Spectrum: The Lockwood Thompson Dialogues @ Cle Public Library 10/6 With Ohio as one of the battleground states for the upcoming election, you can imagine why the auditorium was overflowing for the Politics and Propaganda: Designing the President event at CPL Monday evening. Dan Moulthrop, host of 90.3 WCPN-FM, moderated the event, which featured Donna Brazile, political strategist and chair of the Voting Rights Institute, and Frank Rich, New York Times Op-ed columnist and author.

Hyped on one hand as being the most exciting presidential campaign in history, the upcoming election was questioned as being too scripted and poll-tested, with the candidates being afraid to make a mistake and coming off disingenuous at times.

The discussion of the design of the current presidential candidates was just shy of an Obama rally with Brazile and Rich using words like “taller, calmer, more polite and more engaged” when describing Obama’s demeanor and style in comparison with McCain's during the last debate. Both agreed that Obama’s campaign is one of the most sophisticated they’ve ever seen.

The crowd that came to witness this event was older than I anticipated, but was, overall, a diverse group. They were passionate about their politics and I got the feeling that they would have welcomed Obama with open arms, had he showed. More info on upcoming events: http://www.cpl.org.

From Cool Cleveland contributor T.L. Champion tlATcoolcleveland.com
(:divend:)