This past week, it seems, there will indeed be at least one televised debate in the much dramatized United States Senate Race in Arkansas.
Whew!
Many eternal worriers of the political process thought this debate, both men on the same stage at the same time with questions being hurled at them on topics Arkansas want to know, might never happen this election season.
The hour-long debate, sponsored by the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, will be Oct. 14 at the University of Arkansas Global Campus Auditorium (right off the Fayetteville Square) at 7 p.m. The debate is to broadcast on all of the ABC affiliate stations within Arkansas.
Steve Clark, president and executive director of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce and a former state's Attorney General, finally got the two sides to somewhat agree on the terms of the debate. The initial format was centered on three subjects -- education, transportation and job creation/economic development.
Fair enough, both sides said initially. Those seem to be the issues Arkansans want to know about.
Then some staffer, no doubt a real "political techie," said "What about "foreign affairs?"
And the wheels almost fell off this fragile debate wagon.
Congressman Tom Cotton, who brags at every opportunity as a military veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, suddenly wanted to discuss some foreign policy.
U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, who is perhaps one of the least travelled U.S. Senators in the Upper Chamber in his two terms, did not want to discuss those issues. Pryor wanted, it seems, to stick with the three topics already decided.
Some felt that Pryor was dodging the foreign policy issues in the debate. I have to ask: Why not dodge the foreign policy issue.
Do Arkansans really want to know what these two guys know about foreign affairs?
There has not been any Congressman or U.S. Senator from Arkansas, since 1974 that could even begin to carry the foreign affairs briefcase of the late J.W. Fulbright. The native son of Fayetteville, Fulbright was a Rhodes Scholar, former Razorback running back, and spent his entire 30 years Senate career enamored with foreign affairs.
He was the longest running chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was a staunch multi-lateralist.
A what? A staunch multi-lateralist. That's a typical term bantered back and forth in a real foreign relations debate.
Now do you see why Mark Pryor doesn't actually want to debate foreign affairs or foreign relations?
And, maybe why Tom Cotton does.
Cotton, the Harvard educated policy drone, was profiled in the Atlantic magazine this past week. The magazine dug up his old term papers and graduation thesis. Pretty dry reading, but eye-opening to see how this literal newcomer to Arkansas politics is hard-wired.
Foreign affairs and advancing age is exactly what led to Fulbright's defeat at the hands of Charleston's Dale Bumpers in the August 1974 Democratic Primary. Fulbright had tried for decades to tame the Middle East with substantial relationships with the Saudi Arabians and other U.S. friendly Arab nations.
But, in Arkansas speak, this is really what happened.
It was said Senator Fulbright knew more about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution than the price of gas at the Gulf Oil Station on Main Street Arkansas. All that foreign affairs knowledge made Fulbright out of touch with Arkansas voters.
Arkansans do care about these wars that were kicked off by terrorist acts and the Bush Administration. These wars have continued on too long.
But neither Tom Cotton nor Mark Pryor really know anything about foreign affairs?
So why talk about it when the real decision is electing a U.S. Senator who can take are of this rural, poor state and its people.
MAYLON RICE, A FORMER JOURNALIST HAVING WRITTEN BOTH NEWS AND COLUMNS FOR SEVERAL NWA PUBLICATIONS, HAS BEEN WRITING FOR THE ENTERPRISE-LEADER FOR SEVERAL YEARS.
Editorial on 09/24/2014