I wrote last week about a video from CNN, in which Gloria Borger asks Ron Paul about his old newsletters.
A Paul supporter wrote in, with a link to raw video of the interview, contending that the full video shows Paul didn’t walk away from the interview. (I’ve embedded the raw clip at the end of this post.) The correspondent suggests that I admit that, in fact, Paul didn’t walk away.
I originally remarked of the CNN clip that
If so [that Paul’s newsletters are no issue], why walk away from an interviewer? It’s a bad move: one should never walk out. If anything, one should insist on staying longer, and talking about more things, to compensate for talking about what one contends is a bogus issue.
This was a rookie mistake, from a man whose age and experience leave him anything but a rookie.
While the post’s headline was too much (Paul didn’t ‘storm out’ as Mike Riggs and I wrote), he most certainly did walk away – in both videos he takes off his microphone and walks away. If the Paul supporter’s contention is that Paul didn’t storm out, then he’s right. If the contention is that Paul didn’t walk away, because he walked back, he’s wrong. One can walk away and then walk back, as Paul plainly does.
I was clear and right about staying longer, too: it would be better to cancel the next event than flub the CNN interview. Borger, by the way, isn’t rude, she’s just persistent. If anything, in CNN’s finished video and in the raw footage, she’s solicititous of Paul. (Far more so, really, than other interviewers would have been. Paul’s been around a long time; he surely knew that Borger’s questioning was persistent but relatively mild.)
Finally, thanks to the Paul supporter for pointing me to the raw video of the interview. The video was linked through Drudge, a site that the supporter assures me is from an ‘a lister.’ There’s a bit of irony in this, for while Drudge is an a lister, he’s one in the corner of Mitt Romney. (See, a June 2011 story that’s still true: Mitt Romney leads the Drudge primary.)
When Matt Drudge bolsters Paul in a multi-candidate field, it promotes the idea that the race is between the well-funded Romney and Ron Paul. Romney supporters are sure they’ll win that contest in the end. I’d guess they’re right, and that the GOP will go for Romney, but in any event Drudge is not boosting Paul for the sake of Paul.
So we’re clear, I don’t think Paul’s a racist because of the newsletters; I do think he’s handled the issue very poorly. Of the newsletters themselves, and also of Paul’s anti-market views on immigration, I’ve been critical before.