An Unintentional Bit of Wisdom
In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams which aired Monday evening, Sen. McCain, the presumptive Republican Party nominee, told Williams that "Sen. Obama says that I'm running for a Bush's third terms. It seems to me he's running for Jimmy Carter's second."
Despite all the usual political bickering and shallow rhetoric we should expect from Sens. McCain and Obama in the coming months, this little statement is actually quite truthful in regards to both candidates - despite McCain's attempt to use Obama's statement mockingly and in the context of a refutation. While trying to compare the opposing candidate to previous poor administrations from their respective political parties, Obama and McCain accurately described the choices America is truly facing in November.
Senator Obama does indeed resemble Jimmy Carter in that: a) he has touted his Washington "outsider" status as a measure of how unpolitical and untainted by special interests he claims he is; b) a large part of his presidential campaign is based on stirring emotions rather than talking about the most crucial details of his policies -- in '76 Carter had a political monopoly on the word "trust," while in '08 Obama has it on "hope" and "change"; c) Obama firmly uses populist economic rhetoric in the wake of the housing issue and rising oil prices, much like the sort used by Carter in the wake of an energy crisis and overall economic stagnation. Many of the policies Obama has rallied for lately are in the same Keynesian vein as Carter's misguided policies of the late 70s which only worsened the economic problems they attempted to solve through government action.
McCain resembles G.W. Bush less so than Obama does Carter, but in some ways McCain is, indeed, carrying the Bush torch in that: a) he has asserted a stern our-way-or-the-highway foreign policy approach much like that of post-9/11 Bush (100 more years in Iraq, anyone?); b) despite Bush being labeled as an extreme right-winger, the fact of the matter is that he is more like a McCain Republican in that he does not really resemble a classical conservative whatsoever, but rather what we would call a neoconservative or a big-government centrist. McCain and Bush both only verbally support "free trade" and "limited government," as their records show that, on the contrary, they truly aren't afraid to drastically expand the size of government or use it for economic regulations and mandates; c) both use a more conservative brand of populist rhetoric, i.e. McCain's "Straight Talk America" or Bush's overall playing up of his rural male image.
Ultimately Sens. Obama and McCain were correct in their assessments of each other, but either candidate wouldn't want to admit that they are quite similar to the failed president they are compared to. It is quite telling of the poor choices America faces (and has faced for a long time) in that we are basically choosing between an emotions salesman with misguided and myopic populist economic rhetoric, and a foreign policy hawk with a penchant for borrowing big-government ideas from both sides of the aisle.
Isn't anyone else getting tired of this "lesser of two evils" question we seem to face every four years?
Despite all the usual political bickering and shallow rhetoric we should expect from Sens. McCain and Obama in the coming months, this little statement is actually quite truthful in regards to both candidates - despite McCain's attempt to use Obama's statement mockingly and in the context of a refutation. While trying to compare the opposing candidate to previous poor administrations from their respective political parties, Obama and McCain accurately described the choices America is truly facing in November.
Senator Obama does indeed resemble Jimmy Carter in that: a) he has touted his Washington "outsider" status as a measure of how unpolitical and untainted by special interests he claims he is; b) a large part of his presidential campaign is based on stirring emotions rather than talking about the most crucial details of his policies -- in '76 Carter had a political monopoly on the word "trust," while in '08 Obama has it on "hope" and "change"; c) Obama firmly uses populist economic rhetoric in the wake of the housing issue and rising oil prices, much like the sort used by Carter in the wake of an energy crisis and overall economic stagnation. Many of the policies Obama has rallied for lately are in the same Keynesian vein as Carter's misguided policies of the late 70s which only worsened the economic problems they attempted to solve through government action.
McCain resembles G.W. Bush less so than Obama does Carter, but in some ways McCain is, indeed, carrying the Bush torch in that: a) he has asserted a stern our-way-or-the-highway foreign policy approach much like that of post-9/11 Bush (100 more years in Iraq, anyone?); b) despite Bush being labeled as an extreme right-winger, the fact of the matter is that he is more like a McCain Republican in that he does not really resemble a classical conservative whatsoever, but rather what we would call a neoconservative or a big-government centrist. McCain and Bush both only verbally support "free trade" and "limited government," as their records show that, on the contrary, they truly aren't afraid to drastically expand the size of government or use it for economic regulations and mandates; c) both use a more conservative brand of populist rhetoric, i.e. McCain's "Straight Talk America" or Bush's overall playing up of his rural male image.
Ultimately Sens. Obama and McCain were correct in their assessments of each other, but either candidate wouldn't want to admit that they are quite similar to the failed president they are compared to. It is quite telling of the poor choices America faces (and has faced for a long time) in that we are basically choosing between an emotions salesman with misguided and myopic populist economic rhetoric, and a foreign policy hawk with a penchant for borrowing big-government ideas from both sides of the aisle.
Isn't anyone else getting tired of this "lesser of two evils" question we seem to face every four years?
Labels: 2008 election, barack obama, john mccain
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