I'm not the most political person but this article points to how I feel about the debates/ elections

Opinion

Obama the Adult Versus McCain's Economic Easter Bunny

John Nichols Wed Oct 15, 10:58 PM ET

The Nation -- Debating on a night when global markets were tanking, Barack Obama and John McCain engaged in an edgy debate about "spreading the wealth," "class warfare" and creating an economy that benefits "Joe the Plumber" more than "Ivan the Investment Banker."

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But while McCain clung to the failed fantasies of the past, Obama offered America a community rarely served up on the presidential debate stages of recent campaigns: realism.

Though they differed, at times viscerally, both men were struggling to occupy a populist high ground that suddenly appears far more attractive than the valleys of Wall Street.

The Republican kicked things off by declaring, "Americans are hurting right now, and they're angry. They're hurting, and they're angry. They're innocent victims of greed and excess on Wall Street and as well as Washington, D.C. And they're angry, and they have every reason to be angry."

The Democrat echoed the theme. "I think everybody understands at this point that we are experiencing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And the financial rescue plan that Sen. McCain and I supported is an important first step. And I pushed for some core principles: making sure that taxpayer can get their money back if they're putting money up. Making sure that CEOs are not enriching themselves through this process," explained Obama. "And I think that it's going to take some time to work itself out. But what we haven't yet seen is a rescue package for the middle class. Because the fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this latest crisis."

Not since 1912, when Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Teddy Roosevelt and even Republican William Howard Taft all tried to steal some of the thunder of Socialist Eugene Victor Debs have major-party presidential candidates scrambled so furiously to sound populist themes on the cusp of a definitional election.

But behind, beneath and beside the rhetorical flourishes were the evidences of a fundamental difference in approach.

McCain clung to the fading vision of Reaganomics as seen through the lens of George Bush, defaulting again and again to a lexicon of tax cuts for the richest, empty promises of trickle-down prosperity, fantasies of spending freezes and the certainty of deeper deficits and greater dysfunction in a federal government.

For McCain, ultimately, it was all about those tax cuts -- for plumber Joe Wurzelbacher in Ohio who wants to start a small business and, though he did not mention it, for corporations that earn more in a quarter than the GDPs of more than a few sovereign nations.

"The whole premise behind Sen. Obama's plans are class warfare, let's spread the wealth around. I want small businesses -- and by the way, the small businesses that we're talking about would receive an increase in their taxes right now," growled McCain. "Who -- why would you want to increase anybody's taxes right now?"

Obama chose to respond as an adult.

"I want to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. Now, it is true that my friend and supporter, Warren Buffett, for example, could afford to pay a little more in taxes... in order to give additional tax cuts to Joe the plumber before he was at the point where he could make $250,000," the Democrat began.

"Then," he continued, "Exxon Mobil, which made $12 billion, record profits, over the last several quarters, they can afford to pay a little more so that ordinary families who are hurting out there -- they're trying to figure out how they're going to afford food, how they're going to save for their kids' college education, they need a break.

"So, look, nobody likes taxes. I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself. But ultimately, we've got to pay for the core investments that make this economy strong and somebody's got to do it."

McCain sputtered back: "Nobody likes taxes. Let's not raise anybody's taxes. OK?"

"Well," Obama replied. "I don't mind paying a little more."

In less serious times, that might have been a risky statement.

But Obama was no Walter Mondale apologizing for addressing fiscal realities.

The Democrat did make a class distinction, and in so doing he made the connection that more apologetic Democrats had failed to find in past campaigns.

"I think tax policy is a major difference between Sen. McCain and myself. And we both want to cut taxes, the difference is who we want to cut taxes for," explained the senator from Illinois.

"Now, Sen. McCain, the centerpiece of his economic proposal is to provide $200 billion in additional tax breaks to some of the wealthiest corporations in America. Exxon Mobil, and other oil companies, for example, would get an additional $4 billion in tax breaks," Obama continued. "What I've said is I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans, 95 percent. If you make... less than a quarter million dollars a year, then you will not see your income tax go up, your capital gains tax go up, your payroll tax. Not one dime. And 95 percent of working families, 95 percent of you out there, will get a tax cut. In fact, independent studies have looked at our respective plans and have concluded that I provide three times the amount of tax relief to middle-class families than Sen. McCain does."

The candidates displayed differences on issues that really do matter -- and, of course, on issues that didn't matter.

Obama and McCain were steered, briefly, into an empty "tone-of-the-campaign" debate by moderator Bob Schieffer.

McCain initially eschewed Schieffer's invitation to mouth the William Ayers-ACORN-appeasement blather that has been such a staple of his campaign in recent weeks. Instead, McCain accused Obama of spending "unprecedented amounts of money on negative ads about me." Obama reminded McCain that "100 percent of your ads are negative."

Finally, after a torturous back-and-forth about "hurt feelings," McCain dropped the bomb but missed the target. So the candidates wasted a few minutes on a sixties-radical-turned-college-professor named Ayers and a community-organization named ACORN.

But it was such a deviation that even McCain veered out of a convoluted riff on Ayers -- "it's not the fact that Sen. Obama chooses to associate with a guy who in 2001 said that he wished he had have bombed more, and he had a long association with him. It's the fact that... all of the details need to be known about Sen. Obama's relationship with them and with ACORN and the American people will make a judgment" -- to essentially acknowledge the absurdity of the discussion.

"And my campaign is about getting this economy back on track, about creating jobs, about a brighter future for America," McCain suddenly declared, pulling the brakes on the associated-with-terrorists talk. "And that's what my campaign is about and I'm not going to raise taxes the way Sen. Obama wants to raise taxes in a tough economy. And that's really what this campaign is going to be about.

The debate was back on the economic track -- and headed in a direction that allowed Obama to be the adult.

As the candidates sparred over health care, education, funding for programs for children with special needs and a host of other essential issues, the Democrat kept steering the discussion toward reality.

Both candidates talked about what they wanted to do.

While McCain imagined a world of tax cuts and free money, Obama allowed as how the economic Easter Bunny that Reagan and Bush promised was just around the corner might not be coming.

When McCain hailed his vice president running-mate's commitment to helping children with special needs and promised to help them, Obama responded, "I think it's very commendable the work she's done on behalf of special needs. I agree with that, John."

But, he added, "I do want to just point out that (children with) autism, for example, or other special needs will require some additional funding, if we're going to get serious in terms of research. That is something that every family that advocates on behalf of disabled children talk about. And if we have an across-the-board spending freeze, we're not going to be able to do it. That's an example of, I think, the kind of use of the scalpel that we want to make sure that we're funding some of those programs."

McCain offered America an old fantasy now discredited.

Obama offered America the promise of realism and a warning that, "(The) biggest risk we could take right now is to adopt the same failed policies and the same failed politics that we've seen over the last eight years and somehow expect a different result."

That was not the happy talk of the past.

But these are not happy times.

For those who want to wait around for the Easter Bunny, McCain made the proper appeal.

For those who figure it's time to get real, Obama was the only serious candidate on the stage.

Lessons Taught By FDR

FDR is by in far one of my favorite Political people:

Lessons Taught By FDR

By David Ignatius

Sunday, October 5, 2008; Page B07

"Piece by piece, the nation's credit structure was becoming paralyzed. Crisis was in the air, but it was a strange, numbing crisis. . . . It was worse than an invading army; it was everywhere and nowhere, for it was in the minds of men. It was fear."

-- James MacGregor Burns, "Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox."

It may be the end of an economic era on Wall Street, as commentators have noted over the past few weeks. But it is not yet the beginning of a new political era in Washington. In that gap lies the opportunity for Barack Obama to explain to the nation how he proposes to make a new start.

The frantic debate over the $700 billion bailout plan has obscured the reality that a new framework for recovery will have to be built by the next administration. The crisis package is important, but it's the political equivalent of an overnight loan, a short-term fix to keep the system functioning. The definition of the new era -- the post-crash era -- hasn't really begun.

To win, Obama will need to give voters a clearer sense of how he will govern in this new era. He still talks like a lawyer, making debating points and rebutting arguments but not explaining how he will rebuild a shaken and traumatized country. This "vision thing" will become all the more important in coming weeks, as the economic crunch moves from Wall Street to Main Street and the country begins to feel real pain.

Franklin D. Roosevelt is the obvious model for a new president taking office amid severe economic difficulty. But what are the lessons that FDR teaches?

A first FDR decision, before he took office, was that he wouldn't get caught up in the flailing rescue measures of the lame-duck Hoover administration. Then, as now, the problem was a paralyzing credit crisis. A desperate Hoover sent Roosevelt a handwritten note on Feb. 18, 1933, pleading with him to endorse a common program to restore confidence: "The major difficulty is the state of the public mind, for which there is steadily decreasing confidence in the future."

Roosevelt ignored the plea. He felt that working with the discredited Hoover would undermine public support for his own recovery program when he took office a few weeks later.

By backing the Bush rescue plan, Obama has lost that complete freedom of action. But he didn't really have a choice. More worrisome is that he hasn't yet articulated a larger plan for economic reconstruction. Indeed, he ducked the issue in the first presidential debate. That's a mistake.

A second Roosevelt lesson is that the heart of the problem is psychological. As FDR wrote his March 4, 1933, inaugural address, he had open a volume of Thoreau with the passage, "nothing is so much to be feared as fear." That became the famous, ringing line: "First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Within a few days, he had received half a million enthusiastic letters and telegrams.

A third FDR precept was to accompany his ringing words with decisive actions. Roosevelt announced a "bank holiday" his second day in office, making a virtue of the fact that panic-stricken banks had shut their doors. By the end of his first week, he had signed an emergency banking bill that reopened the banks on what the public perceived as sounder footing. The bill passed Congress in just eight hours. A GOP floor leader, Rep. Bertrand H. Snell, said simply: "The house is burning down, and the president of the United States says this is the way to put out the fire."

A final FDR lesson is that in crisis, it's sometimes better to go by instinct than to wait for a systematic plan. FDR considered sending Congress home after it passed the emergency banking bill so that he could come up with a comprehensive recovery proposal. Instead, he went piecemeal, cobbling together the package of 15 major bills that made up the famous First Hundred Days.

Roosevelt understood that it was a confidence game. He surrounded himself with smart people and good ideas. But his real success in 1933 was that he conveyed to a frightened country that he knew what he was doing and never let on that he was, as his biographer Burns says, "playing by ear." It's that sense of pitch that the public wants to see in Obama.

The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues