Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Pay attention and open your ears

Barack Obama spoke at the University of New Hampshire yesterday where he did not detail any solutions for any of his talking points except for increasing energy efficiency by using a cap and trade strategy. The humor in this lies in a WMUR-TV (virtually the only NH news station) interview with a University of New Hampshire student:

The reporter asked what the student thought of the speech and Barack's healthcare stance. The student replied that they thought Barack had some very good ideas and proposals. The anchors then laughed and said that Barack actually didn't give any proposals and only mentioned the broad concept that small businesses need more and the U.S. need universal health care. They then showed a clip of Barack's brief mention of healthcare where he effectively says nothing.

The question is this; is anyone paying attention to Barack's complete lack of substance yet or are people still naive enough to be seduced by populist appeal? Sadly, the answer seems to be the latter. Time will show us that charisma can only carry Barack so far.