Tuesday, 09.30.08
In Friday's debate John McCain said six times that Barack Obama doesn't "understand" foreign policy. The next day Obama released an ad saying "McCain doesn't get" middle-class economics. So McCain volleyed back via satellite, saying it's Obama who "doesn't seem to get" how seriously our bank system failed. Obama swung back harder, reminding a Detroit crowd Sunday that it was most certainly McCain who "just doesn't get it." And McCain finished off with an overhead slam, telling George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" that if there was any not-getting-it business in this race, it was surely the young senator who "does not understand, and did not understand and still doesn't understand" the situation in Iraq. All of which begs the question: Is tit-for-tat a strategy or a tactic?
As if Jim Lehrer's prodding the candidates to please "talk to each other" at the debates didn't sufficiently conjure the air of therapy, the next phase of the presidential campaign has become a discussion of that most personal and wishy-washy concept of understanding. Every time a candidate reaches the thesis of his argument, he claims the other guy just doesn't really get it.
"He doesn't get it" is an effective charge for a change election because it manages to indict all a candidates' policies in just thirteen letters. For both candidates, "getting it" is a cipher for their fundamental arguments. When John McCain talks about "not getting it" he's saying Obama's inexperience makes him unfit to handle serious issues. When Barack Obama talks about "not getting it" he's saying McCain is too old and too tied to the Bush administration to speak to middle class concerns.
"My opponent just doesn't get it" is also a nice little riposte when you don't have any real objection to what's just been said. One little secret of this campaign is that Obama and McCain's short-term policies are largely identical on foreign policy. Both candidates (and the president) tacitly back Iraq's request for a gradual withdrawal of troops in the first two to three years of their first term. Both candidates (and the president) would move troops into Afghanistan to roll back the Taliban's advances. Both candidates would almost certainly target Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan if the government refused direct involvement. As Marc Ambinder pointed out based on the cryptic testimonials of Henry Kissinger, the candidates aren't as far apart on Iranian diplomacy as the debate suggested. And both candidates have gingerly supported the bailout plan provided it has transparency, accountability and all those other check-box terms that candidates tack on when they're short on details or fresh ideas.
To be sure, a McCain administration would be very different from an Obama administration. What we have here is not, as Dr. Lehrer might suggest, a failure to communicate but a failure to deviate from a limited option of safe responses. The Iraq War has exhausted America's patience: What poll-perceptive candidate wouldn't talk about getting out? The Wall Street meltdown is devastating the stock market: Who's going to say no to a bipartisan rescue? Events in the Mid East and Midtown have placed such narrow restraints on what is considered mainstream politics that there's not enough space for either candidate to carve out a tough position without being accused of being a radical warmonger, peacenik or socialist.
That's why Friday was a debate about worldview rather than issues. It was entirely legitimate for Obama to say, as he did many times on Friday, that he agrees with John McCain but still finds his policies lacking an understanding of what makes America respected abroad and prosperous at home. And it was entirely acceptable for McCain to say, as he has many times, that even if he can't clearly distinguish his short-term Iraq plan from Obama's, his younger opponent doesn't earn an "A" for comprehension just because he's learned to praise the surge.
Although predictions in this race have a habit of becoming anachronistic in a week, it's worth pointing out -- at least on the morning of Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - that the "getting it" argument does not favor McCain. Obama's rambling professorial style is probably an overall weakness. But wonkiness is also the perfect antidote to McCain's accusations of ignorance. Every time McCain used the U-word on Friday, Obama would summon a swirling series of musings that, even if they failed to be entirely persuasive, at least sounded like a smart guy thinking through the issue.
In what increasingly looks like an economic election, polls show the public trusts Obama - a constitutional lawyer on a foreign affairs subcommittee - more than it trusts the third-decade Senate veteran on the economy. Maybe the letter after McCain's name is just tough luck but he hasn't convinced enough struggling middle classers that he can lift them out of the muck of a looming recession. Rhetoric aside, the hardest part for McCain is that November will be decided, not by the candidate "who gets it" but by Americans who've got it bad.
(4)
THE WALL STREET BAILOUT IS A TRAP:
YOU DID THE RIGHT THING people by stopping this 700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street with your money. It's a trap set by the Bush McCain administration years ago to spring on you, and the World just before the November elections. It will cripple our economy for years to come by taking away money from important social programs like health care reform, education, and social security.
What ever congress does to try and fix our stunning economic catastrophe needs to be done very carefully. Congress needs to take their time, and be sure of what they are doing. Whatever is done needs to be sharply focused at helping, and protecting the best interest of the ordinary Americans. In particular the vast American middle class. 700 billion dollars is a lot of the peoples money to spend to bail out a bunch of corrupt Bush loan sharks.
When have you ever known any government plan, or project to only cost what the government said it would. Remember the war in Iraq. Bush and his so-called advisers said it would only cost you about 80 billion dollars. But we now know that the war in Iraq will cost you, and your children, and your grand children over a trillion dollars, and still counting.
So if 80 billion can end up costing you over a trillion dollars. How much could 700 billion end up costing you. Any math wizards out there. I come up with 9 trillion...:-(
My fellow human beings, just as I warned you ahead of this catastrophic economic meltdown, I must now warn you that what is ahead has the potential to be even more catastrophic than what we are going through now. The worlds geopolitical landscape has been booby trapped by the Bush McCain administration and their republican allies in congress. These booby traps are poised to spring at any time.
Fortunately the Worlds Nations have been blessed with many excellent leaders (except the US) who have been careful, wise, strong, and self-restrained in dealing with the provocations, and antagonism's of the Bush, McCain administration.
Barack Obama and the democrats are your best hope now. Tell your family, friends, and everyone you know to support them as best you can, and vote for them like your life, and the lives of your loved ones depends on it. Because it does. You will not survive 4 more years of Bush McCain.
JACK SMITH - WORKING CLASS...
THE WALL STREET BAILOUT IS A TRAP:
YOU DID THE RIGHT THING people by stopping this 700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street with your money. It's a trap set by the Bush McCain administration years ago to spring on you, and the World just before the November elections. It will cripple our economy for years to come by taking away money from important social programs like health care reform, education, and social security.
What ever congress does to try and fix our stunning economic catastrophe needs to be done very carefully. Congress needs to take their time, and be sure of what they are doing. Whatever is done needs to be sharply focused at helping, and protecting the best interest of the ordinary Americans. In particular the vast American middle class. 700 billion dollars is a lot of the peoples money to spend to bail out a bunch of corrupt Bush loan sharks.
When have you ever known any government plan, or project to only cost what the government said it would. Remember the war in Iraq. Bush and his so-called advisers said it would only cost you about 80 billion dollars. But we now know that the war in Iraq will cost you, and your children, and your grand children over a trillion dollars, and still counting.
So if 80 billion can end up costing you over a trillion dollars. How much could 700 billion end up costing you. Any math wizards out there. I come up with 9 trillion...:-(
My fellow human beings, just as I warned you ahead of this catastrophic economic meltdown, I must now warn you that what is ahead has the potential to be even more catastrophic than what we are going through now. The worlds geopolitical landscape has been booby trapped by the Bush McCain administration and their republican allies in congress. These booby traps are poised to spring at any time.
Fortunately the Worlds Nations have been blessed with many excellent leaders (except the US) who have been careful, wise, strong, and self-restrained in dealing with the provocations, and antagonism's of the Bush, McCain administration.
Barack Obama and the democrats are your best hope now. Tell your family, friends, and everyone you know to support them as best you can, and vote for them like your life, and the lives of your loved ones depends on it. Because it does. You will not survive 4 more years of Bush McCain.
JACK SMITH - WORKING CLASS...
The real issues of this campaign go much deeper than the sound bites in the debates. The dismantling of the New Deal safeguards against another economic meltdown like the Great Depression have been systematic and thorough. Recent history has proven once again that the Free Market does not solve its own problems without bring an unacceptable amount of hardship to millions of little people in this country. Yet the Reaganomics followers have managed through owning Conservative Talk Radio and most other media outlets to convince a lot of people that up is down, good is bad, and black is white. Without regulation, however, the financial markets are guaranteed to bring about another crisis like the one we are experiencing today. The chief job of a Democratic administration is to reign in the greed and avarice that is always there in those who operate the financial markets so we can live with them. McCain is still calling for more deregulation. Obama, at least recognizes the problem. The other issue, of course, is to have a Democratic president to reverse the trend on the US Supreme Court. We are in danger of getting a court like the one that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to deal with during his first term, one that believed the same things the deregulators of our own time believe. Don't try to convince me that the two candidates are alike. Those issues alone are of profound importance.
Well put Mr Thompson. It has been tiring with the back and forth about the old man missing it and the young man not undertanding it. It is getting late in the election; but, we still have a few debates left and the bailout still has not passed. If the election is decided "by Americans who've got it bad" then Senator Obama must get the "McBush" tag to stick more on Senator McCain. I don't think average Americans see McCain as more of Bush and do not blame Bush for all of the counties woes. Many feel that Drilling here at home would lower gas prices if the Democratic leadership would allow it. They also feel that much of the housing woes could have been avoided without The Democratic leadership blocking Fannie/Freddie reforms in the last 5 years. Many also see former Democratic leaders "in bed" with Ethanol companies; so, they are seen as being responsible for raising corn prices and raising food prices. Joe Six Pack and Reagan Democrats care about food and fuel. Senator Obama must get Americans to see how his social programs will be affordable; especially, if the $700 billion bailout is approved. If this affordabilty is made through taxes or even the fear of taxes; he is done. Many people remember President Clinton's retroactive tax increase when he came into office. The hurting folks want cheap gas, cheap heating oil, cheap food, and no more taxes. This is even the case if it is seen as patriotic by Joe biden. It is up to Senator Obama in the coming weeks to pin the issues stated above on Senator McCain and not an amorphous republican party. In the least, Senator Obama must have a believable plan for the aforementioned "bread & butter" issues.
Posted by Terry | September 30, 2008 3:20 PM