{"id":8214,"date":"2006-08-16T09:10:14","date_gmt":"2006-08-16T13:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8214.html"},"modified":"2006-08-16T09:10:14","modified_gmt":"2006-08-16T13:10:14","slug":"ambition-is-good-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ambition-is-good-but\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ambition is good’ but…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maryland has a crowded Democratic Senate primary, in which the candidates largely agree with one another on all the major issues of the day. Distinguishing oneself is a challenge, but Rep. Ben Cardin (D), a leading congressional proponent of cancer research and screening, thinks he’s found a niche<\/a> (via Minipundit<\/a>).<\/p>\n

With a month to go before primary voters head to the polls to choose Senate nominees, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin kicked off yesterday a weeklong effort to highlight his congressional record and vision on health care by making the mother of all campaign promises – to cure cancer.<\/p>\n

Cardin, a Democrat from Baltimore County, gathered with cancer survivors and doctors in Lutherville to detail his efforts to expand cancer screening and his plans to fight the disease.<\/p>\n

“We are going to lick cancer by 2015,” Cardin told a group of 15 people at the HopeWell Cancer Support Center on Falls Road.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cardin isn’t kidding. He wants to lead the fight in the Senate to eliminate cancer over the next decade. It’s not entirely clear how<\/i>, but Cardin does know a thing or two using the power of the federal government to tackle cancer.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Cardin spearheaded bipartisan efforts that resulted in a new law that expanded Medicare coverage for screening several types of cancer. Two years later, he pushed for Medicare coverage of patients undergoing clinical cancer trials, a measure enacted by a 2000 executive order issued by President Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n

Dr. Marvin Schuster, a retired Johns Hopkins gastroenterologist, said Cardin has been a leader on health care since he was first elected in 1987. “Hillary Clinton once told me that Ben knows more about health care than any member of Congress, and she’s right,” said Schuster, who attended yesterday’s event.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of this starts to sound a bit like a West Wing episode. Oh wait, it was<\/i> a West Wing episode.
\n
\nFrom Season Three’s “100,000 Airplanes<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Good evening. Thanks for being here so late.<\/p>\n

ALL: Good evening, Mr. President.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: A President stood up. He said we will land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. You know what we knew when he said that? Nothing. We didn’t know anything. We didn’t know about the lunar surface. We didn’t know how to land one of these things. All we’d ever done is crash it into the ocean. And God knows we could figure out how to land soft. We didn’t know how to blast off again, but a President said we’re gonna do it, and we did it. So I ask you, why shouldn’t I stand up and say we are going to cure cancer in ten years?<\/p>\n

Silence in the room. No one responds.<\/p>\n

BARTLET [CONT.]: I’m really asking.<\/p>\n

JOSH: Well, how close are we to really being able to do this?<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Nobody knows.<\/p>\n

JOSH: Then…<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Toby.<\/p>\n

TOBY: It’ll be seen as a political ploy.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Why?<\/p>\n

C.J.: It can be seen… [to Toby] Excuse me. [to Bartlet] It can be seen as self-serving.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: How?<\/p>\n

C.J.: Using cancer to deflect attention from MS.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: You think people with cancer care what my motives are? You think their families do?<\/p>\n

C.J.: I’m saying…<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Joey?<\/p>\n

JOEY [KENNY]: I agree with everything that’s been said, except, I don’t think they’ll see it as deflecting the MS. I think they’ll see it as deflecting the censure.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Once again, why would somebody…?<\/p>\n

JOEY: Everybody cares about motive, Mr. President.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: I didn’t…<\/p>\n

KENNY: She said, “Everybody cares about motive,” sir.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Sam.<\/p>\n

SAM: Yes sir?<\/p>\n

BARTLET: Why shouldn’t I do it?<\/p>\n

SAM: I think you should. I think ambition is good. I think overreaching is good. I think
\ngiving people a vision of government that’s more than Social Security checks and debt
\nreduction is good. I think government should be optimistic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Great episode. It turned out Bartlett’s idea was quickly shelved — they didn’t know how to pay for it and lacked time to work it into the State of the Union — but it was hard not to like the motivated approach to government.<\/p>\n

Of course, it was fiction. With [tag]Cardin[\/tag], there’s certainly nothing wrong with being the “I want to [tag]cure[\/tag] [tag]cancer[\/tag]” candidate. As niches go, it’s a good one. That said, is this even remotely realistic?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maryland has a crowded Democratic Senate primary, in which the candidates largely agree with one another on all the major issues of the day. Distinguishing oneself is a challenge, but Rep. Ben Cardin (D), a leading congressional proponent of cancer research and screening, thinks he’s found a niche (via Minipundit). With a month to go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}