Fenty Needs a Better Strawman
I like the Adrian Fenty ad that claims he has walked every mile of every road in DC. Sure, it’s an exaggeration — some roads don’t allow pedestrians and there are way too many side roads and back alleys for him to have covered — but it’s the kind of old-fashioned red-blooded political exaggeration that I can get behind.
However his latest ad, which is up at his site, bugs me because it starts with him saying, “Some people say I spend too much time responding to my constituents. I tell them there’s no such thing.”
No, Adrian. No one has ever said that to you and you’ve never had that conversation, ever. Some may complain that you don’t spend enough time on other things but no one has ever come up to you and said, “Mr. Fenty, you spend too much time responding to your constituents. Please try to cut back!”
Actually, Fenty has been criticized for paying too much attention to his Blackberry in meetings, etc. In the ad you reference, look how many times his Blackberry is shown. Obviously the connection he wants viewers to make is that when he’s on his Blackberry, he’s responding to his constituents–thus, those who criticize him for being on his Blackberry so much are criticizing him for the amount of time he’s spending responding to his constituents.
Is that what he uses his blackberry for? I don’t know. But it isn’t quite the strawman you make it out to be, just a little too esoteric and reaching in its presentation.
Fenty has launched that whole “I spend all of my time talking to my constituents” campaign in response to Cropp’s obnoxious commercial and her comments saying that he doesn’t care about the people of DC. I actually met Fenty briefly yesterday because like many of the other political hopefuls, he was at my metro stop on my commute to work passing out info. He was quite charismatic and probably the least annoying of all I’ve met, but I get quite annoyed and sometimes go towards the metro at a light jog to avoid 3 different pamphlets that I’ve already seen being shoved at me. There’s got to be a better way, but it is good to see them all out and doing something, I guess…