LIVESTRONG Forum Field Is Weak

The following piece was produced through OffTheBus, a citizen journalism project hosted at the Huffington Post and launched in partnership with NewAssignment.Net. For more information, read Arianna Huffington's project introduction. If you'd like to join our blogging team, sign up here.

The LIVESTRONG presidential cancer forum came and went this week with little notice and perhaps equally little effect. Only four Democrats and two Republicans of the 16 or so (does Fred Thompson count?) presidential hopefuls participated. MSNBC, the television host, put little effort into promoting the event and the press gave it scant coverage. If the event has effect it will be because the answers candidates gave are used by them or their opponents as the primary season picks up its pace following Labor Day.

Reasons for the lack of interest are speculative, but, in my judgment, there are probably three basic factors that hurt attendance and interest. First, the timing, late in August, is at the height of the doldrums. The Democrats had just completed four debates in two weeks time. Even political junkies at Americablog and First Read are registering debate-fatigue. On the other side, the Republicans had recently completed the Ames Straw Poll process, and the GOP has a debate in New Hampshire on FOX News for all of the candidates next week on September 5.

Second, Lance Armstrong's popularity and his claim to be bipartisan do not suffice to compel attendance. The AFL-CIO and the netroots were groups with political clout that the Democrats could not ignore. GOP candidates are unlikely to take a pass on a FOX debate in New Hampshire. But there is no evidence that passing up a feel good forum (who opposes curing cancer?) could damage a candidate's prospects. Obama's campaign has made explicit their need to budget debate and forum time since time is, perhaps, a campaign's most precious resource. Now that Obama has made that move, we can expect others to follow.

Third, the political news cycles on Monday and Tuesday turned out to be very busy. The morning time slot for the forum was unhelpful. The media had the Alberto Gonzales resignation and the Larry Craig sex scandal to cover. Add in the usual mix of Iraq and Iran politics with a Bush speech to the VFW on Tuesday that warned of "nuclear Armageddon" and the story of how candidates want to fight cancer loses.

If you need proof, look no further than DebateScoop and my own blogging. We missed the live edition and suspect many others did, too. What we missed courtesy of First Read:

In Cedar Rapids, IA beginning at 11:00 am ET, four Democratic presidential candidates -- Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, and Kucinich (in that order) -- participate today in the LIVESTRONG presidential cancer forum, moderated by MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Lance Armstrong. Each candidate will have two minutes for an opening statement, and then will engage the moderators for 13 minutes in Q&A. Tomorrow, the Republican candidates -- just Brownback and Huckabee -- will have their turn speaking to Matthews and Armstrong. Brownback is a cancer survivor, while Edwards' and Huckabee's wives have battled with cancer. Yet there are some cancer survivors who will be no-shows at the forum, including Giuliani, McCain, and Fred Thompson. Armstrong told Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday that he was disappointed with the no-shows: "I think the future commander-in-chief needs to show up and talk about what kills 600,000 Americans a year." Also, this will be the first forum/debate that Obama, whose mother died of ovarian cancer, has skipped since his campaign declared that it would begin limiting the senator's appearances at debates and forums.

What did we miss?

According to the early AP article, Edwards and Clinton "tussled" about lobbyists, a fight that was the highlight of the YearlyKos debate, escalated at the AFL-CIO debate, and has remained a theme since. Obama and Edwards have both attacked Hillary from that angle, so in Obama's absence, Edwards did Obama's work for him.

Kucinich and Richardson barely get a paragraph at the end of the article. Their campaigns might be disappointed if the opening provided by Obama's absence does not produce better results than the early returns indicate.

The AP article says a lot more about how their writer sees the campaign than it does about the event. But the fact of that kind of coverage and the scant coverage even on MSNBC proves all debates are not created equal.

Video highlights are buried at the Hardball page at MSNBC's site and may well be moved.

Despite his role as host earlier in the day, Chris Matthews spent the first half of his Hardball hour on the news item that eclipsed the forum, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's resignation. In the one brief segment he did include, Matthews highlighted Hillary Clinton saying she would declare a national "War on Cancer." Lance Armstrong approved of the war metaphor. John Edwards did not call that a "bumper sticker" like he does the "War on Terror."

Maybe we will get to hear just how Brownback plans to end cancer deaths in 10 years. Will the Republican spend government dollars?

Brownback's method of reducing cancer deaths to zero in 10 years time is to make it a goal. He trots out the much abused "man on the moon" analogy:

"Look, if John F. Kennedy, if President Kennedy says I'm going to double the NASA budget, because I think we ought to try to go to the moon, does that stir the American public?" Brownback asked. "Or is it him saying we're going to the moon, and then that drove an increase in the NASA budget -- it's the objective that drives the money."

He also claimed that if we "believe," then it will come true and noted that Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France wins were unbelievable.

This is precisely the same answer Huckabee gave when I asked him after the debate in Des Moines how he would end reliance on fossil fuel imports in 10 years. Huckabee's Iowa campaign manager also invoked the space program when I asked him the question. But we had intercontinental ballistic missiles at that time. It was just a matter of changing trajectory. Was the science at all analogous?

But when asked how to pay for the program, Brownback balked. He repeatedly refused to name programs he would cut or tax breaks he would rescind when pressed by Matthews. Brownback claimed it was just a matter of "priorities" but refused to say what priorities should be lowered.

Bottom line: wishful thinking ("wishing it so makes it so") backed by money that grows on trees is the answer to the question I had for Brownback going into the debate.

I noticed Brownback was also tripped up by first claiming prevention was important but later balking at the preventive measure of a vaccine for HPV. He used a different metaphor for prevention:

"We are about to see a tsunami of cancer in America" because the graying of the Baby Boomer generation means more people are reaching ages in which the risk of cancer is higher, said Brownback, himself a skin cancer survivor. "If you have a tsunami coming, you don't just wait to count the dead bodies, you get prepared."

So, you prepare for a tsunami by preventing all but cervical cancer and then launch free cancer curing rockets for the rest.

Huckabee, Brownback's chief contender for the "next-tier leader" was much more specific, even arguing that all smoking in all public places should be banned by the federal government.

As all of these events are, this was more a cross-examination period in the larger "debate" that is the campaign itself. Brownback could be hurt if people follow up and use his attempt to pander on what he tried to make a signature issue beginning with a debate last spring. Huckabee's credentials as a true conservative could be questioned in a later, more prominent debate, if his support for federal smoking legislation is raised. A smart candidate or moderator might poke at Edwards in a later debate if Edwards reprises his "bumper sticker" argument.

Debaters are taught to use cross-ex answers as ammunition in later speeches. If the cross-ex is not referred to later, it's as if it never happened. The ball is in the court of the campaigns, the press, and future debate moderators. If they follow up, the LIVESTRONG event will live on. Otherwise, it's as if this event never happened. The only winners then would be those who spent their time elsewhere.

The above piece was produced through OffTheBus, a citizen journalism project hosted at the Huffington Post and launched in partnership with NewAssignment.Net. For more information, read Arianna Huffington's project introduction. If you'd like to join our blogging team, sign up here.