Barack Obama's Ironic Politics

If you want to know just how confused the Obama campaign is about what to do in light of Sarah Palin's speech, just listen to the criticism from the campaign today. After the obligatory congratulations for giving a good speech, the Obama campaign immediately launches into an attack about how the speech lacked specifics about what the McCain campaign would do for the "middle class" as far as health care, education, jobs, gas prices, etc. Talk about chutzpah, the Obama campaign spent about a year and half talking about hope and change. Then, his acceptance speech spent twenty minutes getting into specific policies, and suddenly he is criticizing the other side for not offering enough specifics. Of course the Obama campaign knows full well that it is the Presidential candidate that gets into the most specifics. Furthermore, the rest of the speakers talked plenty about the differences in philosophy between the Republicans and the Democrats. Still, if Barack Obama wants someone to formulate the differences between the two campaigns on the major differences on the issues, well, I will be more than happy to oblige.

1) Taxes and the Economy

Barack Obama wants to combine tax cuts for the middle class with tax increases for the wealthy, capital gains, and some estates through the inheritence tax. He will combine these targeted tax cuts with increased government spending.

John McCain wants to cut the corporate tax because ours is one of the highest in the world. This makes our country uncompetitive and drives business elsewhere. McCain wants to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent not merely those for the middle class. Furthermore, McCain will place a focus back on spending where he believes the Republicans failed most.

2) Healthcare

Barack Obama wants to create a system of universal health care in which private health care is combined with government run health care.

John McCain wants to move from a third party cost health care system to a sytem in which everyone gets their own insurance. He will do this by offering tax credits if employees get their own health care as opposed to health care through their employer. Also, he wants to create legislation that allows for consumers to cross state lines to get health care.

3) The Mortgage Crisis

Barack Obama: He wants to bailout as many people as possible and then create as much regulation, punitive and otherwise, on mortgage professionals, bankers, and securitizers.

John McCain pretends he doesn't want to bail out as many people as possible though he does as well as Obama. He has said nothing (thankfully) about any new regulations

4) Education

Barack Obama wants to spend a lot more money to give bigger salaries to teachers, more equipment, textbooks, classrooms etc. He will place special financial emphasis on early childhood education and care.

John McCain

John McCain believes that education can be improved by offering as much choice as possible. That's why he supports school vouchers so that parents can send their children to charter schools, private schools, and other alternatives to public schools. He also believes in tougher accountability for failing schools and tougher sanctions for said schools.

5)Iraq

Barack Obama wants to end the war "responsibly". That means that as soon as he gets into office he will change the mission to one that involves a timetable for withdrawal. He hopes to have all troops out of Iraq in eighteen months

John McCain has backed the surge since the beginning. He thinks that General David Petraeus knows exactly what he is doing and any tactical decision will be made only after significant consultation with General Petraeus.

6) GWOT

Barack Obama thinks that the key to victory in the GWOT is victory in Afghanistan. He will provide at least two more brigades in Afghanistan. He believes that most of the other terror sponsoring states including Iran, Syria, and North Koreacan be be dealt with through aggressive face to face diplomacy including potentially diplomacy between the President and their heads of state.

John McCain believes that the tenor of the Bush doctrine was correct. He believes that the best way to defeat terrorists is to attack terror sponsoring states and turn those states into Democracies. On the other hand, he believes that this strategy went haywire when the Bush administration went off track for four years with a poor strategy in Iraq. He believes we are facing the same sort of problem in Afghanistan and he plans on exploring a similar strategy in Afghanistan.

7)Energy

Obama is lukewarm on driling. He believes that an aggressive program of government spending of about $150 billion over ten years in a wide array of alternative energy sources will create energy independence in the same period of time.

McCain is for drilling, though not yet in ANWR, and he believes that this will help create the bridge until alternative energy sources. He believes in tax breaks and other incentives to motivate entrepeneurs to invest in alternative energy sources

GITMO, Warrantless Wiretapping, Habeus Corpus, torture and other such things

Barack Obama wants to close down GITMO, though he doesn't say where these folks will go. He wants to gut the Patriot Act and treat terrorists much like we treat criminals.

John McCain did want to close down GITMO though he has reversed himself. He is against torture, but on all other measures he wants to continue the Bush policies which he points out have kept the homeland from attack since 9/11.

There you go, Senator. That's how the two of you stack up in short hand on the major issues of the day.