| Opinion - Friday, September 26, 2008
Endorsements '08: Race to the White House
Obama's a no-brainer to us—but will the election be about issues?
President
It's probably no surprise that the Sun endorses Barack Obama for president. What is amazing to us is that with George Bush, as discredited as he is—and John McCain having embraced the overwhelming majority of his policies—McCain is polling so well. We are surrounded by rising unemployment, declining incomes for all but the very wealthy, rising inequality, foreclosures and a crumbling national financial structure, increasing debt, a perpetual healthcare crisis, soaring energy costs and diminished civil liberties. Out status in the world is deteriorating, as is our moral authority. Our military is overextended and our allies are leaving us. We are reaping a bitter harvest from our costly unilateral adventurism. The U.S. is exhibiting many of the signs of an empire rotting from within and in decline abroad. McCain's campaign manger said recently this election is not about issues. Here's why he doesn't want to deal with issues:
Abortion
McCain is proud of his 25-year "pro-life" record and says life and rights begin at the moment of conception. Obama is pro-choice.
Gay Marriage
McCain supports California's Proposition 8, which would repeal gay marriage. Obama supports full rights for same sex couples and opposes Prop 8.
Economic/Domestic Policy
In 2007 McCain told the Boston Globe, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." He has acknowledged that economics is not his strong suit. So he turned to people he has called "real strong economic minds"—people like Phil Gramm—for advice. Gramm was McCain's campaign co-chair and top economic adviser until he was forced to resign for his "this is a mental recession" and "we've become a nation of whiners" remarks. Gramm, the former Texas senator who pushed banking deregulation as chair of the Senate Banking Committee and then left for (surprise!) a top banking job, engineered the deregulated system that has fostered much of our current banking/housing meltdown. Deregulation and corporate consolidation also produced the savings and loan debacle, our California energy disaster and predatory cable, telecommunications and other faceless utility oligopolies that reap huge profits and prey upon consumers. If you want more of this—along with eventual enormous government bailouts, such as with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, when unrestrained "free markets" fail—Gramm and McCain have a plan for you. In its most recent vote rating, the consumer group Public Citizen gives McCain a 15 percent score. Obama's score was 69 percent.
Technology
When asked whether he uses a PC or a Mac, McCain said, "Neither. I'm an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get." Here's what Amanda Terkel of Salon.com says: "McCain has a long record of blocking progress on tech issues. He has served as a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation since coming to the Senate in 1987, and as chairman from 1997 to 2001, and again from 2003 to 2005. He oversaw the committee at a crucial point in history: the explosion of the Internet economy. During McCain's tenure, the committee oversaw the implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the first major overhaul of U.S. telecom law in nearly 62 years. McCain had to choose whether to be pro-competition or pro-big business. In most instances, he chose the latter route. Other media experts have characterized McCain's Commerce Committee tenure as a lost opportunity to make progress on telecommunications policy." She quotes former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt as saying, "The thing that stands out for his entire tenure is that he has never had a priority, and has never had, to my knowledge, any accomplishment of any kind at all." In contrast, Obama, who is often on his BlackBerry, has delighted the tech community with his in-depth tech knowledge and thoughtful positions on forward-looking technology issues.
Environment
This covers a lot of territory, but one shorthand gauge is the League of Conservation Voters annual vote analysis and ratings. McCain scored zero percent in 2007 and 29 percent in 2006. Highlighting one of his many missed votes, the LCV president said, "In December 2007, his was the single vote that prevented the Senate from transferring billions of dollars in tax subsidies from the oil industry to clean, renewable energy sources." Obama, who also missed some votes while campaigning, had scores of 67 percent in 2007 and 100 percent in 2006. Campaign Money Watch says in Texas alone, June oil- and gas-connected donations to McCain's Victory '08 Fund, from at least 85 donors, totaled over $1.2 million. Of that total, 73 percent came after June 15, when McCain announced his position in favor of offshore drilling.
The Courts
McCain says Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, part of the extreme right wing of the current court, "would serve as the model for my own nominees." Many observers believe that the appointment of one more conservative on the Supreme Court could tip whatever slim balance still exists on questions such as abortion, civil rights, civil liberties and many key issues. Obama, who was president of the Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against the confirmations of Roberts and Alito. He said this about his Alito vote: "The Judicial Branch of our government is a place where any American citizen can stand equal before the eyes of the law. Yet, in examining Judge Alito's many decisions, I have seen extraordinarily consistent support for the powerful against the powerless, for the employer against the employee, for the president against the Congress and the Judiciary, and for an overreaching federal government against individual rights and liberties."
Foreign Policy
McCain once said it would be fine with him to be in Iraq for 100 years. He bashed Obama for months because of Obama's proposed timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. That changed after Obama visited Iraq and received support from Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. Now even the Bush administration is talking "time horizon," as is McCain. Obama set forth a policy in the face of criticism, and even his opponents are now following his lead. Sounds like courage and leadership to us. McCain has been one of the most outspoken Iraq hawks from the start and talks similarly about Iran, which he has joked about bombing. McCain's running mate says we may go to war over Georgia (read: oil-pipeline route). McCain has not demonstrated that he sees the world substantially differently from Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush.
How many foreign policy embarrassments and lost lives are enough? How much lost respect from our increasingly skeptical allies will it take for this country to learn from its repeated foreign policy blunders? The military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against, and that drives so much of our military and foreign policy, has never been a stronger force than it is today. McCain would serve it well.
To tie a bow on the package, McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt is a Karl Rove protégé and former counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Schmidt helped guide the Supreme Court nominations of Roberts and Alito through the Senate. He is part of what Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post called "an inner circle crowded with former Bush loyalists." Campaign manager Rick Davis has been a registered lobbyist for telecommunications companies like SBC Communications, Comsat and Verizon and many multinational companies. He has been a political adviser to McCain for years, at times when his firm represented companies with major issues before the Federal Communications Commission, which is overseen by the Senate Commerce Committee McCain chaired.
McCain's pick of Sarah Palin is further evidence of his sharp shift to being a captive of the evangelical right. She's anti-abortion, anti-sex education, wants to teach creationism in schools, doesn't believe human activities contribute to global warming and while mayor, broached the subject of banning books with the city's librarian.
Schmidt, McCain and his supporters are doing their best to portray Obama as scary, using race and religion and anything else they can find or invent to suit their needs. What's scary about this campaign is not Obama. It's that Americans could seriously consider replacing George W. Bush, perhaps our worst president ever, with someone who advocates most of the Bush policies and surrounds himself with the same Washington power elite that surround Bush, Cheney and Co. Of course, there are some differences between McCain and Bush. McCain was born in Panama. He has a notoriously volatile temper and is 72 years old, with a history of serious health issues. He has also picked an evangelical running mate with no national experience who repeatedly reveals ignorance or misunderstanding of major issues facing our country, and who just recently got a passport. Obama has 12 years of legislative experience at the national level and in a large, complex and diverse state. He has a broad multicultural background dealing with challenging issues. We believe that spending three years working on inner-city Chicago problems, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and then going to work for a civil rights specialist in a small Chicago firm instead of cashing in for big bucks at a large corporate firm demonstrate capability and character.
It's no wonder Davis has said this campaign is not about issues. If it is, Obama wins in a walk. We hope this campaign is about issues, about intelligence and talent and real change. We also hope it's about inspiring young Americans to have a reason to hold hope for the future. The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania's FactCheck.org has accused McCain's campaign of a "pattern of deceit" and of being "less than honest" and of making "simply false" statements. Other independent fact checkers have made similar comments. We hope Americans focus on the candidates' qualifications, their issue positions and those around them. We hope that voters make an effort to separate fact from media hype. If they do, we believe most voters will pick Obama.
The Pacific Sun endorses Barack Obama for president.
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