Politics- What Else??

Tonight's post won't be nearly as light as my post on Friday. I just can't seem to get away from politics as hard as I may try. Tonight's post brings you an article from Tom Foreman, a clip with John Roberts, and an upcoming appearance for John King. And on with the politics...

Tom Foreman's article in the New York Metro took a different look at politics... who's talking about space?

We’re falling behind in the space race

I hate to bring this up, with the election grinding into its final days, and so many urgent issues at hand, but somebody needs to be talking about Mars. India has sent an unmanned rocket to the moon. China is making noise about putting a human being on the lunar surface; the first since we packed our Samsonites and left that great gray sandy beach in the sky in 1972. That’s right, we left the moon 36 years ago, and no one has been back. We don’t write. We never call.

Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has shown any real enthusiasm for space exploration. Each offers a tepid notion that we should generally continue our efforts in orbit, and that’s about it.

Considering our economy, fractured international relations and security issues, it is understandable that they and many voters might want to cool it with the NASA talk.

But space matters.

The economy? Space exploration is a fundamental power behind scientific and technological advances, many thousands of which wind up as consumer products that we market to the world. Security? Our banking, communications, satellite imaging capabilities, spy networks, and military forces could be hugely diminished if our dominance of space fell to the wayside. Education? One of Obama’s own commercials talks about how he was inspired to serve his country, because as a child he saw astronauts in a parade.

Maybe America has grown tired of the space race, but others haven’t. China is not messing around. They are still, according to space experts, considerably behind us, but they are paying to educate hundreds of thousand of new engineers each year, sending robotic probes around the moon, and seriously looking at a manned mission to Mars.

Robert Zubrin, the most enthusiastic proponent of Mars travel I’ve ever met, says, “If we continue to stand still, by the middle of the next decade their space program is going to be superior to ours, and they’ll be moving on to the moon and Mars, while we’re looking back on our former greatness.”

That’s right. If the next president wins reelection, by the time he leaves office, China could be the Man in the Moon’s new BFF. The space race is a marathon, not a sprint. America will not be able to just suddenly catch up, if we hear the Chinese are getting ready to launch. Is there life on Mars? Not yet. But there could be. And how are we going to feel, if the explorers who make it first, are there to plant another nation’s flag?

CNNPolitics.com | Catch Tom Foreman on CNN every Saturday at 6 p.m. on This Week in Politics for a look back at the presidential campaign trail.

Next on our political agenda tonight, have you tried having a conversation with someone about politics recently? How about someone who doesn't agree with your views? If you've found it challenging, you're not the only one! John Roberts interviewed Kelly Nyks about his documentary, Split: A Divided America on America Morning on October 17th.

Thursday night, John King will appear on South Carolina ETV. Here's a look at the press release for The Big Picture.

Columbia SC… In an interview with South Carolina ETV taped Wednesday, John King, CNN’s chief national correspondent, admitted that some criticism of the media’s handling of election coverage is legitimate. The interview airs on “The Big Picture,” Thursday, Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m.

Telling program host Mark Quinn, that he hopes there will be a lot of reflection after this election cycle as to how it was covered by the media, King said there is a lot to be learned.

“We did invest our thinking too much at the beginning, in the Clinton juggernaut,” he said. “Of course, Senator Clinton was going to win—the Clinton name is the gold standard in Democratic politics. Of course she’s going to win. And so, when people say now we haven’t spent enough time looking at Barack Obama’s background, a lot of that was because people were looking at Senator Clinton early on as the frontrunner, and thinking ‘Well, this guy, he’s going to mount a good race, but he can’t possibly beat her.’ And then he does, and we’re on into the general election. I think there’s some very legitimate criticism that we did not treat all of the candidates in the Democratic race—particularly the top two or three—equally, because of the Clinton obsession in the national media. It is a very fair point. We need to learn that lesson.”

In response to a question Quinn asked about whether Sarah Palin has been treated much differently by the press than her counterparts, King said, “Part of that may be legitimate. Part of that may be how the McCain campaign put her out there. We whine too much sometimes. If the McCain campaign doesn’t want to make Sarah Palin available for interviews, OK, just say they won’t make her available for interviews. We don’t have to jump up and down and scream and cry about that…In today’s democracy, if she is doing talk radio, if she is going to town halls, if she is out campaigning, we should make note of it…it is not our job to whine or complain…If (people) think that’s important, if a voter thinks it’s important that she’s not doing the Sunday shows, then the voter will make their decision based on that. Other voters will think, ‘So what? Why do I want to listen to you? I want to see her in a town hall. I want to see her giving a speech.’ So, we need to observe, not object so much…”

King then went on to comment about the perception by some that the media is elitist.

“I say this all the time, and many in my business disagree with me, but one of the things I love about what I do is I travel. And there are a lot of people who sit—they’re wonderful people—they’re well-intentioned, don’t get me wrong, but they sit in New York or Washington—and they don’t come to South Carolina or North Carolina or Ohio or any other swing state out here and actually talk to human beings—or watch what it’s like to stand outside of a factory that just shut down with people. And so their attitudes are influenced by the fact that they live in Washington or New York and they don’t travel enough. And the criticism is that makes them elitist. I would just say sometimes there are some people who are very influential in our business who are somewhat out of touch.”

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