Obama Versus McCain on Issues of Importance to our Country

[Time for change]

Our “mainstream” news media has shown little or no interest in covering actual issues of importance to the American people during the current Presidential campaign season. As Jamison Foser of Media Matters notes:

Through 17 debates this year, roughly 1,500 questions have been asked of the two parties’ presidential candidates. But only a small handful of questions have touched on the candidates’ views on executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil liberties concerns….

More specifically:
 Wiretapping: One question
 FISA: Zero questions
 Renditions of our prisoner to face torture: Zero questions
 Habeas corpus: Zero questions
 Telecom liability: Zero questions

David Podvin and Carolyn Kay offer an explanation for why our “mainstream media” has slanted so far right in recent years. They zero in on Jack Welch, the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, which owns NBC:

Welch told several people at GE that the conversation with Rove convinced him that a Bush presidency would ultimately result in billions of dollars of additional profits for General Electric. Welch believed that it was his responsibility to operate in the best interest of GE shareholders, and that now meant using the full power of the world’s biggest corporation to get Bush into the White House…. Toward that end, Welch said that he would finally deal with a longstanding grievance of his: the ludicrous idea that news organizations should be allowed to operate in conflict with the best interests of the corporations that own them.

That pretty much says it all, though the Kay-Podvin article goes into a great more detail on the subject. It explains how Welch transmitted his ideas on this subject to the owners of the other major news networks and convinced them to act likewise. And indeed they all have, as we now have the greatest news media consolidation that our country has ever experienced.

John McCain cannot compete with Barack Obama on the important issues that face the American people today. If he wins the presidency it will be largely because our corporate news media so obfuscated those issues that most Americans have little idea of whom or what they are voting for. In other words, exactly what happened in 2000 and 2004.

So, if the American people are going to learn about the important issues facing our country today, it will have to come from some other source. Here are ten issues that will need to be dealt with, among others:


Torture

McCain
Though McCain has achieved a reputation for challenging George Bush’s torture program, and he has in fact said that torture “should never be condoned”, for which he deserves credit, when push comes to shove, he almost always votes with Bush on supporting his torture plans.

Obama
Obama has been universally and strongly against torture. This is what Obama had to say about George Bush’s Military Commissions Act (which McCain voted for) and his torture programs:

The five years that the President's system of military tribunals has existed, not one terrorist has been tried. Not one has been convicted. And in the end, the Supreme Court of the United found the whole thing unconstitutional, which is why we're here today. We could have fixed all of this in a way that allows us to detain and interrogate and try suspected terrorists while still protecting the accidentally accused from spending their lives locked away in Guantanamo Bay…

Instead of allowing this President – or any President – to decide what does and does not constitute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions…

But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on terrorism

The environment

McCain
Though McCain has made a big deal of pretending to go against George Bush on the issue of global warming (I have received e-mails from him noting the necessity of doing something to combat it), in an attempt maintain his reputation as a “maverick” and vie for the votes of Independents, his actions speak otherwise. The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) gives him a 24% lifetime score for his global warming policies, and a 0% score for 2007. His overall environmental score with the League of Conservation voters is 0%. And in an act of political cowardice, he was the only Senator to fail to show up for a recent vote on a clean energy bill that failed to pass by one vote.

Obama
Like McCain, Obama also uses rhetoric that emphasizes the need to combat global warming, saying “I don't believe that climate change is just an issue that's convenient to bring up during a campaign. I believe it's one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation.” But in stark contrast to McCain’s 24% lifetime LCV rating for his global warming policies, Obama received a rating of 86%. His overall LCV environmental rating was 67% (compared to McCain’s 0%) for the 110th Congress.


The economy

McCain
McCain’s idea of an economic stimulus plan is to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, claiming that such a tax cut is “essential to U.S. competitiveness”, “will expand the U.S. economy, creating jobs and opportunities for prosperity”, and “lead to higher wages”. Other McCain ideas for tax cuts include lowering taxes on capital gains and dividends and fighting “the Democrats’ crippling plans for a tax increase in 2011.” What McCain means by that last statement is that he will ensure that the Bush tax cuts for the rich, including the total elimination of the inheritance tax, become permanent in 2011. An article in the Wall Street Journal estimates that McCain’s tax cut proposals will cost our government as much as $400 billion a year.

McCain’s plan for dealing with the housing crisis is to bail out banks, without providing substantial help to ordinary Americans who lose their mortgages, whom he refers to as “financial and property speculators”.

Obama
Obama’s tax plan is in many ways the opposite of McCain’s. It would reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich, while reducing taxes and simplifying filing for working and middle class Americans. Specifically, he has said:

The Bush tax cuts – people didn't need them, and they weren't even asking for them, and they ought to be relaxed so we can pay for universal health care and other initiatives.… We have to stop pretending that all cuts are equivalent or that all tax increases are the same…. At a time when ordinary families are feeling hit from all sides, the impulse to keep their taxes as low as possible is honorable. What is less honorable is the willingness of the rich to ride this anti-tax sentiment for their own purposes.

In addition to his tax proposals, Obama has an extensive economic plan, which includes: fighting for “fair trade” instead of “free trade”, as manifested by NAFTA; job creation; restoring workers’ rights to unionize; the creation of a universal 10% mortgage credit to give relief to homeowners; a crackdown on mortgage company abuses; and a crackdown on predatory lending policies.


Civil Rights

McCain
McCain consistently voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1990, which was designed to overturn U.S. Supreme Court decisions that made it more difficult for employees to prove job discrimination, and which would impose new penalties against employers for job discrimination.

McCain voted to table an amendment that required states to address juvenile delinquency prevention efforts and efforts directed at reducing, without the use of quotas, the disproportionate number of juvenile members of racial minority groups who come in contact with the juvenile justice system.

McCain voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits gay marriage.

McCain’s voting ratings on Civil Rights are: ACLU – 0%; NAACP – 7%; Human Rights Campaign for gay rights – 33%. On his website McCain doesn’t mention civil rights at all. He does have a section on his website titled “Human dignity and the sanctity of life”, but there is nothing about civil rights there.

Obama
Obama was not in the U.S. Congress when the issues noted above were voted on. His voting ratings on Civil Rights are: NAACP – 100%; Human Rights Campaign for gay rights – 89%; No rating from ACLU.

Obama has a detailed plan to strengthen civil rights on his website. That includes: overturning of the USSC decisions that weakened laws against employment discrimination based on race or sex – including passage of the Fair Pay Act to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work; ending deceptive voting practices that prevent citizens from voting; a plan to end racial profiling; elimination of racial sentencing disparities for drug offenses; and the use of rehabilitation, where appropriate, to replace prison for first time non-violent drug offenders.


Health care

McCain
McCain says on his website that “We can and must provide access to health care for all our citizens”. Though that sounds like he’s advocating universal health care, the only concrete step towards that goal that he provides in his plan (not counting all the generalities about “promoting competition”, “reform”, and “reducing costs”) is tax credits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families, which families could use towards the purchase of private health insurance. Such a plan leaves our current for-profit health insurance system fully in place without coming anywhere near achieving universal healthcare coverage.

Obama
In marked contrast, Obama offers a national health care plan to all Americans to buy affordable (through government subsidies) health care coverage that is “similar to the plan available to members of Congress.” Unlike the McCain plan, this plan would make healthcare coverage affordable for everyone, prohibit discrimination based on preexisting illness or health status, and substantially change our current private for-profit insurance company domination of the market by making available to everyone a Medicare-like, government sponsored program as an alternative.

Some have criticized Obama’s plan because it leaves the private for-profit insurance system intact. While it is true that private insurance companies will not be prohibited under his plan, they will be seriously wounded by the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of preexisting illness and by the competition provided by the far superior government programs. That competition would force insurance companies to either provide a product comparable to the government insurance programs or else get out of the market. Although I acknowledge that it is a weakness of Obama’s plan that it gives people the opportunity to opt out and thereby game the system, it would nevertheless be a vast improvement over our current situation, and there is every reason to believe it would eventually morph into a single payer system as private insurance companies decide that there isn’t enough profit left in the business to encourage them to stay in it (See Paul Krugman’s discussion of this issue).


Children

McCain
The Children’s Defense Fund rates John McCain as the worst Senator in Congress on children’s issues. An example of why he received that rating was his vote against much needed additional funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, combined with his advice to George Bush to veto the bill when it passed Congress – which Bush did.

Obama
The one most important thing that a President could do for American children would be to fight poverty, which disproportionately affects women and children in our country. Currently, 14 million American children live in poverty. Obama has an extensive plan to combat poverty if he is elected President. His 2007 Children Defense Fund rating was 60% (compared to McCain’s 10%), which was lower than several other Democratic Senators because of absenteeism due to campaigning for the Presidency (Obama’s score in 2005 and 2006 was 100%, compared to McCain’s 22% and 10%).


War

McCain
McCain co-sponsored the Iraq War Resolution that facilitated Bush’s plans for war. His saber rattling was as aggressive as anything we heard from Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld:

I believe Iraq is a threat of the first order, and only a change of regime will make Iraq a state that does not threaten us and others, and where liberated people assume the rights and responsibilities of freedom.

McCain accurately announced just a few weeks ago on Mike Gallagher’s right wing radio show that “No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have.” He has demonized those who criticize the war, with statements such as “I believe to set a date for withdrawal is to set a date for surrender” and by calling those who opposed the surge intellectually dishonest. And most ludicrous of all, he put on a big charade to convince the American people of how safe we have made Iraq, while neglecting to mention that while doing his tour he was wearing a bullet proof vest and accompanied by U.S. military air and ground support:

He (McCain) says one sign of progress is that the Republican congressional delegation he's leading was able to drive from Baghdad's airport to the city center, rather than taking a helicopter as prominent visitors normally do. McCain told reporters there are many other signs of progress…

He has consistently opposed any plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He has said that we should stay in Iraq for a hundred or even maybe a million years.

He gives every indication of extending our war to Iran if elected President: At a press conference, McCain began singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”. He has repeatedly lied to the American people that Iran harbors al Qaeda. Our national news media refers to such statements as “gaffes”. But they are not gaffes. They are lies. If they were truly gaffes he wouldn’t continually repeat them, despite being corrected about his “mis-statements”. Worst of all is his enthusiasm for illegal “preventive war”, as described by Matthew Iglesias in an article titled “The Militarist – When it Comes to Foreign Policy, John McCain is More Bush than Bush”, sums up McCain’s views on war”:

The strategic concepts he outlined back in 1999 came to be at the core of what we today term the Bush doctrine. Most significant is the emphasis on preventive war as a tool of policy. As outlined in McCain's disquisition on North Korea, the fact that some state does not, in fact, pose an imminent threat to the United States is no reason to refrain from attacking it. On the contrary, the fact that a state is non-threatening is a reason to attack it as soon as possible, lest it become more powerful over time. In Bush's hands, this concept has led not only to the fiasco in Iraq… McCain has pushed this doctrine longer, harder, and more consistently than has Bush.

Obama
In marked contrast, Obama plans to withdraw from Iraq, while committed to meeting our humanitarian responsibilities there. He has stated on his website:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda…

Obama believes that America has a moral and security responsibility to confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis – two million Iraqis are refugees; two million more are displaced inside their own country. Obama will form an international working group to address this crisis. He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find a safe-haven.

Much has been made of Obama’s so-called “inexperience” in foreign affairs. But rarely does a new President have Commander-in-Chief experience before being elected President. The two Americans with the most experience in this position today are George Bush and Dick Cheney. Is that what we want? Judgment is what we need, not so-called “experience”. Here is a sample of Barack Obama’s judgment prior to the Iraq War:

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics... Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man…

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

Too bad we didn’t have the benefit of Obama’s experience prior to getting ourselves enmeshed in this war.


Judicial appointees

McCain
The part of John McCain’s website that discusses his judicial appointees is titled “Strict Constructionist Philosophy”, and it speaks of “his consistent opposition to the agenda of liberal judicial activists who have usurped the role of state legislatures…” The phrase “strict constructionist” is a misnomer, and it implies that the radical conservatives on our current USSC have a judicial philosophy, which they do not. Rather, they act primarily as enablers of the extreme conservative wing of the Republican Party. Their only “philosophy” is to make whatever rulings are necessary to protect wealthy and powerful corporations and individuals at the expense of the American people, or to pander to the religious right.

Consider, for example, their insistence that the right of corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns is protected by the free speech clause of our First Amendment. That is quite a stretch for so-called “strict constructionists”. Or consider their insistence that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create regulatory agencies, even though our Constitution clearly gave Congress the right to enact laws. Or consider the ridiculous “unitary executive” theory that many of them have recently promulgated, paving the way for executive tyranny. Nowhere does our Constitution give such powers to our president. Constitutional lawyer Cass Sunstein explains:

Mr. Sunstein shows that fundamentalists have been wildly inconsistent in applying constitutional history, referring to it only when it fits their policy goals. Too often, he says, their interpretation neatly fits only the agenda of the extreme edges of the Republican Party's right wing rather than any reasonable view of history.

Specific changes that would be highly likely to occur with a McCain Presidency and appointment of just one more radical right wing Supreme Court Justice include:

 The overturning of Roe v. Wade
 The total extinction of affirmative action
 The enabling of our states to overturn (page 68) our entire Bill of Rights without federal interference
 Radical curtailing of civil rights for women, homosexuals, and minority racial groups
 The declaring of environmental protection laws to be unconstitutional
 The widespread disappearance of habeas corpus
 The virtual creation of Christianity as a national religion
 The Dismantling of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Obama
This is what Obama had to say about his leanings for the appointment of Supreme Court justices:

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom…. the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

Special interests

McCain
McCain speaks often of the undue influence of special interests with lots of money, saying on his website that “Too often the special interest lobbyists with the fattest wallets and best access carry the day.” Indeed, I give him a lot of credit for passage of the McCain-Feingold bill, passed by Congress with the intention of limiting the undue influence of money in politics.

Yet, despite McCain’s efforts to hide the fact, he has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign. He also appears to be gaming the system with respect to his own (McCain-Feingold) legislation and use of lobbyists. As a campaign finance expert explained:

John McCain's campaign struck a canny deal with a bank in December. If his campaign tanked, public funds would be there to bail him out. But if he emerged as the nominee, there'd be no need for public financing, since the contributions would come flowing.

It's an arrangement that no one has ever tried before. And it appears that McCain, who has built his reputation on campaign finance reform, was gaming the system. Or, as a campaign finance expert who preferred to remain anonymous told me, referring to the prominent role that lobbyists have as advisers to his campaign, "This places McCain's grandstanding on public financing in a new light. True reformers believe public financing is a way to replace the lobbyists' influence, not a slush fund that the lobbyists use to pay off campaign debts."

Obama
Obama’s rhetoric on campaign finance reform matches McCain’s. But unlike McCain, the actual running of his campaign has matched his words. He has refused to take money from federal lobbyists for his campaign (although he does take money from corporations that use lobbyists). Consequently, the funding for Obama’s Presidential campaign has come very disproportionately from small donors, and his donations have averaged just $109 per donor, despite the fact that he has broken numerous records for fundraising:

With this distribution of funding sources, why would Obama need to please the corporate power structure at the expense of the American people?


Elitism

Today’s Republican Party is the epitome of elitism. They starve social programs meant to give working people an even break in life so that taxes can be cut for the ultra-rich, and so that their ultra rich progeny can inherit their fortunes intact; they don’t protect the environment against corporate rape because that would cut into corporate profits; they shrink government to limit its involvement in health care and civil rights, and let the private sector run wild, so as to maintain huge income disparities that keep children in poverty and limit opportunities for education of the masses that might upset the status quo; and they support wars for oil that reap huge profits for oil companies while over a million innocent people die, and the American people pay close to $4 per gallon for gas.

How can a political party win elections with an agenda like that? Other than election fraud, the only way to do it is to keep the American people ignorant of what’s going on. That’s where our corporate news media comes in. That’s what explains the virtually total lack of serious news coverage and the ban against exploring any of the political issues that most affect the American people.

Instead, turn the tables and pin the “elite” label on Democrats. Call Democrats “elite” and back it up with proof, like a video of Barack Obama… asking for orange juice instead of coffee at a diner, or a poor bowling score. Repeat it often enough, and before too long people will believe it.


A brief word to Clinton supporters

I acknowledge that your candidate and mine are very similar on the good majority of issues that I discuss above, with the major exception being their pre-war attitudes towards our war in Iraq and current attitudes towards Iran. Certainly they are much closer on all these issues than they are to McCain. I voted for Hillary in the Maryland primary, but shortly after that I switched my allegiance to Obama, largely because of what I considered to be negative campaigning on her part.

It reminds me very much of the 1972 Hubert Humphrey campaign against George McGovern. Humphrey was a great hero of the Civil Rights movement, and he deservedly had quite a large following because of that, but his support for the Vietnam War as Vice President in the Johnson administration brought his candidacy down. His negative campaigning against McGovern tore the Party apart, and the results of that were evident on Election Day 1972, when McGovern carried only a single state. What our country got for that was two more years of war and abuse of Presidential powers. Fortunately in those days the Democratic Party had the good sense and courage to impeach a President who showed no respect for our Constitution or the rule of law in general.

I’m sick and tired of the two Democratic candidates’ supporters tearing each other apart. I respect Clinton’s right to remain in this race, but I hope it ends very soon, and as far as I’m concerned it’s over. It is time, in my opinion, to be talking about the many important issues that separate Obama and McCain.