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NDP Leadership Race #126
March 15, 2012 - 10:14am
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Although I think Rosie Barton's appeal for Tom on P&P for an interview is somewhat manipulative, I don't think there's a grand plan to eviscerate the man live on air. I think it's simply a matter of having an interview with the 'perceived' front runner who is also a really interesting person. Don't forget - Rosie is a temporary replacement for Evan Solomon this week - and she's not nearly a match for Mulcair who is a lawyer and also a politician with a lot of experience.
So your saying that Layton would not have appeared in 2012?
And what about the unpaid non-hacks on babble? Or should we start making a list of media outlets where Mulcair will refuse to appear?
No, I didn't necessarily agree. I was using it as a point of contrast.
And no, not joking. I believe every other candidate has appeared. And he seems to have the most support on here, at least among those who have declared an intention.
I don't think so, Gaian. The CBC has been fighting for its life for the last few years under the Conservatives while Jack Layton was alive too, and they were constantly bringing up stupid, irrelevant crap, and directing "loathsome attacks" on him (co-op housing smear, massage parlour) and he didn't avoid the press - heck, he had a reputation for constantly COURTING the press. He wasn't afraid of them.
If you think Mulcair is more vulnerable to attacks by the press then Layton was, then maybe you should ask yourself why. And is the Harper strategy of avoiding hard interviews the best way of dealing with it?
It certainly wasn't Layton's way.
Oh, so now you're refusing to take questions?
Oh, and regarding babble - the other candidates have faced some harsh criticism here as well - Cullen comes to mind - and they haven't even had armies of campaigners on babble singing their praises constantly the way Mulcair has. And yet, they weren't too chicken to show up on babble and chat for an hour - especially considering that they all had the opportunity to see all the questions ahead of time and formulate their responses, and hardly any of them had much time in that hour to respond to follow-up questions, much less any new ones.
If Mulcair can't even address critical questions from supporters of the NDP in such a highly-scripted forum as the one-hour candidate Q&A structure on babble, despite the legions of devoted babblers he'd likely have posting "Oh my god, you're SO AMAZINGLY GREAT, good answer, you're going to be the most amazingly fantastic leader we ever had ever!" after every post he made here balancing whatever critical ones would be posted, then that seems pretty weak to me.
I honestly don't understand why Mulcair would refuse the Current interview. It makes no sense to me at all.
Yes, and heaven forbid he should be asked that question, or answer it. Heaven forbid.
Yes, it's quite possible that Mulcair is more vulnerable to attacks from the mainstream media, and from progressives, than Layton was. Maybe you should ask yourself why. Why is it that Mulcair has attracted so much more criticism and mistrust from his non-supporters than other candidates have from theirs? Why is it that Mulcair has so much more past baggage that the media could exploit than Layton did?
You seem to be making the case that Mulcair has so much more to be worried about from the press than Layton did. Well, do you think that Mulcair is going to be able to avoid the media after he becomes leader, unless the media agrees to let him have 15 minutes of uninterrupted response time to "fully explain" this or that to them? Does any politician get that kind of explanation time from the mainstream media, outside of the softball one-on-one Mansbridge interviews?
Is knowing how to talk to the media and being able to handle hard questions not an indispensible qualification for a party leader?
The media, including the CBC (which I agree is caught between fear of the Master and the LPC sympathies of many of its political forum-DJs), will spin whatever any NDP leader or MP or office clerk says or does any way they can. They will spin Mulcair's silence as fear or surliness or anti-social tendencies, just as they would split anything he tried to explain into harmful soundbites, were he to appear on air.
He and his advisors really need to weigh the long- or medium-term damage of not appearing (having him cast as a type for the duration of the campaign) vs. having his words misinterpreted or mis-spun (which voters might well forget 3 years hence).
As I've pointed out already, Mulcair has been on P&P since entering the race - it was last fall, and the questions were softballs. Perhaps Mulcair feels he's been interviewed already, and hs time is best spent elsewhere? The email I received from his staff after asking him to come on babble pointed out that Tom is really busy travelling all over the country and participating in a lot of forums.
In the last thread I posted that Rosie Barton had an interview with Martin Singh yesterday, and her questions were slightly pointed, but Singh dug his own hole by continuing to go after Topp on his "lack of truthfulness" which to me sounds juvenile and petty and Singh should simply move on.
Mulcair has been on Power & Politics once since the race started, just like all the other NDP candidates. The pleas are pathetic, Fox News, ratings boosting tactics.
Not going on The Current is bizarre but I feel a little shadenfreude because of the very rude and disrespectful way that show used to treat Jack Layton.
I'm not saying that I agree with Mulcair avoiding The Current. I would have liked to have heard what he had to say. I just think that he probably thinks he is way ahead one week before the convention and is adopting a "safe" strategy of reducing media avaialbility. In the final week of election campaign 2011 when the NDP started surging across Canada - Jack also suddenly became very unavialble to the media.
Thanks Michelle for making me laugh - first of the day and much appreciated. I so do not want our next leader of the NDP to emulate in anyway leaders or election strategies used by either the Conservatives or Liberals. Let's see here, refusing to participate in potential negative press, and or campaign strategies of not being upfront with voters and campaigning one way but once in office ruling differently (that's tricking the public and found it so distasteful when liberals repeatedly do that).
Jack had no problem going straight at them and it was part of the strategy. And I remember CBC interviews during the 2008 campaign where the hatred and obvious disdarn was so apparent and literly dripping off Manbridge's face in interviews with Jack. I was absolutely disgusted with how the CBC and Manbridge treated Jack and it was at that point that I didn't care if CBC went the way of the DoDo bird or not.
Jack made me proud and not to avoid. I figured if Jack could put up with that crap on public tv than the least I could do is knock on doors and have some slammed in my face - geez.
I would like it if Mulcair came and answered questions on babble, but I suspect his campaign team has been pretty offended by a lot of the smear articles that have been posted here on rabble blogs and featured prominently on the front page. A lot of these articles make no sense, for example the Pierre Beaudet one, and as much has been pointed out by many babblers. And then there is the witch hunt, or should I call it, the "innuendo" files. One of the rules of politics (and life in general!) is that you don't reward bad behaviour, if you can avoid it. Still I would join the call for Mulcair to visit babble, if only for the incredible job of self-discrediting that his attackers would likely do.
Yeah, I'm sure he just figures, "Everyone will remember my last appearance on P&P six months ago, so no biggie. National media coverage in the last week before the election is no big whoop."
Maybe once he becomes leader, he can just give an interview to all the major media outlets the month after he is elected, and then if he's approached six months or a year later by a reporter, he can tell them, "Hey, I've already appeared on your show once. That's enough."
Y-uh huh. Unlike the other leadership candidates, who are sitting on their butts at home and phoning it in. They've got all the time in the world.
Oh, Singh was on P&P yesterday? I didn't catch that. My mistake, I guess the Mulcair team DID appear on P&P after all! ;)
Martin Singh has not been on babble either, as far as I recall.
Yup and I remember Jack Layton's last press conference of the 2011 campaign. I think it's probably still up on CPAC.ca somewhere. The reporters were literally screaming at him and over eachother from a few feet away. They wouldn't let him answer!
Yeah, I'm sure no one ever remembers Mulcair's appearances on Power and Politics. There's probably been less than 100 of them. Whatever happened to the line about "once people know Peggy Nash or Brian Topp" they will love them? Why is the new line Tom Mulcair isn't well enough known, the public must have all Tom all the time?
You post way more on babble than I do these days, Gaian, with the exception of your short-lived self-imposed exile recently. Today is an anomaly. And I agree, your posts generally are bitter and puerile.
geez, Michelle, your hostilty really shows.
In what's becoming a mind-numbing pattern, you guys are reading too much into it. People make other plans. You can't always put everything on hold to make every media appearance. It's not like he's never appeared on the CBC before.
Does it? Good. Normally I try not to fight personal attacks with personal attacks, but I made an exception in this case. Maybe that's why my hostility is "showing" right now. Gaian's hostility, on the other hand, is so often on display, which may be why you didn't comment on his hostility despite the fact that he said exactly the same thing about my posts as I did about his.
Feel free to flag my post. I'm willing to take a reprimand from a mod for it. It was well worth it.