Political Podcasting, Poverty and Pollution

I decided to take a break from my CD listening project to check out the growing arena of political podcasting. It’s an interesting medium, although I’m not sure it really clicks with me. I’m not great at getting information purely from speech – I need the visual engagement that comes from seeing and exchanging gestures, expressions, and so on. And when it’s something heavy like a policy issue, it’s that much harder to keep the focus going. That said, if you’re more of a sound person than I am, these podcasts can be a good chance to see what ideas are percolating behind the major news coverage. Today I listened to:

• John Edwards at his One America Committee site, discussing his proposal that America set a Project-Apollo-like goal to eradicate poverty within America in the next 30 years. I like that Edwards is talking about the importance of the big idea, I like his hammering on the economic obstacles that help exacerbate so many of our other problems, and I like that he really seems to have committed himself to this theme over the last two or three years. You can see a brief video message that Edwards recorded for members of his online community, you can hear the speech he gave to the National Press Club, and you can read the prepared version of the speech. One thing I found remarkable is that in the video message, Edwards seemed almost unprepared – a lot of pauses and “um”s. Then, if you listen to the speech and follow along with the prepared text, you can see how he keeps to the structure but occasionally reshuffles lines on the fly or makes the text more conversational, and barely misses a beat when doing so.
• Wesley Clark at his Securing America site discussing global warming in the first of a series of podcasts on the topic. I found it interesting the way that Clark brought global warming out of its normal environmental context and urged that we think of it as a national security issue. It’s not really surprising, since Clark is trying to establish himself as one of the Democratic leaders on national security, but I do find it encouraging that he’s not thinking of “national security” in the narrow way it’s often portrayed. And Clark has a good point – if global warming does have the kind of environmental impact that a lot of scientists think it could, then there’s going to be a lot of upheaval that’s going to pose challenges for any country trying to be a world leader.

It’s probably no coincidence that both Edwards and Clark are at least thinking of making a run for the 2008 presidential nomination. And y’know, if the way that they want to do so is by carving out solid niches on vital issues and mobilizing voters to take action on them, more power to ’em. Once the midterm elections are over, 2007 is going to be an interesting year in national politics.

About Dave Thomer

Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.

July 8, 2006 @ 6:22 pm

Public Policy