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?