New Orleans   I didn’t watch the debates for more than the 30-seconds it takes to change channels.   By the time I was home from work and the gym, put out the garbage, fed the dog and washed out her kennel, eaten my Healthy Choice, and read some back papers and drug myself upstairs, I was more interested in 45 minutes of  one of the Boardwalk Empire episodes I had missed while in South America last week.  My mind is pretty much made up about how I intend to vote, and I didn’t really believe I would learn much new.

I was curious though about the lead editorial in the New York Times though which busted up both of the boys on their seemingly non-existent interest in poverty or the condition of our cities.  Predictably, and accurately, they bust on Romney for his discredited trickle-down monkey business economics, but they also chewed on the President’s leg about his “neglect.”  Score a bulls-eye!

They dug up his dusty proposals for “a youth service corps, a program to help low-income people commute to jobs, a prison-to-work incentive program” and noted Obama’s proposals here had “never been tried or have been listlessly implemented.”  Score another close to the heart!

Add to this other critiques that correctly score on his Bush-like education program’s obsession with test scores and running from family-based problems.  They speak of his “administration’s efforts to build a comprehensive antipoverty strategy” as having been one ‘in relatively small and uncoordinated ways, and often only temporarily.”

Is it wrong for us to want a former community organizer to actually care about the poor and the cities and to really step up in a second term and do something about them?

Debate that dudes, and I’ll tune in.