Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Went to the debate tonight. Four candidates.

Well, I was there. I'm not going to Monday morning quarterback, just yet. I'd like to do so after the podcasts are live. That might be a few more minutes or months with the P-G multimedia gurus.

Tony Oliva, the Libertarian candidate, did well.

Luke was Luke. Mark DeSantis was okay. Those guys were as expected.

The highlight of the evening for me was meeting fellow blogger, Char. Seriously.

And, I got to tell Mr. Zober to check out Google Calendars.

The low light of the evening, sad to say, the Socialist Workers Party candidate. Wow. You know, if he would have given 10 or 15 second answers, he might have won the debate. After 20-seconds of talking his "persuasivenesses" was grossly marginalized. After he got into deeper into his replies, say :45 seconds, it became painful. Burning tires would have enhanced air quality.

Who is old enough to remember The Gong Show?

4 comments:

Char said...

I'm old enough to remember it. And it was great meeting you too, Mark.

Schultz said...

Oliva did "well" but DeSantis did okay? Are you sure? I listened to parts of the podcast - the debate was pretty boring. Tony seems to have some good ideas but he struggled. Didn't you take the time to coach him?

Mark Rauterkus said...

I didn't coach Tony. Not a bit, sadly. I send him emails now and then. I offered.

He is a grad of Pitt's Political Science program. His brother has been a speech writer too.

I was nervous for him.

The delays in delivery from Mark, Tony and the Socialist were obvious. It would have been nice to hit fast forward here and there. That takes practice.

But, the redundancy from Mark and of course Luke and the Socialist was also painful.

When you have the same audience, repeating yourself is showing a lack of creativity and logic -- plus respect for the audience.

DeSantis did okay.

Plenty of what DeSantis says does NOT resonate with me.

The attacks on policy items and putting words right back at Luke are just okay.

Luke said that the city is better than it was now rather than 13 months ago. With police, as an example, he still won't be up to the mandated amount until after the first of the year. That's too long. The 30 from the Housing Authority are not mentioned. We really are not much better -- we are just replacing those who have departed.

I like the reply from DeSantis that 30 have the skills for community conflict resolution and every officer should be with that training. We need more meat like that from him on stage in rapid bursts.

Of course, his policy papers can give more depth and background.

Schultz said...

I did like Tony's quip "It's not about age, it's about the mileage."