Obam v Mccain Debate: Some thoughts

I seem to have inadvertently deleted my belated debate notes in the process of saving them, so here goes my off-the-cuff blog post: Confession: I didn't actually watch the debates (no tv) but I did read the transcripts. A few points:

1. Mccain proposes the government's buying up housing mortages while cutting taxes. Where will the money come from? The last thing we need is a bigger deficit. He also proposes stemming the tides of globalization and stopping (or at least, radically changing) our business relationship with China. Most economists agree this is impossible/would severely harm the American economy.

2. Warren Buffet, multimillionare, supports Obama and is Obama's pick for treasury dept. sec. If he has confidence in Obama's tax plans, maybe we should consider those plans work.

3. Mccain often avoids questions, choosing instead to castigate Obama for (what he claims to be) mistakes made in connection to those questions.

4. When asked about Russia, Mccain proposed "moral support" to countries intimidated by Russia. Obama proposed moral support - accompanied by practical solutions.

5. Most of Mccain's tax cuts go to corporations. (note: low corporate tax rates were part of what led to the Great Depression.) Mccain voted for 4 out of 5 Bush budgets.

6. Obama would raise taxes, but only for those earning over a quarter of a million dollars. People earning less than that (ie most Americans) would either pay the same taxes or pay less. (depending on a variety of circumstances)

7. Mccain claimed he would find Osama bin Laden. He claimed he knew how to do so. Yet he criticized Obama for "talking big" when Obama said that, while we should give more nonmilitary aid to Pakistan, we should predicate it upon Pakistan's aiding us in finding terrorists and taliban, including within their own borders. Should Osama be clearly within reach, and Pakistan refuse to go after him, we should go after him ourselves. According to Mccain this means Obama said "he would invade Pakistan." Hardly. A targeted assassination in a remote hypothetical situation does not an invasion make.

8. Obama wants to decrease troops in Iraq and increase in Afghanistan while working with local leaders and minimizing corruption within the Afghani government, and cracking down on the drug (opium) trade which benefits the Taliban. Mccain simply wants a surge in Afghanistan - without taking troops out of Iraq. Hello over-stretched military. (not to mention over-stretched government budget.)

9. Obama called America "the greatest nation on earth". He also pointed out that historically, no nation has maintained military superiority while facing economic decline. This is an important point, especially since the war in Iraq is indirectly (if not directly) related to our economic decline. Getting out of Iraq would prevent our government deficit from ballooning, while enabling us to not over-stretch our troops. It would help our economy by giving our government more money to spend on healthcare and education. (link: you spend less on healthcare. you either invest the extra money, or put it in banks, or buy a new dress. no matter what, the economy benefits. education and economy - that should be self-evident.)

10. Mccain likes to point out how Obama was wrong about the surge, one aspect of the war. He fails to mention that Obama was right about the war as a whole, and voted against it. Mccain was wrong about the war as a whole, and voted for it.

11. Obama proposed military sanctions on Iran, especially when it comes to oil. (Iran currently imports oil, due to bad management of their own natural resources.) He also vowed not to take the military option off the table. Mccain provided harsh platitudes against Iran without concrete steps of how to prevent Iran from gaining WMDs. Instead, he preferred to criticize Obama for his willingness to talk to Iran.

12. Genocide prevention - Mccain was wishy-washy, but pointed to how he had effectively predicted that deploying marines to Lebanon under Reagan would be a failure. Obama, citing the Holocaust and Rwanda as examples, cited the need to prevent genocide. He proposed giving non-military or indirect military aid to African peacekeepers in Darfur, which is something concrete that does not endanger the lives of US soldiers. (He detailed the exact types of support, though, without my notes, I can't.)

13. People point to Mccain's experience as  Vietnam War Vet as positive. I wonder if perhaps it is not negative: While parallels can be seen between the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq, the two are still different wars in different eras. Viewing the War in Iraq with so much personal baggage, perhaps feeling we need to win in Iraq the way we couldn't in Vietnam, is something negative, and an obstacle Mccain may need to overcome in order to view the war in Iraq objectively. While every person and president has their own biases and life experiences that they bring to the table, this is one personal bias that Obama does not have to overcome in order to see the war in Iraq objectively. That being said, I don't think being a war vet should be held against Mccain - I just think the negatives neutralize the positives, making his veteran-hood a non-factor in deciding who to vote for.