Election Day 2008

It’s over. The longest and most expensive presidential campaign in U. S. history ended last night with Barack Obama’s clear victory, both in the electoral and popular vote. His victory did not come easy; he had to outfight formidable opponents in Hillary Clinton and John McCain and persuade Americans that he had the ability to lead them in tough times. But the precision and professionalism with which he and his advisors ran his campaign made him the decisive winner and gave America its first African American president. It was a stunning moment, especially for people like me who vividly remember that less than fifty years ago, segregation was legal in the South and de facto segregation was pervasive in the North. Barack Obama’s victory does not mark the end of racism in the United States, but I think that it marks the beginning of the end.

This election galvanized voters of all parties. Everywhere I went yesterday, people sported “I Voted” stickers and were eager to discuss the election. My husband and I went to West Springfield High School at 7:15 AM to vote and found that the line was already snaking its way out of the building. But despite the early hour and the long line, people were upbeat and talkative, energized (in part) by the coffee and baked goods volunteers were selling outside, but mostly by a keen awareness that we were taking part in a historic election. Our long line moved swiftly, and in less than an hour, my husband and I were inside the school and voting. The use of scannable paper ballots made it possible for more people to vote at once, and this new voting method kept the line moving and frustration low. What about you? What happened when you went to vote?

On Mason’s campus, the weather was dreary and damp, but spirits were high.

Student Government ran vans to the Woodson High School polling place, and volunteers promoted this service by becoming “human advertisements.”

Rain apparently, does not damper revolutions!


This guy stole my heart!

Our university was not without its own drama. Yesterday morning, a hacker broke into the Provost’s email account and sent out a fake message announcing that the election had been moved to November 5th. Rumors circulated that Mason students who voted could lose their financial aid.

But such lame attempts proved ineffective against the smart and savvy youthful voters who went to the polls in record numbers. Your demographic – voters between the ages of 18 and 25 – voted overwhelmingly for Obama and helped power him to victory. Now it’s your turn to act upon that mandate and consider how you will help him guide our nation toward economic recovery, energy reform, and improved security both at home and abroad.

How will you meet the challenge Obama made to all Americans in his victory speech last night that change can’t happen without “a new spirit of patriotism, a new spirit of sacrifice?” How has this election influenced your outlook on the future and the role you will play in it as a working professional?

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

With a typical day in the Dow Jones becoming a 500-700 point loss, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama know all too well that a turbulent economic situation awaits the next President of the United States. This was one of the main topics of the third and final presidential debate on October 15th, held at Hofstra University in New York. In an article that both summarizes the events of the evening and refuses to give either candidate the right to declare victory, Laura Meckler and Christopher Cooper of the Wall Street Journal pointed out the truths and stretched-truths of the debate, and even provoked discussion of the now-infamous Joe the Plumber.

The two presidential candidates exchanged jabs throughout the evening, rarely letting up from the offensive, in an effort to squeeze every last vote that they possibly could from crucial swing states. One of the early stories that came up was about a certain Joe Wurzelbacher from Ohio, a plumber who told Senator Obama in a town-hall meeting that he was afraid to purchase his company because of higher taxes that would be imposed on people earning more than $250,000 a year. Senator McCain was quick to point out this issue in an attempt to catch Obama off-guard in front of a national audience, but Obama was always quick to fire back with a stinger like this. Obama pointed out that he will exempt small businesses from paying these taxes, again leaving McCain open-mouthed, frantically blinking, and smugly smirking.

McCain got in his good comebacks as well. When criticized by Obama for the umpteenth time for being a President Bush clone, McCain fired back, "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." Not to be outdone or shaken from his calm, cool demeanor, Obama jeered back, "The fact of the matter is that if I've occasionally mistaken your policies for George Bush's policies, it's because...you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush." What I would like to know is why Obama always resorts to using poor old President Bush as a tool for attacking McCain instead of using McCain's policies themselves, and why McCain seems to never fully read Obama's stances on issues or even pays attention to what he's said in previous debates. To me, the candidates are almost like horses with blinders on at this point, they just keep repeating a lot of the same old stuff that we've heard over and over for months, hoping that somewhere they'll make their opponent slip up, in a desperate attempt to make their opponent lose votes. McCain is especially buying into this tactic since he's been behind in the polls for some time. He's in danger of losing key states like Michigan, which the authors of this article say is now "out of reach", and our beloved own Virginia, a "longtime Republican stronghold". This has forced the McCain campaign to be on the defensive in areas that it didn't expect. You could probably point to the ever-increasing liberal population of Northern Virginia (which should probably be its own state) as one of the reasons why Virginia may go blue for the first time in a long time.

There was a lot of finger-pointing in this debate, notably with the candidates bringing up past affiliations that were either questionable or downright despicable. McCain would point out Obama's affiliations with William Ayers and Acorn, and Obama would point out people who had accused McCain of being racist and McCain's "100% negative" campaign ads (they're actually 73% negative according to the CNN post-debate analysts, while Obama's are 61% negative). To McCain's credit, though, he did air a congratulatory commercial when Obama won the nomination. And you could even see the candidates showing a little bit of their hurt feelings when the negative ad competition was brought up, but I don't think that this should have been as big of a deal as they made it out to be. It's politics as usual; we've been seeing hurtful and insulting ads for years attempting to slander other politicians' reputations, and that's not about to stop anytime soon.

Overall, the debate was productive for both candidates in that we saw their aggressive and defensive sides, and we got to hear a little more deeply what they feel about certain important issues. It's hard to say at this point what effect these debates will have until we know the election results and we can look back on key turning points in each campaign. Over the next few weeks, anything can happen, and there is almost always a candidate that tries to pull some trick out of his sleeve at the last moment to gain an edge. With the racial tension underpinning this election from the start, I'm almost afraid to see what they'll come up with.

Questions:

1. Did you feel that there was a winner in this debate? If so, who is it and why?

2. Do you think that McCain gained more ground in the polls from being on the offensive most of the time, or that Obama maintained his lead by being steadfast and defensive?

3. Are there any domestic policy/economic issues that were not discussed that you would like to have seen in this debate? What are they and why?

We know the what. Let's hear the why.

In the past week and a half, the typical political narrative has been turned on its head. As Peggy Noonan describes in her article “Party of One”, John McCain’s decision to run back to Washington and put the campaign on hold has turned the cliché of “the impetuous young man [throwing] the long ball… [while] the more measured and less excitable older man [says] easy does it” on its head.

McCain’s move to “suspend” his campaign was bold, risky, and outside of his recent character, but the jury remains out as to whether it was a good idea. It was possibly “too cute” for its own good. By deciding to go it alone in an attempt to de-politicize the issue of the economy, McCain may have accidentally achieved the exact opposite, by appearing confrontational in a time where “Bipartisan spirit would be more reassuring.”

This move, however, is the latest in a string of ways in which McCain has resumed pulling away from his party’s MO, which follows the story of the rest of his career. He is using the choice of Sarah Palin as his VP pick to help “hold up the right flank” while he lives up to his Maverick ™ moniker and makes the choices that his party wouldn’t necessarily agree with. The example the article mentions is his sudden direct mentioning of immigration reform rather than sidestepping the issue, which was one of the main differences between himself and his opponents in the Republican primary.

Obama has a similar disconnect between himself and his party. While the economy is typically an issue that favors Democrats, Obama’s poll results have not reflected that typical boost, possibly because he is not “a Democrat”. He is “an Obama.” He picked Joe Biden in part to Velcro himself to his party.

The article asks a good question: Shouldn’t we know more about how a candidate thinks? There is a difference between saying what your stance on an issue is and explaining how you came to that stance. Ms. Noonan believes that both candidates should answer publicly a series of questions about their platform: “Why are you a Democrat? What is the Democratic party…?”

The article goes on to express similar questions with regards to Sarah Palin’s stances. The article alternately blames the campaign and Palin herself for why she hasn’t shown her stuff, as it were, to America the way she did to Alaska. As Ms. Noonan writes, “She rose for a reason. She has to show America what she showed Alaska.” The campaign has made her look like a timebomb by hiding her from the press, and the recent interview she did with Katie Couric did nothing to dispel that image.

My personal stance on all of this is that the question “Why are you running under X ticket?” should be the LEAD question of a Presidential debate. I was, quite frankly, angry that I heard absolutely nothing that I hadn’t already heard about the candidates’ issues. At this point both of them are sitting on cruise control, repeating the same lines over and over until they stick to the undecided voters. I think a lot of the people who haven’t decided yet really would appreciate, rather than hearing the WHAT of the situation, hearing the WHY instead. I may be a liberal on most issues, but on the economy, explain to me WHY we need $50 billion to jumpstart the economy, Obama.

Barack Obama, quite frankly, really is his own brand at this point. No one has had quite the campaign path that he has, and while that’s not exactly a bad thing, it leaves much to be desired. It feels like he (and McCain, though not quite as much) are hiding behind a shield composed of their image rather than their issues. (Above, could the seal over which there was such a hubbub be Obama's "Hope Shield"?) What the article barely touches on is the media's role in all of this.

Fact of the matter is, the 24-hour news cycle has necessitated the candidates being extra careful over what they say. It's a lot easier to make sure a statement of fact is bulletproof than an explanation, and so the whys and hows fall to the background while the what takes center stage. If the news media is willing to fill time by comparing an interview to a parody of the same interview, imagine the field day they'd have if Obama had said 6 months ago "We need to spend $50 billion because of X, Y, Z, economic factors" and someone discovered all three of those factors were false! It'd be nuts?

I'd like to close by asking a couple of questions:

1) What does it mean to YOU to be a Democrat or Republican?

2) Which candidate would you rather see in an election: Obama™, who never says anything wrong but by doing so increases his chance of making it to office, or Obama, who speaks what's on his mind, giving America a greater look into the future leader of their country, whether or not that results in his winning the election?

3) Where does the blame lie for the existence of Obama™ and McCain™? Is it the political system, the media, the American public?

McCain Tries To Find A Scapegoat

Friday, September 19, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178318884054675.html

The Wall Street Journal's Review and Outlook section featured an article Friday, accusing John McCain of wrongfully using Christopher Cox as a "scapegoat" for the current financial panic. The article, titled "McCain's Scapegoat" showed how little John McCain understands the current problems.

McCain has pointed a finger at the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically at the chairman of the SEC, Christopher Cox. The article quotes Mr. McCain at length, calling the SEC "asleep at the switch" and claiming that the chairman had "betrayed the publics trust."
The author of the article set McCain straight, pointing out that Mr. Cox had only changed a few minor rules and had not changed the rules on short-selling, while overturning the great depression era "uptick" rule. The article condemns McCain's attack on the chairman as "both false and deeply unfair" and "un-Presidential."
Short selling stocks adds information to the marketplace because it reflects the market view that a stock may decrease in value. As for the "uptick" rule that McCain claimed "protected investors for 70 years," controlled experiments have proven that it has no effect on stock prices. The rule was unanimously taken off the books by the SEC commissioners in early 2007.
This is not the first time McCain has shown a lack of understanding in financial matters. He has wrongly accused oil speculators of causing the price of gas to rise. This new attack is equally unsupported by economic evidence as he attempts to blame speculators for the collapse of mismanaged companies.
Ironically, speculators short selling in the marketplace were net buyers, not sellers of stock during the last quarter. This means that instead of fueling the crisis, the short sellers were actually keeping the prices at higher levels!
The Wall Street Journal points out that during a financial crisis, voters will turn away from a candidate who is searching for someone to blame and choose "steady, calm leadership." Mr. McCain cannot win the election against Barack Obama by finding a scapegoat, only by finding a reasonable solution.

With the economy on the rocks, the primary focus of this election will be shifting toward Wall Street as election day draws closer. The next president will be taking over a country on the verge of economic collapse and will be tasked with saving the american dream. While neither candidate has given more than a general outline of his plan to rescue the economy, John McCain has actually gone out of his way to point a finger at the wrong people! Mr. Cox, chairman of the SEC, is hardly the person to blame.
So who's to blame for the economic crisis? Well Mr. McCain, try pointing your finger at the CEO's who have been mismanaging some of the largest corporations in the world for the last decade. Point your finger at the Bush administration, under which tax cuts were given to the people that needed the money least. Point your finger at the Republican backed rules that give CEOs job security, weather or not they actually do a good job. With all these people to blame, why would you point your finger at the person who cannot do his job because of the red tape that has been intertwined with economic policy by your party? The only conclusion that a reasonable person can come to is that you, Mr. McCain, do not have the least bit of understanding of basic economic principles.

Washington Post columnist George F. Will wrote another response to McCain's attack on Christopher Cox. Read about it here.


Questions for Discussion

Will John McCain's finger pointing affect your decision? why or why not?

It has been argued that no man can be an expert on every topic, only an expert at picking advisors and knowing when to listen to them. Do you agree with this statement? Should the president be an economic expert?