The debate they won't have

Thursday, August 7, 2014

The dew point was 65 and there were flying roaches in the weather garden and Mark Pryor must be a complex rascal.

John Brummett is blogging daily online.

That's what I remember from happening to catch a local television station's news program the other evening.

It was the channel with Craig O'Neill and a teenage-looking woman who does happy sports.

So, yes, it seems I remember her, too.

I believe she said the Hogs were looking good; that they were undefeated, in fact, through one day of practice.


Every commercial break was about Pryor. I thought for a minute that he was Steve Landers' long-lost brother.

Pryor is a "decent guy," declared one ad in which the ensuing verbiage was that he wasn't decent at all because he'd been on the side of that horrible Barack Obama.

He's a "blessing," it was asserted in another commercial by the wife of a serviceman who had been helped by Pryor.

He and that horrible Obama either don't know or don't care that Wanda and Jerry got letters about losing health insurance, or so Jerry said in a reprised commercial.

And Tom Cotton sternly approved a message that Pryor laughably thinks the Mexican border is more secure than it was a decade ago.

One commercial was about Cotton.

Harry Reid's super-PAC said the young Kochian would harm seniors by gutting Medicare. But I already knew that.

This Crain Team-ish barrage will rage into November, accelerating as it goes.

In the dreary face of that, it occurs to me that either candidate could assure victory by abandoning these slickly produced commercials featuring surrogates waging personal attacks.

Either could win simply by using his purchased time to talk directly to the camera in minimalist form to answer the other's assaults.

Muhammad Ali called it rope-a-dope.

For example, a talking-head Pryor could say as follows during a forthcoming commercial break in your 10 o'clock news:

"Well, folks, now Tom Cotton has a commercial blaming me for our nation's illegal immigration woes.

"What you should know is that the video clip he uses of me saying our border is more secure than it was a decade ago is edited in such a way as to obscure context.

"What he left out is that I went on to say in the very next breath that the border isn't secure enough, and that we have a lot of work yet to do.

"If he's going to quote me, I wish he'd at least let me finish my thought. Has anyone out there ever said to your spouse: Honey, please let me finish?

"So, one, let's work on a bipartisan basis to solve this immigration crisis. And, two, let's elect someone to do that work who has participated in bipartisan solutions, as I have, and as my opponent hasn't.

"And, three, let's elect someone to do that work who talks straight with you in his own words, rather in the distorted presentation of his opponent's edited words."

I think the race would be over right there.

So in the interests of viable political competition and fairness, I should offer a script for Cotton as well. Here's some rope-a-dope for the challenger:

"Mark Pryor is running commercials saying you should vote for him because I favor raising the Medicare age to 70 and voted against an appropriation containing money for new research at the Arkansas Children's Hospital.

"I thought I'd take this opportunity to point out that he is saying you should return him to the Senate because he would spend your money and I would save your money.

"If spending someone else's money is your idea of what a senator should do--if you find that to be a talent worthy of your precious vote--then Mark Pryor is your man.

"The Arkansas Children's Hospital is a great institution--so great, in fact, that it will thrive even without Mark Pryor exercising his talent to spend your tax money and borrowed money for it."

Boom. We just had the debate the two candidates can't seem to agree to have.

Here is an alternative piece of advice for Cotton: Turn your television advertising over to your mom and dad.

For that matter, Pryor could do the same and bring in his famous folks.

David and Barbara Pryor versus Lynn and Avis Cotton, appearing as themselves nightly during your local television news--now that would be a battle for the aged and the ages.

Four fine people you like, talking about their kids--what could be more engaging?

Certainly not the woes of Wanda and Jerry.

And it would be more enlightening than what we're otherwise getting between evening-news segments about Craig, the dew point and happy sports.

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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 08/07/2014