Politicks

The video is a little dated, but still so true.



Let me be up front. I happen to classify myself as a Conservative. I tend towards conservative social policies and some economic ones as well. But, I hope to stay fairly balanced in this particular post. Apologies in advance.

Let's think back a bit. Back to before I left school for the summer. Back when the primaries were still going strong, and Obama and McCain just started to pull ahead. I was eating at the Hoch and we were discussing the candidates, and most of us agreed that a contest between Obama and McCain would be fairly solid. On one side you've got the fresh face of change, on the other a conservative who isn't off his rocker.

Fast forward to the summer. Obama has the majority, McCain is off campaigning, and we start seeing the weak points in each candidate.

Now, we're in convention mode.

I am a firm believer that the most important class you can take and must understand is a good Economics and Civics course. Why? It's so you can understand the basic workings of economy and government and don't get cheated by fast talking dealers or 30 second soundbites from the news. My economic policy would be to raise taxes and pull down spending. Essentially, let's get rid of that stupid federal debt, or at least stop increasing it. As it stands, simply paying off the interest (i.e. minimum payments) on the debt takes up the largest chunk of our federal budget. Not only is this stifling other programs, but this is just paying off minimum payments. Any smart economist knows that paying minimum payments means you're going to be paying a whole lot more from the interest than the original principle amount. There's the whole compound interest problem, and the fact that it takes forever to pay off the debt. This is why credit card debt is such a huge problem in the US. Interesting fact, we've actually managed to, on average, be in personal debt as a nation, even with crediting our retirement funds. That's negative personal savings. Aren't we such a gluttonous people. Plus, our debt is being bought through bonds by foreign organizations. Not good.

But enough about generalities, let's rip these candidates a new one.

First, Obama. The easiest target is that he's young. He hasn't experienced a whole lot, and probably hasn't solidified what he believes in. Then again, this might be a virtue since he's not stuck in his ways yet and can change his mind based on new data and ideas. My personal concern is his voting record and his speech abilities. He has voted on several issues, and his record shows him to be the most liberal voter ever. He was the singular person voting against the Born Alive Protection Act in Illinois. It wasn't named the same thing, but it was essentially the same bill. Furthermore, there are several instances where he voted as merely present, or even better, he voted present then changed his vote after everyone had voted. Sounds a little sketchy to me.

As far as his speeches, he is perhaps the best orator the nation has seen in modern times when on a teleprompter. He has a great delivery, huge ideals, and the ability to whip his followers up and make them believe that the waters of the ocean will begin to recede at his command. When he's off the teleprompter, he keeps pausing and stuttering and throwing in lots of "um"s and sometimes plain out lies. Recently was the panel with Rick Warren, and let's be honest, Rick Warren is probably gunning for McCain but as far as moderators go he was solid, let the candidates speak, and gave simple concise questions. Yet the big Obama mess ups were his "above my pay grade" comment on deciding when a child gets full human rights, and his claim that he worked with McCain on the finance and ethics reform bills. He may have worked briefly on the ethics reform bill, but the finance reform bill was done and in law before Obama even was elected to the federal Senate. Now, all of my friends can attest to me flubbing up my wording quite often, but Obama really needs to get a handle on this chronic problem. I don't want the messiah, I just want a good President who can candidly tell me what he thinks. None this of trying to have both sides of the issue.

Last thing is the company he keeps. Reverend Wright, his grandmother, Bill Ayers (now convicted), and others that have basically not made Obama look good. As an added bonus, Obama then commences to disown them, or as the conservative radio talk people like to call, "throw them under the bus." I will concede that we can't know everything about all the company we keep, and I'm sure it's a little extra publicity since he's on our newspapers every day searching out all his brief encounters. However, some of them had to have shown signs. Reverend Wright is a very good example. Led a church for many, many years, and I'm sure that's not the first time he made interesting remarks. If anything, I'd hope he turned them down knowing Obama was part of his congregation.

On to McCain. He's old. Very old. Plus, he's not necessarily in the peak of health with the skin cancer and the swollen left cheek. On the other hand, you hope this means he has more experience and knows his way around the government and foreign affairs better, but it also probably means he's more set in his ways. Beyond that, he's a bit of an odd cookie. The reason we liked him a year ago was he was a moderate conservative, but had a pleasant liberal streak sometimes, especially on environmental policy. The problem is recently he's tried shifting right. Really, really right. There was a period where he was agreeing with Bush almost word for word, even while major advisers were saying otherwise. For example, they made statements about not even talking with hostile leaders, while their advisers wanted to at least give diplomacy a shot.

McCain is also a bit hawkish. He's a big military buff, and in a way that's good. A strong military is a powerful show of ability as well as a defender of the populace, plus it's usually what applies all our academic research into something more practical. However, when he made the comment about staying in Iraq for another 100 years, plenty of people were up in arms and with good reason. McCain is big on the military. He fights to win. Unfortunately, as it stand right now, most people don't want our military spread around the world. Getting tangled in too many conflicts is generally a bad idea. Just look at all the major wars in the past. Two front wars end badly. Heck, you could learn that from a simple strategy game.

McCain is also subject to being called the second Bush. We've been giving Bush a bad record for a variety of things, some warranted and some not, but the fact is most of us just don't like our President all that much. Big selling point is Iraq and the perceived trumped up charges on WMD production. Looking back, it is true the evidence was a little shaky, but on the other hand many people in the field still suspected Hussein since he broke his promises before. We also did find a little evidence that the program were ready to start up again, but not enough to really validate the claims. Then there's the slumping economy, which I personally blame on the stupid banks and lenders but oh well. But let's face it, Iraq is widening our debt, he's not the best on economic nor environmental policy, and his "either with or against us" attitude right after 9/11 was probably a bad idea concerning foreign relations. While I don't think McCain is quite as bad, you will have to suffer some classic conservative ideas such as businesses lift up everyone in the economy and growing economy is a good thing, sometimes no matter what cost. Which unfortunately recently has merely squashed the middle class, and prompted a nice recession. Then again, us middle class people always get slighted. Not rich enough to pay for stuff outright, but never poor enough to get much government support. Guess I gotta make it big to get out of here, or go broke trying.

McCain is also the "maverick." On some cases, this is a good thing. He reformed public financing, has been butchering earmarks, and generally is not afraid to go against the party. On the other hand, this makes him a little unpredictable, so you can't take what he says now as the truth. As I mentioned before, he swung way way right for a while. Thankfully he's a bit more sane now, and even had the guts to pull out quite the Vice President choice. He has been solid on a couple of main issues, for example abortion, so you can definitely line up or rail against some of his core ideals.

A minor note. Everyone keeps complaining about this recession. Economists will tell you it's part of the natural economic cycle and a requirement to help trim down the business sectors and make things more efficient again. We skipped our last two, one being around the dot com bubble bursting which was offset by a booming housing market. Not surprisingly, that formed a housing bubble which is currently deflating. So, recession is an OK thing, just as long as it's not a nose dive. Don't I sound like a horrible person, promoting rising unemployment and failing businesses?

Now here's something they're both weak on. Energy policy. On one hand, giving a bit of relief on energy costs would be nice. There's the Alaskan oil, offshore, shale, etc. Why not knock off the speculators a little with some drilling. Just the perceived promises of future supply can kick the prices around quite a bit. On the other hand, just because it's there doesn't mean we should use it. I'm impressed the American people finally got out of their cars for once instead of being the gas gluttons we usually are, and as a result the price of fuel dropped. Basic economics at work.

The truth is, we should move to less polluting and more renewable areas, like solar, wind, and so forth. Problem is solar only works where there's sun, and we only capture around 12% of the energy right now. Wind is OK, but they can be an eyesore and you need strong winds to make it worth it. Something that only happens in select regions. Nuclear is nice, but unfortunately the capital costs are huge, and there's the small matter of what to do with the bloody nuclear waste. Water generation is actually the best in efficiency, but setting up dams and getting the giant turbines are huge, not to mention the destruction of the riverbeds by the giant lake you form. The thing is that these potentially pollute less than continually burning gas and oil for power, not to mention we're taking advantage of the more natural forms of power available in nature.

I will be the first to admit that none of these sources of energy are perfect. None are the perfect panacea to our problem. Some are actually a little impractical, especially since energy harvesting systems and batteries aren't quite there yet. But that just means research needs to get on top of this issue. Many other nations are starting to catch up or even overtake the US in terms of research and academic abilities, and we need to step it up. For example, we're losing the biogenetic research to Asia. They house their scientists in the latest labs with huge amounts of funds and almost no restrictions. We lock them into academia with bureaucracy and them scrambling for fellowships and grant money. Nothing wrong with competition, but the spigot could be loosened a little.

So now we come to my problem. Who the heck do I vote for? Also, in case you didn't notice, I contradicted myself by saying the government should spend less, but then I advocate more research funding. In the end, there is no perfect answer. All the economically sound ones are unpopular with the general populace. How many like hearing that unemployment is a good thing? However, all the popular ones (like health care for all) are economic suicide, not to mention most major government projects to "help" the underprivileged have a bad habit of backfiring in some weird way. So, you do need to cut the candidates some slack because neither of the poles are going to work perfectly.

I personally happen to agree with McCain on more issues than Obama, and I simply don't think Obama is ready. He feels a little too tricky and changes his mind too readily. Maybe next time when he's solidified a little and shaved off his more radical ideas. Then again, I'm not enthralled with McCain and how some of his policies are flat out wrong. Not gonna be a great next four years either way.

Here's my wimpy advice. Stay away from the soundbites, from the sensational news, and take a look at the facts. Try to not listen to the current claims, they're propaganda to get your vote. Take a look at their past voting history, their decisions, and what they've done. As much as they swing around now, they'll return to their old ways. For better or for worse.

And even if you hate both of them, what can you do? It's still a two party system, and you might as well throw away your vote because Ron Paul is not gonna win.