Score one for Obama

I thought one of the lamest questions in a debate was when Tim Russert asked the Democrats what their biggest weaknesses were. Ugh. It's a dumb question that just begs the candidates to prevaricate. Barack Obama was the only one who gave a real answer - being self critical about not being organized sometimes. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards gave queasy-making answers that were really just self praise. And Obama is having fun ridiculing their answers.

Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night's debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork - something his opponents have since used to suggest he's not up to managing the country. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.

"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, 'What's your biggest weakness?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. "If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'"

How phony of Clinton and Edwards.

I've worked some with students at our school, including my own daughter, helping them to prepare for scholarship interviews and we often ask them this question because it's a typical interview question. And we usually have a good laugh about people who answer that their biggest fault is that they "care too much" or "try too hard to help others." The teenagers get it right away how phony such responses are, but apparently Edwards and Clinton think that people will buy that sort of guff.