Opinion: Slow start

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Presumably, the pace -- and the fireworks -- will pick up in the Republican presidential debate that just began.

But it’s hard to imagine that the moderator, Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Des Moines Register, could have asked an opening question that would offer fewer distinctions among the candidates.

The query: Should the huge national debt be considered a national security problem? An important issue, to be sure, but hardly one -- especially when asked of a group of Republicans -- that would illuminate dramatic differences among the frontrunners. (Rudy Giuliani, though, did offer a nuance that the debt is more a matter of economic security; national security involves fighting terrorists.)

-- Don Frederick