Pacific Views

You're Talking, and Talking, But All I Hear Is...

Reuters published a story titled, "Edwards Unveils Plan to Cut US Poverty, and I clicked on it hoping to find out what he proposed. But I was no better informed at the end of the article than I was at the beginning. This passage was the most 'policy oriented', read it and weep:

..."For too long Washington has dealt with these problems by dismissing them as things that our country must live with," Edwards told a cheering crowd of mostly students packed into an auditorium at Pomona College.

"So many poor Americans, are invisible where they are ignored, unseen and unheard. For so long, Washington has been able to dismiss poverty as a personal problem, a drug problem," he said. "Poverty has many causes but the biggest cause of all is the silence of people who can do something about it."

The North Carolina senator, racing to catch front-runner John Kerry before the crucial March 2 "Super Tuesday" round of 10 contests, diverted from his normal stump speech to focus mainly on the poverty issue.

[ed. two more paragraphs of horserace recap deleted] ..."We need specific ideas," he said, after criticizing President Bush for failing to win a "war on poverty." ...

The author of the article went on to be silent about any specific ideas Edwards may or may not have proposed during his remarks.

Politicians have a reputation for using a lot of words to say nothing. Maybe the reputation is a partly undeserved reflection of political reporters who've been trained to use very concise language and precision quoting in order to say nothing.