We didn’t learn much in last night’s debate, excepting in its first five minutes. It was held in Nashville, Tennessee, and since the first one was held in Oxford, Mississippi (the third will be in Hofstra, New York), one might wonder why the south has become so central in the arena of presidential debating. But beyond that, there was little in the way of surprise.
The first half of the debate was devoted, as expected, to the current financial melt-down. The rest was split evenly between foreign policy and health care (a bit more on foreign policy). On those two issues, we learned nothing new, and indeed there was little difference between the two candidates. Obama views health care as a “right,” and McCain views it as a “responsibility.” Obama, if forced to prioritize, considers energy independence the first priority for the next administration, health care number two, and education number three. McCain says there’s no reason to prioritize among the three, that “we Americans” can tackle all three at once. And both men continued to promote the strengths of their own personality: McCain the long-time (maybe too long) maverick, versus Obama the thoughtful and unflappable newcomer.
The first question, concerning the economy, presented the only meaningful contrast between the two. Tom Brokaw asked: “With the economy on the downturn and retired and older citizens and workers losing their incomes, what’s the fastest, most positive solution to bail these people out of the economic ruin?” Here, certain true colors shone through the haze. Obama said what he has been saying consistently for the past two weeks: his focus is on the long-suffering American middle class, and this crisis points to the need for additional oversight and government regulation of our ailing financial sector, investment banks most of all.
McCain said something more surprising, though his answers wandered a bit, and you had to be paying attention to hear it.
He said that priority number one in the face of the current crisis was achieving America’s energy independence. Offshore drilling was the cornerstone of that policy, “buying us time,” in his view, to develop alternative energy sources. That seemed to stray rather far from the question, to my ear.
But the single new proposal we heard this evening was rolled out here, in the first five minutes, as point number two. And Senator McCain repeated it all evening long, lest we miss it. He now proposes a state-sponsored re-definition of the current housing market, such that the federal government will buy up an enormous number of imminent foreclosures (how?), mandate a new evaluation of the real value of these homes (how?), then enable homeowners to re-negotiate their current mortgages and to stay in their homes (huh?). The failure of “Fannie and Freddie,” McCain insisted, was “the match that lit this forest fire.” And apparently he believes that you can dig the necessary fire-break with even more federal intervention than we’ve already witnessed in the past two weeks. It makes one wonder what the first 700 billion dollars was for.
It’s an interesting idea, actually, one worthy of a maverick who seems now to be boasting most of all over the fact that members of his own party “don’t like him very much.” But in light of my previous blog, it is a shocker. Does his Vice President know about this? She continues to preach the gospel of personal responsibility and belt-tightening in the face of hard times.
The current Republican presidential nominee, the same man who continues to trot out the tired old truisms about Democrats being “big government spenders,” is now proposing yet another socialization, yet another federal takeover of wretched private debt.
We’ve socialized everything from “bundled securities” to even more bogus long-term insurance policies (“credit default swaps” they’re called, and they’re what sunk AIG); now the Republican nominee proposes a federal takeover of the housing market and the federal establishment of housing value. Apparently the Cold War is over, and *they* won.
(When Tom Brokaw asked if Russia was an “evil empire,” Obama answered by saying that was a complex question, and McCain said “maybe.” Then he backtracked. It is complicated; the old terminology doesn’t apply to these uncharted economic and political realities.)
This is neither a serious nor an honest proposal from a lifelong maverick. This seems more like the desperate ploy of a man who feels the campaign slipping away. He needs something new and dramatic to say. But what was said is as pandering and staged as a vice presidential wink, a promise that fails to titillate, and it’s just plain irresponsible, doggone-it.
