterson concluded that “polls, projections, strategy and the like” have gotten one-fifth of overall campaign press coverage, while “issues” got one-12th. The first presidential debate touched on some of these issues, especially economic growth, trade and race relations, but mostly in sound-bite fashion. Here are five matters of importance to our country that have been mostly neglected, or treated with stale platitude and useless generality......To Read More....
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