Test your campaign knowledge
With Campaign ‘08 about to enter its fourth and final year; with candidates debating each other on MSNBC and YouTube and CNN and NPR and, for all I know, the “Rachael Ray Show”; with charges and countercharges being flung like cow pies at an Iowa county fair, it’s time to see how much attention you’ve been paying.
See if you can correctly identify the many ways in which the candidates for Leader of the Free World and their supporters have been debasing themselves, each other and the democratic process.
1. In a campaign video produced by the Hillary Clinton campaign, in which of the following ways does former President Bill Clinton NOT embarrass the office he once held:
a. By wearing a sweatsuit.
b. By jogging on a treadmill.
c. By wolfing down a hamburger.
d. By shopping for dresses at The Gap.
2. Long shot GOP candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo produced an ad that depicts an illegal immigrant:
a. Washing dishes.
b. Picking fruit.
c. Obtaining a New York driver’s license.
d. Sneaking across the border to blow up a shopping mall.
3. During the July 23 CNN-YouTube Democratic debate, who questioned the candidates on the life-or-death subject of global warming:
a. Al Gore.
b. An eminent panel of scientists.
c. A cartoon snowman.
d. A Brazilian farm worker.
4. Which of the following true charges have been leveled against GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani?
a. That he promoted Bernard Kerik for secretary of homeland security, despite Kerick’s alleged ties to organized crime.
b. That he used his security service to guard his estranged wife and his girlfriend at the same time.
c. That he authorized his firm to hire a priest suspended from his duties by the Catholic church after the priest was accused of molesting teenagers.
d. All of the above.
5. Which of the following charges have not been leveled by other campaigns against Democratic candidate Barack Obama?
a. That he’s not patriotic because he removed his American flag lapel pin.
b. That his White House ambitions first surfaced in kindergarten.
c. That as a pickup basketball player, he uses his elbows too freely under the boards.
d. That he’s secretly a Mormon.
6. “The lazier a man is, the more he plans to do tomorrow” is a quotation dragged out of where to describe GOP candidate Fred Thompson:
a. The cast of “Law and Order” in 2006.
b. The Senate Watergate Committee in 1973.
c. His campaign staff in 2008.
d. His high school yearbook in 1960.
7. The most embarrassing campaign moment for liberal Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich came when he had to defend his assertion that:
a. He once played a munchkin in “Wizard of Oz.”
b. He once spotted a UFO.
c. He wears a hairpiece.
d. He voted for Ronald Reagan.
8. How did Barack Obama say he’s teaching his children about the importance of environmental issues?
a. Rented “An Inconvenient Truth” at Blockbuster.
b. Carpooling to school in a Prius.
c. Helping them screw in long-life lightbulbs.
d. Vacation home is a yurt.
9. In a letter written when she was in college in 1966, Hillary Clinton described a date she’d had with a “Dartmouth boy” who was later revealed to have been:
a. Future president Bill Clinton.
b. Future talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
c. Future Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
d. Future beefcake actor David Hasselhoff.
10. In pledging that his children would not receive Chinese-made toys for Christmas, Democratic candidate Christopher Dodd said that, instead, his kids would receive:
a. 100 percent American-made toys.
b. “Green toys” made from sustainable forest products.
c. Not Christmas toys, but non-religious specific “holiday toys.”
d. Toys made in Iowa.
Answers: 1.(d); 2.(d); 3.(c); 4.(d); 5.(d); 6.(d); 7.(b); 8.(c); 9.(c); 10.(d).