It’s a time-honored strategy for political front-runners to minimize the number of debates with their underdog opponents; the bigger the lead, the less likely a candidate will want to jeopardize it by tangling with an opponent. Joseph P. Kennedy III, the scion of the famous political family, is the favorite to win election in the redrawn Fourth Congressional District, currently represented by Barney Frank. And while Kennedy hasn’t exactly been hiding from his Republican opponent, Sean Bielat, neither has he agreed to more than a bare-minimum three debates, only one of which — a roundtable sponsored by WCVB-TV, which aired last Sunday — was likely to reach a large audience.
Clearly, Kennedy wants to be highly visible and available to voters in the district without having to engage too often with his opponent. It’s too cautious an approach for a 32-year-old newcomer. Perhaps Kennedy does have the magic to re-establish a great political name in a new century, but he should have to prove it — repeatedly. Voters in the district, which runs southwest from the Boston suburbs to the Rhode Island border, deserve more than just smiles, handshakes, and gentle words. Kennedy should be challenged hard, and pressured to prove his worth. In the five weeks remaining in the campaign, he should agree to more debates.
Comments
While I agree that debates can be a method of establishing clear ideological and political differences between candidates in the minds of voters, the sad truth, as demonstrated by last night's presidential debate, is that only rarely do candidates speak in terms of specifics of how they intend to govern or change the operations of government. They now simply repeat talking points, making debates seem like live, pointed campaign ads rather than truly informative debates that lay out the details of how each candidate will govern. After the incessant Republican primary debates for far too many months, is there really an expectation that more debates will produce anything more than repetition of key talking points and very little substantive detail?
Joe III does not want more debates against an experience opponent like Sean Bielat what does he have but the name of Kennedy only and millions in trust funds....how can he relate to the working person when he never held a job that was his own cash to survive with. In this economy we do not need wealthy trust funds without real business experience to run the government and give away money we do not have. Remember the Kennedy's LOVE to spend other peoples money and are very generous with it. Just look at the $58 million to Ted's library when the Kennedy's have hundreds of millions of their own money and that defense fund money should have gone to our wounded military and not to a very wealthy family (not even a president library). Please wake up people and get over the name of Kennedy.
The editorial is unfair. It implies that the voters of the Fourth Congressional District will vote for Joe3 just because he's a Kennedy. Imagine that!
Don't be so naive, Globist. . . This latest edition of the Kennedy misteeque (or is that mistake) is running on his name. . . He has no background to justify launching himself into Congress, not even one term under Bob DeLeo's tutelage in the MassaChusetts House . . . so of course he doesn't want this Bielat Republican to get a chance to show Kennedy up as a still-wet-behind-the-ears, self-assumed- deserver-of-a-congressional-seat with nothing upon which to start building a political record. Fourth Congressional District voters have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to dunk a Kennedy in the real life pool so he can go to get a real world job with a bit of heavy lifting that might make him a convincing congressional candidate in 2014 or thereafter.