A Better Column from Gail Collins of the New York Times...
She praises Chris Dodd while trashing Chris Matthews, John McCain, Richard Nixon, and Hilary Clinton:
None Dare Call It Child Care: Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked whether this country would ever get back to the days when a young guy could come out of high school, get an industrial job “and provide for a family with a middle-class income and his spouse wouldn’t have to work.” Given the fact that more than two-thirds of American mothers have been working outside the home since the 1980s, Matthews could just as easily have demanded to know when we’ll get back to using manual typewriters and rotary phones....
In a two-hour debate that focused on job-related issues, the Republican presidential candidates managed to mention the Smoot-Hawley tariff and trade relations with Peru but not a word about child care for America’s working parents. John McCain... focus[ed] on the fact that “50,000 Americans now make their living off eBay,” that the tax code is “eminently unfair” and that Congress wastes too much money studying of the DNA of Montana bears....
[C]hild car... was one of the very first issues to be swift-boated by social conservatives... vetoed by Richard Nixon... members were flooded with mail accusing them of being anti-family communists....
[I]t is absolutely nuts that it isn’t a topic of discussion — or even election-year pandering.... The only candidate who talks about child care all the time is Chris Dodd....
This is Hillary Clinton’s Women’s Week. On Tuesday... a grab-bag of Clintonian mini-ideas... expand family leave. Yesterday, she was... speaking out for a bill on child care workers that has little chance of passage and would make almost no difference.... Clinton... wasn’t prepared to get any closer to the problems of working parents than a plan to help them stay home from work...
Substantively, a good column. Rhetorically, it rubs me the wrong way. Senator Smoot had a silly-sounding name: that doesn't mean that international trade regulation is a silly issue. Peru is a mountainous country far away filled with poor, darkish-skinned people who don't speak English. That doesn't mean Peru is of small importance. Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a good president (albeit not as good as Dodd) for childcare issues--she belongs classified with the good guys like Chris Dodd rather than to be rhetorically lumped with the malefactors like Matthews, McCain, and Nixon.
A 700-word column doesn't make an argument. Instead, it makes three kinds of assertions:
- It asserts the main point of the column--that we Americans should think more and do more about childcare issues.
- It asserts that the world works in the way assumed by the background against which the main point is painted--that talking about Peru is stupid because Peru is of small importance, and that talking about international trade is silly because Smoot sounds silly.
- It asserts that some people are good guys (Dodd) and other people are bad guys (pundits, Republicans, Hillary Rodham Clinton).
Point 1 is good, point 2 is bad, point 3 is mixed. Am I wrong to demand that people do better?
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
