A Debate on Long Island

Once again I stayed up all night to watch an American presidential debate, this time the third and last. The intended topic was domestic policy, but the answers did roam a little, as John McCain unwisely stuck to his shtick of attacking Barack Obama's record with the kind of "gotcha" mentality that he has criticized in the press, making much of minor mistakes rather than of major failings. On the whole he was a vigorous opponent, and he and Obama appeared to be even, as the latter was unable, due to time constraints, to offer rebuttals to the spates of accusations.

What disturbed me in the first presidential debate and in the only vice-presidential debate was that I had the feeling that the Democratic candidate did not emerge as clearly the victor as I would have liked. The reason, as I just realized, is that, if the confrontations had been fistfights, McCain and Palin would have won, or at least been equally matched, because they were more emotionally invested and therefore more aggressive. But the confrontations were debates, and in both cases, upon reading the transcript later, the flaws of the Republican candidates were clear. Joe Biden, in terms of experience and seriousness and intellect, was in every true sense the victor in his debate, as Obama is in his debates by the force of superior reason and civility. What is particularly impressive about Obama is that, as his demeanour indicates, he can take verbal blows without interpreting them as personal affronts or even letting them permeate his defenses (though this time he did not seem as unmoved).

Anyway, a central topic was health care. Obama intends to offer all American citizens who are not satisfied with their present health insurance, or who have no health insurance, the same insurance that federal employees are currently receiving. He also wants to prevent companies from denying people health insurance on the grounds of pre-existing medical conditions (in other words, the people who are actually sick and who really need the insurance presently have a high chance of not obtaining it). The disadvantage of this plan is that it is, firstly, difficult to finance, and, secondly, difficult to pass through Congress unless it is dominated by the Democrats, though Obama's refusal to mandate health insurance is likely to make it more acceptable for the Republicans. McCain wants to give a $2500 tax credit per person or $5000 tax credit per family to buy health insurance, and suggests that people shop across state lines to find the best plans. The problem with that is that this money is not nearly enough for many individuals and families, and also that this leaves the problem of no health insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions unsolved.

Then there was the issue of the budget and taxes. McCain reiterated that Obama would raise taxes, and Obama reiterated that those who earn $250,000 or less per annum would actually not have to pay any more taxes than they do now, or even pay less taxes. (At the rally event where he first encountered Joe the Plumber, a citizen who asked him a question about taxes for businesses and who was adopted as a symbol of the ordinary American by McCain for the purposes of this debate*, he has said that for those earning more, the taxes would rise from 36% to 39%, and that this was the level of taxation during the Clinton administration.) McCain then suggested that taxes not be raised if no one wants to pay them. (What about the eleven trillion dollar debt, or the fact that, in life, everyone must do a few things that he doesn't want to do?) Then he assured the American citizenry that he was certain that he could balance the budget, and mentioned that the last person to raise taxes during a recession was Herbert Hoover (a Republican, as the Daily Show pointed out), and look where that got us! He also hacked around on the one billion dollars of earmarks that Obama supported, and on the three million dollar overhead projector in a planetarium in Chicago(?), which McCain has mentioned before. This is the sort of petty artillery that is no more significant than the arrows of the Lilliputians against the bulk of Gulliver, especially if one considers the heavy artillery that might be levelled against the Republican administration on account of the Iraq War expenses, the Treasury's decision to let the Lehman Brothers go under, etc.

Where Obama really shone, however, was when he defended himself against the insinuations that he was a terrorist sympathizer for associating with William Ayers, and that ACORN, the voter registration organization where workers filled in forms in the name of Mickey Mouse and other fictitious individuals (in the vein of the Simpsons episode where the people and pet cemeteries of Springfield apparently temporarily relinquish their dead to vote for the Republican candidate), is part of a big Democratic conspiracy to commit electoral fraud. In any case, there are so many things wrong with the ACORN scandal, not least of which is the tendency of less reasonable Republicans (including McCain, in this debate) to warn with horror about the possible subversion of democracy and terrible injustice in this election, blithely ignoring the GOP's filthy machinations in 2000. He was also straightforward and firm on Roe vs. Wade, and he countered McCain's attacks on his abortion voting record (while he was a senator in Illinois) with admirable precision.

As for McCain, he made odd slip-ups. He said that Sarah Palin "understands" special needs, specifically autism. But Palin's baby does not have autism; he has Down's Syndrome. He also said that Obama voted against the appointment of Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, whereas Breyer has been on the Court since 1994, a good decade before Obama was in the Senate. Then he said that Obama opposes offshore drilling, when in fact Obama already said in the last debate that he was not. (Then he said that Obama's phrasing that he will "have a look" at offshore drilling was telling, apparently oblivious to the possibility that one might research an issue before taking an absolute stand on it. Not to mention that the oil extracted through offshore drilling will only cover a fraction of the US's consumption, and that until the oil actually begins to flow, a decade, I think I've read, will have passed.)

One hint that McCain may not be as distant from Bush as he argues is that he fervently argued for cutting taxes to improve the economy. Bush has tried it – it has, in fact, been a cornerstone of his economic policy – and it hasn't worked, as the rising unemployment, budget deficits, etc., prove. It is also becoming evident that the "trickle-down effect" is not only theoretical, but also imaginary. (This effect is the tendency of money, when given to big companies, to trickle down through the economic hierarchy, gradually enriching the middle and working classes; for, so the argument goes if one couches it in Shakespearean terms, the quality of money is not strain'd, but it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.)

But McCain's least finest hour came when Bob Schieffer – who was an excellent moderator of the type who asks probing questions and demands proper answers and keeps the debaters within the time limits (unlike Tom Brokaw, who only forcibly grumbled about it) – asked both candidates about the negative campaigning and the ugly tone of the election campaign lately. First McCain blamed the uncivil tone on the lack of town hall meetings, which he had wanted and Obama had turned down. Then he spoke as if he was the principal victim of negativity, because John Lewis (member of Congress for Georgia and a leader of the civil rights movement) recently responded to the McCain and Palin rallies where people shouted out "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" about Obama, by saying that politicians who tacitly permit or even encourage a climate of violent antagonism can end up being responsible for a great deal of damage, as Alabama's governor George Wallace was during the 60s.** McCain interpreted this to mean that he and Palin are segregationists. But I think that there is an enormous difference between such unflattering parallels that, if unjustified, can be ignored easily, and an incitement to violence (and, if inspired by Obama's national origins and perceived Muslim background, hate speech) that is especially disturbing because of the recent history of the United States. So I was seriously displeased by McCain's very selective moral outrage, which hints that his sense of right and wrong is much skewed by a post-Vietnam tendency to rate his own moral comfort, however propped up by half-truths and self-deception, as the highest good. Of course that would be no concern of mine, if he were not running for president.

What I also dislike is the tendency of politicians, even Obama at times, to say what citizens want to hear even if it's not truthful. McCain said, for example,

I'm not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they're great citizens.

This is like me saying that Democrats are all compassionate, open-minded, intelligent people. Of course they're not! Saying otherwise is a blatant lie. And that is what I came away with from this debate: it is not only Sarah Palin (who falsely insists that she has been "exonerated" from misconduct in the firing of her former brother-in-law), but also John McCain, who tells outright lies and repeats them.

* I am inclined to agree with the conspiracy theory that Joe attended the rally at the behest of McCain's campaign, as a gimmick, because it is weird for one political candidate to address the questions raised by those who attended the rallies of his opponent. (Actually, he was outside playing football with his son, in a quintessential American touch, when Obama came down the street while visiting his Ohio hometown, and he decided to ask a question. Still possible that it was pre-orchestrated, but I guess that there are graver matters to worry about, and this is not an allegation that should be made seriously without proper proof.)

** Admittedly the comparison to George Wallace is a forceful one, and one which Obama's campaign did quickly criticize, because Wallace was a very outspoken proponent of segregation.

P.S.: Sarah Palin is not a "role model to women," or at least not to me.