It was a little anticlimatic. There were about twenty of us, and Frank Luntz basically encouraged us to shout at one another. He also framed the questions so it was difficult for me to answer. “Will Bush’s eagerness for war with Iraq cause you to vote for a Democrat next week?” Well, the answer to that question is “no.” But to raise my hand with the “no” crowd would also be a little misleading — it implies that I’m for the war, which I’m not. He also asked for all the Democrats to raise their hands, and for all the Republicans to raise their hands. He then noticed that not everyone raised a hand.

“Hey, you have to decide,” Luntz said, “Life’s all about decisions. You have to be one or the other.”

Do you? Jesus, I hope not.

I got my licks in, but it’s really tough to be articulate when you’re waiting for someone to pause for breath so you can jump in and steal the platform. I think I made a few decent points, but not nearly as well as I probably could have.

We did one live segment last night, and taped two others, which will air tonight and tomorrow night. For one of the segments, I managed to get a good fifteen seconds of talk time — I made the point that Saddam’s more likely to use his WMDs if we invade than if we don’t. I think I actually made a few of the pro-war panelists pause for a moment. But just a moment. Then it was back to the same line — all of our lives are at risk. For the other segment, I couldn’t get in. I’m not sure which segment is airing on which night.

There was also this mysterious, faceless character named “Buckley” whom everyone was talking about. Throughout the night, I kept hearing about him. “Hey, are you here because of Buckley?” “Are you a friend of Buckley’s?” No, and no. “Hi, I’m Radley.” “Hi. Do you know Buckley?”

His name came up in conversations I overheard among other focus groupers too. “Hey, did you hear Buckley’s going to be at Tortilla Coast after the taping?” “Didn’t I meet you at Buckley’s Dewey Beach party last summer?” “Why isn’t Buckley here?” “Hey, I hear Buckley set you up with his sister!”

I never met Buckley. But he’s obviously the man about town these days. I felt like I’d wandered into the “Drake” episode of Seinfeld.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 30th, 2002 at 8:05 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.