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Banking, health care, augh!
Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama met Tuesday night in a “town hall” style debate. I put “town hall” in quotation marks because the debate was disappointingly structured – viewers could have benefited from a little more back and forth between the senators and a little less from Tom Brokaw. It would have been nice to see each of the candidates force the other to discuss something important, rather than repeating the same old lines.
By the end of the night, McCain was certainly starting to get desperate. He had trouble painting Obama as a tax-and-spend socialist, especially when Obama had to correct him on so many subjects. McCain also had trouble being specific. When referring to health care, he said: “We need to do all the things that are necessary to make it more efficient.” That’s right in line with Gov. Sarah Palin saying she reads every single paper that comes across her path. McCain also numbly tried to turn every phrase into a sound byte, and was almost as bad at it as President Bush.
Obama was far more relaxed than McCain, who started out the debate looking physically awkward and uncomfortable. He spoke in broken sentences, forgetting points and tacking them onto the ends of other thoughts. He seemed unable to come up with new attacks in the debate, three times using the line that he is bipartisan because he works with Sen. Joe Lieberman.
One of the best points Obama made was on health care. McCain has said he wants to offer a $5,000 tax credit to families to help defray the cost of health care. McCain didn’t mention that he wants to, for the first time ever, tax health care benefits. When one hand giveth, the other taketh away. Obama also pointed out McCain’s plan to allow citizens to buy health care plans across state lines. While that might sound like a good idea, Obama pointed out that the insurance companies would most likely move to the state with the weakest laws governing health care, and the system would be worse off.
McCain has actually already addressed this issue. In a magazine article he said, “I would also allow individuals to choose to purchase health insurance across state lines, when they can find more affordable and attractive products elsewhere that they prefer. Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.” Obviously, as we can all see from the stock market, the current bank system is working out just swimmingly. The sort of “innovation” that McCain is talking about is the same that caused the economy’s nose-dive.
McCain attacked Obama for his outspokenness against Pakistan. Mangling a perfectly good quote, he said “Teddy Roosevelt used to say, ‘walk softly’ – ‘talk softly, but carry a big stick.’ Senator Obama likes to talk loudly.” McCain is the one who talks too loudly. He obviously needs to show way more restraint than he has in the past, such as when he fiercely attacked Russia without taking into account Georgia’s own aggression towards Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The debate provided even more reason to distrust McCain and look toward Obama for real change. McCain has moved to the right in an effort to capture the conservative base, and in doing so, he has compromised many of his ideals. His “Straight Talk Express” has been turned into a machine of spin and lies. This debate proved that it is not just the campaign but McCain himself leading the attacks.
William P. Davis is conductor of the “Straight Talk Express.”
Bangor Daily News