Tuesday night’s presidential town hall debate in Nashville was beyond infuriating. The Republican candidate said that his plans would amount to “a net spending cut.” He promised to go “line by line through the federal budget” with a newly sharpened “scalpel” and start to cut.
The GOP candidate said he would “favor nuclear power” as part of a broader scheme for how to supply the country’s energy needs while cutting back on foreign oil dependence. He proposed a “50 percent tax credit” to help people purchase health care.
In foreign affairs, he promised to “kill Bin Laden and ... crush Al-Qaeda” by invading Pakistan, if necessary. He said that Russia had “engaged in evil behavior” and pledged to use all possible means to keep Iran from acquiring nukes, including increased sanctions and not-so-veiled threats.
Actually, that’s a half-lie, or, if you prefer, a half-truth. All of the above quotes were uttered Tuesday night, but the speaker was Democratic standard bearer Sen. Barack Obama. He and Republican Sen. John McCain surely have their disagreements but they sounded so alike on that stage last night that it was hard to tell.
Perhaps that’s because McCain didn’t sound like much of a Republican. He actually attacked Herbert Hoover at one point, whose presidency he is almost old enough to remember. “I’m not too popular sometimes with my own party, much less his,” McCain said, pointing to Obama.
McCain promised to leave tax brackets essentially unchanged and sold his mix of increased income tax deductions for children and tax credits for health care as something that would overwhelmingly benefit the poor and working class. Why, McCain said, the only people who would be inconvenienced by his health plan would be those with “gold-plated Cadillac kind of policies.”
Or perhaps it was because Obama didn’t sound like much of a liberal Democrat. He promised, a la that titan of triangulation former President Bill Clinton, that he would “provide a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans. 95 percent.” To help sell his plans to increase state funding of health, he appealed to those “small business owners, a lot of them, (who) can’t even afford health insurance for themselves.”
Some of this was for show, no doubt. McCain is trying to appeal to liberal swing voters. Obama wants to convince more conservative Americans that he won’t be so scary as president. This great big bear hug of the middle has left Americans with far fewer options than they deserve.
McCain is a conservative warmonger and Obama a liberal interventionist. That means they disagree about Iraq but agree that America ought to be doing more abroad to make the world safe for whatever Americans favor this week. Serious restraint isn’t even on the table.
Domestically, both candidates voted for the recent massive Wall Street bailout, ignoring progressive and conservative objections to the legislation. Both agree that things are really bad but not so bad that some “hope” and “change” and that indomitable fighting American spirit can’t fix things right up.
Who was the victor last night? Obama. Or McCain. It sure wasn’t the great nation that one of these men will soon preside over.
