AR-02: Kennedy Tweets Boldly; Explains Meekly

Blake Rutherford has an absolutely fantastic post regarding the following tweet by Patrick Kennedy:

The arc of a career politician is long and bends towards corruption. PK 12:34 AM April 12th

In response to this, Blake emailed Kennedy and asked the candidate to clarify — or, more accurately, attempt to reconcile — this statement with the careers of Messrs. Pryor, Clinton, and Bumpers, all of whom Kennedy has referenced positively during his campaign.  Kennedy responded via email and his spinning-while-not-quite-retracting-the-comment answers were vaguely reminiscent of another Kennedy’s replies when he was pressed on whether he really meant that he would give blood to the North Vietnamese.

Blake’s entire post is worth reading, but here is a synopsis.

• Bill Clinton is not a career politician, despite 30 years as a politician, because he “voted with his conscious [sic]” and “wasn’t afraid to admit when he did something wrong.”
• “Career politician” does not require longevity, only — apparently — corrupt decision-making.
  
• Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon differ because “one acted wrongfully to preserve his power in office.”
• In the end, a person’s “arc” is his or her own decision.
• What Kennedy is talking about (according to him) is “courage” and “leadership.”
• Joyce Elliott has been a courageous leader while in office, and she has answered tough questions, but she hasn’t put her “national platform” on the internet which is “where the common voter goes for information.”

So…if we synthesize all of the above (including the Twitter message that prompted Blake’s post), we get

The arc of someone who makes corrupt choices while in office is long and bends towards corruption.  This long arc does not depend on the actual length of time in office, nor does the “corrupt” label apply if one apologizes when he errs and lets his “conscious” [sic] lead the way.  Finally, courageous leaders may display courage and leadership, but that doesn’t mean a lot if they don’t also put big-picture ideas on the internet.

I guess Twitter’s 140-character limit forced Kennedy to truncate these insights.

Snark aside, two other points I will make about Kennedy’s tweet and explanation:

1. The tweet was posted at 12:41 AM.  While Blake picked up on it, in general this is the type of random social media posting that drives me insane.  I keep screaming about the need for coherent social media strategy; one aspect of that strategy has to be posting your content/messages at times when people are likely to actually SEE them.

2. The point about the internet being “where the common voter goes for information” is odd when you are talking about a state that ranks 48th in percentage of households with internet access.