The Second Presidential Debate

One thing is abundantly clear from last night’s debate between John McCain and Barak Obama.   The country’s slide toward socialism is going to continue at an accelerated pace regardless of who is elected President.   Both candidates support even more government control over virtually all aspects of the economy.   You know the slide is irreversible when McCain, the Republican candidate, proposes that the federal government spend $300 billion to purchase home mortgages on top of the $700 billion bailout package just approved by Congress last week.    Under McCain’s new plan, the government would purchase and own bad home-loan mortgages and would then presumably forgive a portion of the debt owed on each mortgage.   This plan may be necessary to reverse the high home foreclosure rate, but it would reward people who have incurred more debt than they can repay at the expense of taxpayers who have kept their own debt at levels they can afford.     

The only real news from the debate involved McCain’s proposal for the government to buy bad home-loan mortgages, and even this proposal did not receive much attention.   For the most part, the debate consisted of the moderator asking a question and the candidates responding by regurgitating their talking points.   I found the debate to be fairly boring and uninformative.    I didn’t learn anything new about the candidates or their positions.   I found myself hoping for another debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin so I could at least look forward to Palin’s smiles and winks and her refreshing way of discussing the problems facing the country.

During the debate last night, Obama, as he has done in the past, repeatedly linked McCain to President Bush and the current problems with the economy.   It’s a good strategy because it is working.   It’s also dishonest because there is little McCain could have done to prevent the current crisis, which started in the subprime mortgage market supported primarily by the Democrats.   But that is irrelevant.   After all, this is politics.  Why let the truth get in the way of a good campaign issue?   This is the way the game is played. 

Time is slipping away for McCain.   Everything is going against him.   Bad news on the economy is good news for Obama and terrible news for McCain.   For McCain, it’s guilt by association, which deeply offends Obama when the subject is Bill Ayers, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or Tony Resko, but suits him perfectly when the subject is President Bush and the economy.   It’s a double standard, of course, but Obama assumes correctly that most Americans will not see the hypocrisy and that most members of the media, who are his cheerleaders, will ignore it. 

In my view, both McCain and Obama performed reasonably well.   Once again, I think McCain demonstrated his superior knowledge in the area of foreign affairs, but I don’t think there was an overall clear winner of the debate.   All Obama needed was a tie to maintain his growing lead in the polls.   McCain needed a knockout blow, or he needed for Obama to make a mistake.   Neither one of these things happened.