Kranz: Little progress for Johnson since welcome home
In his regular column today, David Kranz offered a bit of surprising commentary with regards to Senator Johnson, and his continued recovery since suffering a debilitating stroke-like brain injury one year ago. As Dave relates in today’s Argus Leader:
This reporter’s take: Johnson showed that he still retains his thorough knowledge of the issues and his judgement regarding their importance to constituents. Communicating his thoughts, though, still came slowly.
Given the opportunity to compare Johnson this week with his welcome- home speech in August and his interview with Argus Leader reporters two days after that address, one thing was clear Wednesday: It didn’t seem like there was a lot of progress in his speech.
At this point there is little doubt that Johnson plans to run. He has announced a re-election bid, and he reaffirmed that again Wednesday. “I am ready to go,” he said.
There is no doubt that he means business, but people who know him well still add a sentence about the impact of his health problems.
“Anyone can change their minds.”
Read it all here. I’m certainly not a physician, and I didn’t listen to the press conference myself. But what Dave seems to be intimating as lightly as possible is that Senator Johnson has hit a plateau in his recovery, and despite the Senator’s announcement of his candidacy, those who know him well are still privately expressing doubts about it.
Surprisingly (and rare) frank commentary coming from the State’s largest daily newspaper.
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Comments
There you go again, Bill, insisting that people check out facts before forming opinions. Naughty, naughty, naughty. Have you seen The Golden Compass yet?
I hope he is enough of a person to put the interests of his state and nation above his personal interests. Unfortunately, Johnson can no longer effectively represent South Dakota.
I heard a short clip from his news conference yesterday. I thought considering what he has gone through, he sounded good. In a normal everyday conversation, I believe he would be fine. However, it was also apparent he had difficulty in spontaneously answering questions. I believe in a debate situation, this is going to be a problem for him. Even if his mind is working fine (and I have no doubts it is), the appearance of having difficulty speaking is going to be tough to overcome.
The ill-wishers should get what they wish for. Sen. Johnson is too good a man to waste on South Dakota.
6. Not as difficult for the Senator to overcome as it will be for his opponent. No matter how delicately an opponent tries to handle this and asks for debates on the issues, it is going to be “spun” by the Dems as insensitive. It is a no-win situation for whomever runs against the Senator.
8, et al. So don’t debate in the usual format. Debates can happen in any number of ways these days. This isn’t that hard people. And seeing through the Repub’s ruse is pretty easy.
“Oh, geeeze, if Tim can’t do Kennedy v. Nixon or Lincoln v. Douglas, maybe we can win this thing.”
Yeah, right. Go for it fellas.
#8
There is nothing to spin. One person talks, the other talks. When you get done listening, one person may sound less able to talk. Many people will make up their minds by how the people sound. If the Senator sounds like he is having a problem putting together a sentence, it will leave an impression. If he does not sound like he has a problem putting together a sentence, he will be very hard to beat.
Bill, there is no ruse. Nixon vs Kennedy–people who heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon won; people who saw the debate thought Kennedy won. Impressions are important. BTW, the way I read the article, Tim is promising debates. Or do you believe he is parsing his words. What does is mean again?
10. As if being able to put together a sentence on the fly in public is all it takes to be an effective Senator. Has it really come to that, duggerSD? Do you really think your fellow South Dakotans are that shallow? I don’t.
Sen. Abnor wasn’t a great speaker and seemed to have a slight speech impediment but I didn’t hear Republicans then say that disqualified him from office. Same with Sen. Johnson. The issue isn’t how well he speaks but how well he can represent the state. We should be more concerned about his overall health and his cognitive functions rather than if he can rat-a-tat-tat at Janklow-like machine gun speed.
I think Tim should be judged by the same criteria as before the AVM. Is he an effective legislator, does he work on behalf of the citizens, what are his positions on the major issues, can he do the job?
If Tim is judged on this rather normal electoral criteria, he will win.
On a personal note, if any of you ill-wishers ever suffer a stroke or other disability and can’t fully recovery your ability to speak normally, I hope you won’t mind if we think you’re now a big fat drooling dummy. That seems to be what you’re saying about Sen. Johnson just because he speaks more deliberately now and sometimes searches for words.
Todd, are you saying Johnson or anyone else recovering from stroke are “big fat drooling dumm[ies]“? That rather pisses me off. My father couldn’t speak after his stroke but we found each other in other forms of communication before his death.
I’m just SAYING!
Bruce seems to have some reading comprehension problems or enjoys building irrelevant strawmen and then feeling victorious when he whacks off their straw heads.
Todd, Senator Abdnor didn’t “seem” to have a speech impediment. He had one. And, by the power of his superior capacity to reason, hard work, and an instinctual capacity to relate one-on-one, he overcame his speech impediment and was an effective Senator. I admit one had to listen hard to what Jim was saying especially if he was tired. But I will put up the substance of what he had to say against anyone. Anybody who assumed Jim’s speech impediment was indicative of his raw intelligence only made that mistake once. Over a beer, I could consume an entire night telling stories where Senator Abdnor bested the “intellectual giants” of the Senate. One of things that Jim told me was “You can go through life over-estimated or under-estimated. It is better to be under-estimated because by the time they see you coming, you have already won.” While Jim never said it to me, I believe that he enjoyed having people under-estimate him and believed it an advantage.
And Jim Abdnor’s speech impediment was an issue raised by both Republicans and Democrats. It was subtly raised by Senator McGovern, Governor Janklow, and Congressman Daschle when they said they could be more effective “voices” or advocates for South Dakota. They weren’t talking about Senator Abdnor’s position on issues but consciously trying to point to Jim’s speech impediment relative to their own oratory skills. In all the years I’ve been observing campaigns, those three campaigns were the ones that used “voice” or something similar almost always in their advertisements.
And, it was directly raised by their supporters. I recall one specific instance during the 1980 state fair. The entire day while I was manning the GOP booth as a volunteer, people were coming by and spouting off in the booth about “how can a guy who can’t talk be a Senator?” For awhile we just assumed it was “over-zealous idiots” and not orchestrated. However, late in the day, I happened to walk by the Democratic booth and in it were at least four of the “idiots” talking and laughing with two McGovern campaign staffers. I don’t have proof about what they were talking about but when they saw me, they stopped laughing and looked sheepish.
I also remember a conversation with a good friend who was a Janklow primary supporter who asked me, “Who would you rather have on the floor of the US Senate?” While to a large degree it was reference to the reality that Bill Janklow is one of the most gifted orators in South Dakota history, it was also a reference to the fact this was Jim’s weakest attribute.
At the time, because I was personally close to Senator Abdnor and knew first hand of his mental brilliance, I considered those attacks unfair. But as I’ve aged, I’ve come to realize that the question was fair. Jim had to prove to the electorate that he could overcome his speech impediment to effectively perform the job. And, based on his electoral success, I believe he did overcome it to the satisfaction of the people of South Dakota. His defeat to Daschle was not in any way related to his speech impediment but to the combination of incompetence of his campaign staff to effectively deal with Daschle’s October negative ads* and the lowest Republican turnout in decades which many attribute to fall-out from the primary against Governor Janklow.
My point is that Senator Abdnor’s speech impediment was a legitimate question raised in all of his US Senate races and in all of them it had at best negligible effect because the voters saw other attributes which mitigated or superseded his speech impediment.
In this campaign, Senator Johnson will have to address not only the speech issue but also his capacity to perform the day-to-day physical demands of being a US Senator and do his physical and speech therapy. If he shows that he can do it, it will be a non-issue and the election decided by the issues of the day. If he can not, it will become a legitimate consideration on if he should serve our state for another term.
Todd, I don’t think it fair to accuse people asking this question as asserting Senator Johnson is a “big fat drooling dummy.” I’ve yet to have heard a single comment anywhere that in any way implies Senator Johnson’s reasoning is any different than it was before or that he was or is a “drooling dummy.”
Giving speeches, verbally interacting with constituents and colleagues, traveling to, from, and throughout the state are all components of the job description. Some might find them critical components and will hold Senator Johnson to high expectations. Others might find them incidental and will hold Senator Johnson to a lower standard in this regard. Elections are the collective expression of the determination of which candidate they deem overall most capable to serve and represent them. In eleven months, we will have clarity.
* My use of the term “negative ads” is not to impugn the ads or the Daschle campaign but reference to this particular type of campaign tactic.
15. Troy, I worked on the Daschle campaign against Abnor and designed the newspaper ads. The “negative” aspect was that we identified Jim as a “follower” as opposed to a “fighter.” I don’t recall any reference to any speech defects. I do recall drawing both candidate’s portriats in pencil, however, and will admit that I drew Tom’s in a more flattering way than I did Jim’s. Did that make any dif? Who knows?
The part I am sure about are the positive ads we ran for Tom at the end. Full page ads of Kids, Seniors and Vets, great big smiling faces saying I’m voting for Tom.
(Come to think of it, that’s what Tom’s team forgot to do when he was running against John Thune… and why I’m a little torked at Hildy and Erpenbach for not having remembered. Hey do we have to teach you darn kids everything!?)
I hate Dave Kranz and the Argus Leader sooooooo much …