Russert v. Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi was on Meet the Press yesterday, and I found her to be a much better advocate for her party than I had seen on previous occasions. Tim Russert, on the other hand, was downright annoying. His big problem: every time Pelosi started talking about a substantive policy proposal, Russert would ask not "what are the details, how will it work" but what he apparently thought was the more probing question - "how are you going to pay for it?" The end result is no understanding of policy details, just the sight of a politician squirming in her seat, which I guess is Russert's goal. But here's what I mean:

MR. RUSSERT: Will the Democrats propose a total energy independence, weaning us off of oil?
REP. PELOSI: We do.
MR. RUSSERT: Within a very specific time?
REP. PELOSI: Absolutely and I don’t know...
MR. RUSSERT: When?
REP. PELOSI: I don’t know—Democrats are pro—we have proposed in our real security, we rolled this out in March. We’ll roll it out again in June as part of our domestic—because this is a national security issue and it is a domestic issue. Democrats are proposing that we will be energy—are declaring energy independence for the American people and we intend to achieve it within 10 years.
MR. RUSSERT: How?
REP. PELOSI: We intend to send our energy dollars to the Midwest and rural America, not to the Middle East. We intend to focus on biofuels, we intend—on alternative energy, conservation and efficiency. As you said, Brazil is doing this. These cars are made by GM and Ford.
MR. RUSSERT: But this will be huge subsidies to bring it about. Would you be willing to roll back the Bush tax cut to pay for it? [Followed by several minutes of trying to pin her down on the tax cuts before moving on to the next subject.]
...
MR. RUSSERT: Will you bar all lobbyist contributions?
REP. PELOSI: I—our, our proposal is in writing. Senator Reid and I put...
MR. RUSSERT: But will you ban all lobbyist contributions?
REP. PELOSI: I’m for, I’m for what we call clean campaigns. That is...
MR. RUSSERT: Disclosure.
REP. PELOSI: Well, no. Public funding of campaigns. I think we have to break the link completely. I think we have to break the link completely.
MR. RUSSERT: Who’s going to pay for that? You think the American taxpayer will want to pay for campaigns? [Followed by more wrangling.]
...
REP. PELOSI: No. I can say that I can—I can say what I said then. If the election were held today, we would have a Democratic majority. And on that very first day, we will have a new direction for America, for all Americans, not the privileged few. We’re going to make America safer by passing homeland security recommendations immediately, give America a raise by having—increasing the minimum wage, make health care affordable by negotiating for better prices, and prove the—lower the cost of college education by cutting in half the interest on student loans. We’re going to be fair...
MR. RUSSERT: And, and all this without increasing the deficit? [More wrangling.]

Would it be too much for a viewer to ask to actually hear the details of Pelosi's proposals before we quibble over the cost? What about this ethanol business? My problem with converting everything to ethanol is that I hear some scientists argue that ethanol doesn't give us a net reduction in fossil fuel use, since farming is such an energy-intensive industry. Does she have an answer to that? We'll never know. Incidentally, this is why I like the idea of a hefty fossil fuel tax instead of targeted subsidies. I don't know if ethanol is a net fossil-fuel saver. The government could subsidize ethanol production up the yingyang and we could be no better off in the end. With a big tax on fossil fuels, on the other hand, no alternative that wasn't actually a net fossil-fuel saver would survive market competition.

And ditto the other proposals Pelosi mentioned: public financing of elections, minimum wage, health care. Do these proposals make sense? We'll never know by watching Russert.