"I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you."
Rushkoff's essay makes constructive criticisms of Brand Obama, and I'm encouraged to see Obama incorporate some of these concerns into his campaign rhetoric, because it really isn't about what he does next. It's about what we do.
So much RESPONSIBILITY.
The election hit Warp 10 this week and as any Trekkie knows, that means it will occupy all units of space-time until November 4.
The polls are close, but anybody who's sniffed an election before knows they are meaningless until the votes are cast. This could go either way.
I'm voting Obama. And when people ask me why, I have a lot of answers.
I'll share my answers with you since, as Obama said, this campaign is about us. I'll tell you my story, what I believe in and why. I'll tell you where I agree with Barack Obama, where I agree with John McCain, and where I agree with neither of them. Read on...
ECONOMY
Trade
McCain fully supports NAFTA and the WTO, and he opposes labor and environmental restrictions obstructing free trade.
Obama wants to renegotiate NAFTA and other free trade agreements to incorporate labor and environmental standards to level the playing field for American workers and prevent sweatshop labor.
Free market economists obviously fall with McCain on this one, because free trade is less free in the Obama plan. They claim American investment in overseas manufactures is delivering prosperity and happiness to the world, and that sweatshop labor isn't that bad because we pay 17 cents an hour to people who are used to making 0 cents an hour. Labor and environmental regulation would derail the entire world economy, bankrupting American businesses and obliterating the Third World.
I call bullshit. Globalization in its current state makes for cheaper shit at Wal-Mart and bigger bottom lines for GE, but its lead to neither regime changes (see China) or American prosperity. We have an unfavorable balance of trade, a population of consumers that don't produce, and it's conceivable that no big business is truly American anymore.
Capitalism and commerce are not the root of all evil, but our current market systems are hardly free, they were configured with the same biases toward central authority (by outlawing local currencies, utilizing propaganda to create ad culture, and discouraging cooperation) that libertarian icon Friedrich Hayek cautioned would lead from communism to fascism.
The free market might someday fulfill the common economist's prayer for global-peace-through-global-commerce prayer, but today, we're watching the American Dream die, for cheap shit at Wal-Mart and 17 cents an hour abroad.
Obama.
Health Care
John McCain wants to bias market forces toward easily affordable, easily available health care through tax code reforms promoting industry competition.
Obama wants to use the heavy hand of the government to make health care eligibility guaranteed for all Americans and promote market competition by creating the National Health Insurance Exchange.
Either candidate's plan will reform the American health care system for the better by making health care easier to afford.
Obama's plan is riskier, because he's ready to use that heavy hand. We may attribute this to his oft-repeated experience of watching his mother argue with insurance providers while she was dying of cancer. His plan is better than Clinton's because it's not mandatory.
McCain's plan respects the liberty of American business, but may not do enough to extend coverage all the way down to the Americans who need it most.
Obama, because it may be imperfect, but it still gets coverage to those who want it.
Taxes
I would save more under the Obama plan, and it's statistically probable that you would too.
Obama by a landslide.
Social Security
Social Security will go bust in our generation.
McCain wants to partially privatize social security, a stance supported by the free market Cato Institute.
Obama wants to use increased tax revenues from the wealthiest Americans to fund Social Security. He's willing to consider raising the retirement age or cutting benefits to stabilize the system, though neither of those options are part of his current plan. He opposes privatization.
McCain's plan encourages more individual responsibility for Social Security with the risk that a generation will squander their cash by spending instead of saving (a habit that could be the real problem with the economy), while Obama's plan may only be a band-aid for a bullet wound.
Draw.
Net Neutrality
Obama supports net neutrality for all the right reasons. (his podcast at that link is also a great intro to net neutrality)
Obama also has a comprehensive technology plan promoting open source ideals to increase liberty and transparency in American democracy. He is the most tech-savvy candidate in recent memory, with a campaign that would have been impossible without the internet .
McCain doesn't use computers and he thinks net neutrality is horsepuckey.
Obama.
Transportation
Neither candidate has said much on transportation, but Obama acknowledges the declining state of American infrastructure while McCain is pretty focused on vehicle production.
Obama by a hair, for looking at the problem from the bottom up.
FOREIGN POLICY
One of the most publicized issues this election... Let's dig in. Let me disclaim that I respect and honor McCain's service to our country, even if I don't think his experiences equate to executive--or diplomatic--experience.
Iraq
Obama has called it a dumb war from day one. He wants the Iraqis to assume responsibility for rebuilding their country and get our troops off the line of fire, which is probably the best way of supporting troops, don't you think?
McCain has an impressive military record, but the Middle East isn't Korea. His support of President Bush's disastrous, clumsy execution of a war that was sold to the American people wrapped in 9/11 and WMDs is indefensible.
Obama.
War on Terror/Iran
Obama advocates aggressively pursuing and attacking Al Qaeda and other American enemies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. He is also willing to utilize diplomatic relations with unfriendly nations to prevent the same bloodshed and instability we saw in Iraq. But while he would meet with Iran, Obama is very clear that he will stop at nothing to prevent Iran developing a nuclear arsenal.
McCain uses the POW story to remind us that he won't take shit from bad guys, but his plans for fighting terrorism are no different than Bush's bungles. He mocks Obama's willingness to sit down with hostile nations like Iran. Combine minimal diplomacy with his infamous bad temper and he may end up responsible for even more civilian and military deaths than Bush.
Either candidate will likely be far more aggressive outside of Iraq as our military force necessarily scales down and the Iraqis either rebuild or fall into civil war. McCain can't come out and say it, but he'd probably start taking battalions out of Iraq shortly after the time Obama would, citing an examination of "new data" for his reversed position.
Getting out of Iraq frees up military resources, so the next President should be expected to pursue terrorists abroad more aggressively than the Bush administration. I wouldn't even be surprised for Osama bin Laden to be captured sometime before the 2010 midterm elections.
Obama doesn't have McCain's military experience, but reading his 2002 Iraq War speech makes the guy look positively precog, considering the 6 years that followed. In spite of his acknowledged military expertise, McCain has associated himself too closely with Bush policies that bungled Iraq while Al Qaeda rebuilt.
Obama, for knowing the difference between war and dumb war.
Arab-Israeli Conflict
Both candidates are friends of Israel. Obama's rhetoric is more nuanced, and perhaps a bit tougher on Israel, but he remains a steadfast ally, so don't listen to any conservative BS that he love terrorists.
Draw.
Darfur
Both candidates signed a joint statement condemning the atrocities in Darfur, though it is unclear what either of them would do.
Draw.
North Korea
McCain blames Bill Clinton for North Korea's WMDs while conspicuously ignoring the last 8 years that Bush failed to demand disarmament.
Obama has said he would be willing to meet with North Korea, which McCain derides.
Both candidates are likely to be more aggressive with NK than Bush was, but I give the tip of the hat to considering diplomacy first...
Obama.
Pakistan
Obama is willing to kick ass in Pakistan in order to pursue terrorists there: "If we have actionable intelligence about high value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
McCain refuses to threaten Pakistan with military action, which I find amusingly inconsistent with the rest of his foreign policies--probably because he would readily send troops to Pakistan himself, but it's more politically convenient to paint Obama as inexperienced.
Obama.
Torture & Extrajudicial Prisoners
McCain knows a thing or two about this subject, but he's too busy campaigning to remember what. He came out against waterboarding in October 2007, calling it torture. But in February 2008 he voted against HR 2082, which would have prevented CIA waterboarding. He has advocated closing Guantanamo Bay in the past, but stays relatively silent on the subject these days, as it is unpopular with conservative voters.
Obama voted against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and voted to restore habeas corpus to detainees. He advocates closing Guantanamo Bay, though he has not supported two different bills that would have done so. He opposes all forms of torture.
Obama by a contradictory vote on the part of McCain.
ENVIRONMENT/CLIMATE CHANGE/ENERGY
I'm the son of a 30+ year GE engineer. Growing up, Dad would leave for weeks at a time to work on power plants around the country and the world. His work for GE (and Mom's teaching job) paid for my comfortable middle clas upbringing and an expensive private college education. I can't hate GE anymore than I can hate my Dad, and nobody can tell me that my views are based on liberal bias against energy companies because I'm a GE kid, dammit.
I've been schooled in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truths and the Heartland Institute's skepticism of them.
Neither of them has it 100% right, and neither do the candidates.
Obama gets high marks from environmentalists for his plans to reduce carbon emissions with a market-based cap-and-trade system, federally funded public mass transportation, and a new Global Energy Forum of the most energy-consumptive countries (the G8+5).
McCain has a record of breaking from the Republican Party on environmental matters, opposing the ANWR drilling that he now champions (with Sarah Palin), and higher fines for CAFE standards to lower vehicle emissions. It is difficult to say what his positions would be after the election, as he is currently busy persuading GOP voters who don't believe in global climate change.
Having extensively reviewed both sides (including a stint researching and rewriting a global warming skeptic's documentary, very educational process), what do I find?
The scientific arguments suggesting that climate change is happening are more compelling than any claims it is not. Even skeptics have retooled their arguments to say that they believe climate change is happening, but that people are not responsible, or that the policies being proposed will not help.
Overwhelmingly, I've seen stronger scientific evidence that people are contributing to, but not fully responsible for, climate change.
However, I've also seen strong economic evidence that many proposals supported by both candidates (Kyoto II, Gore, McCain-Lieberman) are indeed unrealistic and could make significant trouble for developing nations.
I think we need:
1) Energy independence. This doesn't mean using more domestic oil, it means shifting our power generation to new technologies, including rebooting the nuclear power industry so that the American economy doesn't crash. Stop wasting time, money, and farm land on ethanol (I'm looking at you, Obama), start finding big ways to conserve domestic oil supplies and stop shipping boats full of money to Saudia Arabia.
2) More public transportation and smarter urban planning, which will restore life to public space and reduce motor vehicle deaths while decreasing our energy needs.
3) To lay off the Developing World until we've made the changes and sacrifices for ourselves, then invest our new technologies in the countries that need them most. More energy means more prosperity, so we can't just ask the poorest people to keep going without power.
4) Preparation for climate change, regardless of the causes, because it's already happening. Mosquito nets, sky seeding, planting more trees, whatever--there are sensible things we can do without falling into precautionary principle hysteria.
Who delivers on these?
Neither candidate. McCain's administration will hew too closely to Heartland Institute principles that fail too take climate change seriously, and his VP is a nod to the oil industry that he still has their best interests at heart. Obama is dangerously close to giving the environmentalists too much of what they want, overspending on programs that don't work.
And neither candidate has found an effective way to reduce standards without throwing monkey wrenches into the American economy.
The next Presidential candidate isn't going to decide our fate when it comes to climate change--we are, our children are, our grandchildren, their children... This problem isn't just going to go away tomorrow unless we all RADICALLY change our lives, and that won't happen without some kind of Mad Max apocalypse scenario.
Obama has the right idea with his transportation plans and his comprehensive "green jobs" proposals, but he doesn't support nuclear as he should. John McCain supports nuclear, but he hasn't gone further with the transportation question than vehicle emissions standards.
Is it a draw?
Not when we take it down the next level, to VPs.
Palin doesn't think global warming is man-made, she doesn't think polar bears should be considered endangered, but she wants to open a sub-cabinet to review policy--but if they only consider papers from economic think-tanks instead of the scientific community, they won't do any good. She is in conflict with pre-campaign McCain but in line with the GOP.
Biden broadly supports the same measures Obama proposes, but he makes the correct, studied distinction between promising biofuels and wasteful ethanol.
Palin's views appear more in line with the interests of Alaska than of the nation. Biden actually has a record legislating for reduced emissions and investment in new techonologies.
Biden assists Obama for the layup.
SOCIAL ISSUES
Many of which ain't none of the government's business anyway.
LGBT
People who love each other should be able to get married. It's not going to hurt anyone.
Both candidates call it a state's rights issue.
McCain supported a failed initiative to ban gay marriage in Arizona in 2006.
Obama correctly identifies LGBT rights as a civil rights issue, but does not find federal authority to legislate as such. He has the overwhelming support of LGBT organizations and has never voted against gay marriage.
Obama da rainbow.
Abortion
First of all, it's none of your damn business. Second of all, there is no pro-life and anti-life, no anti-abortion and pro-abortion, there is only pro-choice and anti-choice.
McCain alienated a significant number of conservatives by failing to stress his anti-choiceness enough, but he believes Roe v Wade should be overturned and women don't have a right to choose. Palin deserves special mention here for being so far out of the mainstream: hard-line anti-choice, even in cases of rape or incest, and she opposes birth control in favor of abstinence only.
Obama and Biden are both strongly pro-choice. They know that banning abortion would lead to an underground industry without medical standards and hardship for unwanted children, not to mention violation of the privacy of women and families to make their own decisions about their bodies.
Obama by a wide margin.
Immigration
Both McCain and Obama support a guest worker program, but McCain has a longer record working with both parties on campaign issues. However, he has recanted his proposals from as recent as 2006 in order to appeal to the GOP base. He now talks almost exclusively about border security.
Obama doesn't have McCain's policy record to flip-flop on, but his answers to policy questions are more sensible, more to the root of the problem, than retreating back to border security. For instance, he has noted that an employer is more likely to be struck by lightning than be prosecuted for employing illegal workers, and says that should be one of the first things fixed.
This would have been a draw two years ago. Today?
It's all Obama.
Stem Cell Research
I wholeheartedly support stem cell research. Any questions I had, or you have, are answered in Michael Gazzaniga's book The Ethical Brain.
Both candidates support stem cell research. But McCain's friends in the GOP mainstream are overwhelmingly opposed to it, and we must assume that his Presidency will not change their position.
Obama, by heavy doubts that McCain will change his party's line on the matter.
Education
I've said time and again: creationism and ID are not science, they are religion. Evolution is science. Religion is taught in the home or the church. Science is taught in the classroom.
McCain has previously said he does not think Creationism belongs in the classroom, now he thinks that's a decision for schools, and he selected a VP who advocates teaching Creationism as science.
Obama's ex-church teaches creationism, but Obama himself has not taken a strong stance either way.
Both candidates support charter schools and different forms of merit pay for teachers.
McCain supports a voucher system and decreased federal funding for Pell grants and student loans.
Obama does not support vouchers, correctly assuming that they will bleed out the public education system, and he proposes increasing Pell grants and students, along with other federal expenditures to make higher education more affordable.
Obama, for understanding that there is a time and place for markets and game theory, but the public education system is too vital to American prosperity to bleed dry.
The Patriot Act
Obama opposed the original Patriot Act, McCain voted for it.
Both voted to reauthorize it in 2006.
Obama voted in favor of the FISA bill giving Big Telecom immunity for warrantless surveillance, McCain voted against it.
Long haul? Civil liberties are already restricted in America, but not as bad as say, England. Yet.
Neither candidate has a stand-up record here.
Draw.
The Drug War
Neither candidate would dismantle the DEA like Ron Paul advocates. Both would continue the Drug War, one of the most wasteful, expensive, useless government initiatives we have. It's a policy based on lies and myths about substance abuse, it's been totally ineffective at reducing drug use in our country, and it's responsible for a large portion of the world largest prison population.
That's right--China's population is four times the size of ours and they still have fewer people in jail.
Obama has stated that he thinks medical marijuana should be a states' issue, and it's conceivable that if he makes to a second term he'll recognize marijuana as a non-threat and either de-schedule it or place it at the bottom of DEA priorities. He is the first candidate to speak candidly about his own drug use, and he has himself dealt with quitting a smoking habit.
McCain thinks the Drug War needs to get fired up again. He denies the viability of medical marijuana in spite of copious scientific research published around the world and the refutation of nearly every marijuana myth churned out since Reefer Madness, which incidentally came out the same year that he was born, 1936. He thinks that Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign harkens to a time when the government was winning the Drug War.
As a pot-smoking product of the DARE campaign, I can assure you Mr. McCain, the government has never been winning this war.
And besides, it's nobody's damn business if I want to work, pay my taxes, and light a joint at the end of a long day, anymore than I can break into your house and steal the whiskey from your cabinet.
When you ask Obama about marijuana and the Drug War, he reacts in a way that let's you know he sees the bullshit, even if he has to tread lightly on the fears of Democratic Party parents. He doesn't angrily declare that we need to go after drug dealers with renewed vigor and fill the jails with addicts. Ask McCain about the DEA busting up cancer patients in Humboldt County, and he pretends that kind of shit doesn't happen in America--it does--and calls for every grower, supplier, and user in the nation to take up residence in state-funded jail cells.
Obviously, Obama.
CONCLUSION
McCain was a great candidate in 2000, but clearly he's lost his identity in the clamor for conservative votes. I find his positions on too many issues would do little to change the direction of our country at a time when it needs an about-face, and many of his decisions in recent weeks have left me wondering what he wouldn't sell, steal, or do to get into the White House.
Obama is a rising star who talks big and will have to deliver bigger to satisfy voters if he wins the election.
Neither candidate will destroy the American Way. Both are patriots, both are leaders.
But America is in a mess of shit no thanks to the Bush administration, and McCain just can't get enough distance from them, policy-for-policy, for me to believe that he can do anything more than watch our economy continue to decline, our middle class transition to a lower class, and our soldiers die in wars that could have been avoided.
Obama is willing to roll up his sleeves and untangle the mess, if only we are willing to do our part. We may fail--but we must try.
Obama and Hunter S. Thompson have quoted Lincoln, who said of the USA on the brink of civil war implosion:
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."
Nobly save the last best hope?
Yes we can.
Shawn, i love this article. So true, comprehensive, and yet to the point. Some of these issues i hadn't really given much thought to and I found your take on them enlightening. This article makes you realize that the real difference in the candidates is not the stance they have chosen to take (because many are so similar), but the character and honesty in which their positions are represented. McCain has a long history of going against what he obviously feels in order to win over the increasingly conservative republican party, while Obama is clearly following his own vision of what he sees is possible for this country.
Who wins for me? Obama!!!
Posted by: Erin Eber | September 03, 2008 at 11:34 AM