I found the title of today’s letter interesting. In fact, the title is “Presidential debates may be interesting”. However, I didn’t see anything in that title that is debatable. There are many reasons why the debates will be interesting.
Each candidate can be asked, “What made you change your mind…?”
Most of Obama’s messages seem to be populist and Progressive which makes those that veer from populism and Progressivism great disappointments to Progressives like me.
In June, Obama said that he was against off shore drilling and voted against lifting the Congressional moratorium on drilling.
However, since the beginning of August, Obama has been saying that, in order to gain support from Republicans for his energy plan, he would consider some offshore drilling.
McCain said, if he's elected president, he would appoint a high level commission to investigate the present economic melt-down. Not long before he spoke of his government appointed commission, he deemed himself an ardent deregulator.
The debates can be very interesting, even without talking about lipstick, pigs and Paris Hilton.
The writer of the letter, which was published in the Contra Costa Times on September 21, brought out some of the other differences between the candidates that would help to make the debates “interesting”.
He says the debates will be between an “old pilot” and a “young lawyer”. That’s not too awfully debatable.
The writer says that both McCain and Obama claim to be change agents. He points out that Obama has voted with Democrats 100% of the time while McCain has voted with Republicans 90% of the time.
According to The Washington Post, out of the 348 votes he's cast, Obama has voted with The Democratic Party 96% of the time. The same list has McCain voting with The Republicans 88.3% of the time. This is out of the 231 times that McCain showed up to vote. And this proves what about either candidate’s ability to bring about change?
The writer says that McCain admits that “he’s made some errors in the past” while Obama “doesn’t admit past mistakes”. Up until this point, I wasn’t really sure if the writer had a preference or was merely stating that the debates would be interesting. His statement concerning the admission of mistakes is a lie, pure and simple.
McCain has admitted making mistakes in the past. However, as pointed out above, he would use government intervention to attempt to fix the present economic problems. Should he not admit that deregulation is a mistake?
If anyone’s paid any attention to what Obama’s said about his past, they’d know that he’s admitted to smoking pot and doing cocaine when he was a teen-ager. This admission comes after one two term president expected the American public to believe that he tried marijuana once, but didn’t inhale while another two term president’s widely suspected drug use has been referred to as a “youthful indiscretion”. Neither Clinton nor Bush had the courage that Obama displayed in telling the truth and admitting his mistakes.
The mistake that many would like to hear McCain admit to is supporting the war and occupation of Iraq from the beginning and thinking that staying there until America “wins” is a flawed policy.
