Mr. Craig Crawford
Earlier in the evening my Dad and I attended a lecture/forum by journalist Craig Crawford. A frequent guest on MSNBC shows like Hardball, Morning Joe, and Countdown, I’ve come to enjoy listening to him discuss the current political happenings with his Florida drawl.
The event was held at the Milton Theater, a small building in a small town that we happened to learn about the day before in the local newspaper. It was a pretty informal event with most of those attending mingling in the front lobby prior to the discussion, with Mr. Crawford himself coming in through the front door and speaking to many of those in attendance. We took our seats and the lecture began shortly afterwards. He began by referring to his book and it’s modern take on Machiavelli and how politics impact our daily life, sort of an Aristotelian outlook on life. After that he focused on presidents since Lyndon Johnson who he met as a child.
Mr. Crawford basically summarized each election as a referendum that demanded change from the disappointment we had towards the previous President. He went down the line of Presidents, explaining why each one was elected and why they were defeated or their successor was chosen. He then centered on the current grouping of candidates and said that Obama will most likely win, possibly in a landslide, mainly because he’s not like Bush. He elaborated by saying that their personalities, mannerism, etc. were so different that it’s no surprise how well he’s doing. Mr. Crawford wasn’t an Obama fanboy and he leveled some fair criticism at him, but he had a pretty pragmatic take on the situation and felt that in a few weeks, Obama would be our President Elect.
The guy on the left is NOT me.
After his lecture, Mr. Crawford began taking questions from the audience. There was a large swathe of questions, one person asking what he thought about Palin’s riling up of crowds during McCain speeches which prompted such outbursts as “Terrorist” and “Off with his head,” another asking what he thought about percieved media bias and how journalists, and someone else wanted to know what he thought about the candidates’ choices for Vice President.
All in all it was a great evening and a very informative session from someone who’s one of the most “in the know.” As a student of politics, and the youngest person there by far, I was very excited to be engaged in a process like this and definitely look forward to more opportunities like this.
As an aside, I apologize for not having any pictures of the lecture. I took a few on my phone but I don’t have access to my dummy card to upload the photos, and I was enthralled with what Mr. Crawford was saying and forgot to take more so I had to settle with these images off of Google.
