Hewitt man surprised to hear his question read during the presidential debate ...!


By Paula Blesener
Tribune-Herald content editor
Alden Tarver didn’t even get a chance to hear the answer to his question.
The 25-year-old Hewitt man glanced at his mom Tuesday night when his first name popped up as they watched the televised debate between presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama.
“Whenever I heard my name, I kind of looked at her because I thought it was funny that it was somebody named Alden who got on there,” he said.
And when moderator Tom Brokaw announced the questioner was from Hewitt, Texas, he really perked up.
So did his friends. Even before the candidates fully outlined their views on how the United States could pressure Russia without reigniting a Cold War, the text messages and calls started coming. Tarver was too busy answering to hear the candidates.
Watching the clip later on the Internet, he wasn’t overly impressed.
“They kind of paraphrased my question, and it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for anyway,” said Tarver, who submitted his question on MySpace. “I felt they both kind of used it to jump into their own prerehearsed rhetoric about their policies about Russia. I don’t think either one of them either articulated what I wanted to hear.”
Debate organizers took thousands of questions from the studio audience of uncommitted voters and online participants and winnowed them down to 11, with other questions being posed by Brokaw.
Tarver, a Midway High School graduate who also attended McLennan Community College and Texas State Technical College, said the question grew out of a conversation with a friend. They debated whether a trade embargo would provide the leverage needed to push Russia to improve on humanitarian issues. They concluded it probably wouldn’t, he said. His original question to the candidates asked them their take on an embargo.
As for the rest of the debate, the undecided Tarver found it “mildly educational. I thought the candidates got a little more personal this time.”
The debate got a little personal for a Baylor University professor, too.
Alden Smith, who teaches classics and is associate dean of the Honors College, didn’t watch the debate. But he sure heard about it Wednesday.
He got 15 to 20 e-mails and lots of comments from people congratulating him as he walked about campus. They’d say, “Hey, I saw you were on CNN.”
Well, not quite.
“It wasn’t my question, but it was a good question,” said Smith, who would instead have asked how Obama and McCain would boost confidence in the stock market and whether the recent $700 billion bailout was a good idea.
And he was pleased to hear of a Central Texan involved in the election on the national stage.
“It’s his 15 minutes of fame, but I got two or three minutes of them,” he said.
As for Tarver, he’ll be having more conversations with friends and reading up on the candidates’ stances before making his pick in “probably one of the most important elections of our time.”
He didn’t vote in the primary but said he’s satisfied with how the presidential field shook out. “Either way, I don’t think I’m going to be too disappointed.”
And while they didn’t get his question just right, Tarver said the debate was a key moment for him.
“It kind of restored a little bit of faith for me that my participation in the political process actually counts for something,” he said.
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What Alden wants to know
The question, from a transcript, is as follows:
BROKAW: Sen. McCain, this question is for you from the Internet. It’s from Alden in Hewitt, Texas.
How can we apply pressure to Russia for humanitarian issues in an effective manner without starting another Cold War?
MCCAIN: First of all, as I say, I don’t think that — we’re not going to have another Cold War with Russia.
But have no doubt that Russia’s behavior is certainly outside the norms of behavior that we would expect for nations which are very wealthy, as Russia has become, because of their petro dollars.
Now, long ago, I warned about Vladimir Putin. I said I looked into his eyes and saw three letters, a K, a G and a B. He has surrounded himself with former KGB apparatchiks. He has gradually repressed most of the liberties that we would expect for nations to observe, and he has exhibited most aggressive behavior, obviously, in Georgia.
I said before, watch Ukraine. Ukraine, right now, is in the sights of Vladimir Putin, those that want to reassemble the old Soviet Union.
We’ve got to show moral support for Georgia.
We’ve got to show moral support for Ukraine. We’ve got to advocate for their membership in NATO.
We have to make the Russians understand that there are penalties for these this kind of behavior, this kind of naked aggression into Georgia, a tiny country and a tiny democracy.
And so, of course we want to bring international pressures to bear on Russia in hopes that that will modify and eventually change their behavior. Now, the G-8 is one of those, but there are many others.
But the Russians must understand that these kinds of actions and activities are not acceptable and hopefully we will use the leverage, economic, diplomatic and others united with our allies, with our allies and friends in Europe who are equally disturbed as we are about their recent behaviors.
BROKAW: Sen. Obama.
MCCAIN: It will not be a re-ignition of the Cold War, but Russia is a challenge.
BROKAW: Sen. Obama? We’re winding down, so if we can keep track of the time.
OBAMA: Well, the resurgence of Russia is one of the central issues that we’re going to have to deal with in the next presidency. And for the most part I agree with Sen. McCain on many of the steps that have to be taken.
But we can’t just provide moral support. We’ve got to provide moral support to the Poles and Estonia and Latvia and all of the nations that were former Soviet satellites. But we’ve also got to provide them with financial and concrete assistance to help rebuild their economies. Georgia in particular is now on the brink of enormous economic challenges. And some say that that’s what Putin intended in the first place.
The other thing we have to do, though, is we’ve got to see around the corners. We’ve got to anticipate some of these problems ahead of time. You know, back in April, I put out a statement saying that the situation in Georgia was unsustainable because you had Russian peacekeepers in these territories that were under dispute.
And you knew that if the Russians themselves were trying to obtain some of these territories or push back against Georgia, that that was not a stable situation. So part of the job of the next commander-in-chief, in keeping all of you safe, is making sure that we can see some of the 21st century challenges and anticipate them before they happen.
We haven’t been doing enough of that. We tend to be reactive. That’s what we’ve been doing over the last eight years and that has actually made us more safe. That’s part of what happened in Afghanistan, where we rushed into Iraq and Sen. McCain and President Bush suggested that it wasn’t that important to catch bin Laden right now and that we could muddle through, and that has cost us dearly.
We’ve got to be much more strategic if we’re going to be able to deal with all of the challenges that we face out there.
And one last point I want to make about Russia. Energy is going to be key in dealing with Russia. If we can reduce our energy consumption, that reduces the amount of petro dollars that they have to make mischief around the world. That will strengthen us and weaken them when it comes to issues like Georgia.