A Pox On Both Your Candidates!

This election cycle, there is a lot of spin flying around the internet. Hardly a day goes by without someone sending me a warning about the dangers of Barack Obama or pointing out some flaw with Sarah Palin. For this article, I am going to focus on what I dislike about both candidates’ positions. I will follow up with one about what I like about each (that will take longer to research). I don’t expect my handful of readers to agree with my positions, but I hope that it will encourage you to discuss what you like and dislike about the candidates.

Barack Obama

Energy

Sen. Obama recognizes the need to be free from dependence on foreign oil. He just opposes anything other than renewable sources of energy. He boldly states the goal to achieve 10% renewable energy by 2012 and 25% by 2025. However, he is unclear about how he will get there aside from investing $150 billion over the next ten years. On the other hand, he opposes offshore drilling, while stating that he favors nuclear energy in principle while opposing it in practice. Meanwhile, his short term plan is to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use that money to give a tax credit to citizens. Is that smart? A windfall profits tax will raise the price of oil and will discourage new exploration, just as it did in the Carter administration. Thus, we are going to impose higher taxes on the oil companies, which will lead to higher prices, so that we can give a tax credit to make up for the higher prices that would be caused by the windfall profits tax.

Foreign Policy/Iraq

Sen. Obama wants the troops out of Iraq. That is a worthy goal and one that will happen regardless of who is elected president. However, if he had his way, the troops would be gone by now and we would never have achieved the results from the surge, results that Sen. Obama denies. Sen. Obama’s foreign policy is marked by inconsistency. He says that he will build greater consensus with our allies and talk to our enemies. However, he has advocated unilaterally launching military raids into Pakistan. How popular will that be? Sen. Obama has said that he will listen to our military leaders, but issued a policy statement critical of Gen. David Petraeus immediately prior to meeting with him.

Healthcare

I can’t really say that I disagree with Sen. Obama’s healthcare proposals. He wants to ensure that people can keep their existing healthcare coverage, that it will be less expensive than it is now and that everyone will have access to affordable healthcare. That sounds great. However, I am troubled by the lack of specifics. The only specific proposal that I see is requiring parents to insure their children and punishing them if they don’t.

Judicial Selection

Sen. Obama wants to end conservative judicial activism and replace it with liberal judicial activism. He voted against both of President Bush’s nominees on the ground that they did not favor the powerless sufficiently. He has stated that in certain difficult cases, adherence to precedent and legal reasoning will not be sufficient to achieve a result and that “in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart.” That sure sounds to me like he would encourage his judicial nominees to decide who they want to win and then make the result come out in that direction. That would be the beginning of the end of the rule of law.

John McCain

Bankruptcy Reform

I am a bankruptcy lawyer, so I have some definite opinions about the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. Generally, this statute made the bankruptcy laws more complicated and made bankruptcy more expensive without achieving any significant reform goals. The statute is badly drafted and inconsistent, such that a debtor can be forced to file chapter 13 because payments on 401k loans are not excluded from disposable income in chapter 7 even though those same payments are excluded from disposable income in chapter 13. If you are not a bankruptcy lawyer, I don’t expect you to follow this. However, the bottom line is that Congress took something which worked relatively well and made it so complex that it resembled the tax code without any corresponding benefit. Sen. McCain voted for this legislation (like Sen. Biden, but unlike Sen. Obama) and has not shown any interest in revising it. If Sen. McCain cares about ordinary Americans, he could take a stab at making this legislation coherent.

Foreign Policy/Iraq

In many ways, Sen. McCain has been right about Iraq. He was against torture and he warned against going in with too few troops and no plan for how to manage the country after the shooting stopped. In those areas, he was right to differ from the Bush Administration. However, he still maintains that it was the right decision to invade Iraq. I have come to believe that pre-emptive war is a bad idea in 99% of the cases. Any prudent leader would want to be savvy enough to see through Hitler’s promise that he would be satisfied with the Sudetenland or foresee the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. However, in most cases, we won’t have the clarity of vision to recognize a clear and present danger before it strikes. In retrospect, Iraq was a dangerous country governed by an unstable dictator who refused to account for his stocks of chemical weapons. Despite the potential for malice against his own countrymen and his neighbors, Saddam Hussein was relatively penned in. When we invaded, we lost American lives to depose a dangerous dictator. However, we also killed innocent civilians, tortured randomly, installed a regime friendly with Iran and ignited a simmering religious war between Shiite and Sunni. It just goes to show that war is a destructive thing. People get killed, many of them innocents. In the future, we should be aware that if the potential for a dangerous conflict exists in our allies’ back yards and they don’t favor military action, that maybe we should not try to go it alone.

Healthcare

One portion of Sen. McCain’s healthcare plan is inconsistent with the rest of his message. He wants to tax employer provided healthcare benefits. This is bad on so many levels. First of all, it is a tax increase on the middle class. Sen. McCain has railed against his opponent for wanting to raise taxes on the middle class while he is proposing a middle class tax increase himself. Additionally, employer-provided healthcare is one of the few things that works in our system. Why would you discourage it? This is incredibly stupid and will hopefully be reconsidered if Sen. McCain becomes president.

The Palin Pick

I have spent a lot of time defending Sarah Palin to my friends. I do not think that she is a Stepford Candidate and I don’t believe that she is a lobotomized harpy sent by the religious right to destroy America. However, when you get past all of the ridiculous charges that have been thrown at her, there is one that you can’t deny—she is just so gosh darned inexperienced. She has even less experience than Geraldine Ferraro had before being nominated by the Democrats. Two years as governor of a small Western state might be enough to earn a position in the Senate or the cabinet. However, it is not adequate to be president in waiting. Hopefully, Sen. McCain will have excellent health and Gov. Palin will be a quick study. However, if the Republican ticket is elected, Gov. Palin is going to have to spend the next eight years cramming for a test that she is not ready to pass today.

False and Misleading Statements By Both Candidates

This was supposed to be a different campaign, one in which both candidates would take the high road and give America an example of what positive leadership would look like. It hasn’t been and there is plenty of guilt on both sides. Factcheck.org does a good job of keeping track of the whoppers told by both campaigns.

• Both Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin have repeated the claim that Barack Obama voted to raise taxes 94 times. While Sen. Obama has voted to raise taxes some of the time, 23 votes were votes against tax cuts and seven votes would have lowered taxes on most people and raised them for a few.

• Both Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden claim that Sen. McCain has proposed a $4 billion tax cut for oil companies. In fact, Sen. McCain has proposed a general tax cut which would apply to all businesses and does not offer specific benefits to the oil industry.

• In the debate, Gov. Palin said that a $5,000 tax credit for healthcare would be budget neutral. That doesn’t make much sense. To be budget neutral, a tax credit would have to be balanced with a reduction in spending. Since the government is not providing health insurance to individuals at this time, a $5,000 tax credit would cost the government $5,000 per person in foregone tax revenue.

• Sen. Obama claimed that Sen. McCain voted against funding for renewable energy 23 times, while Sen. McCain claimed that he had always voted for funding for renewable energy. According to factcheck.org, Sen. McCain voted against funding for renewable energy 11 times, not 23 times or 0 times.

• Sen. Obama claims that Sen. McCain wants to cut social security benefits in half and that current retirees would have lost money from the drop in the stock market. In fact, Sen McCain supported a lower increase in benefits rather than a decrease. Additionally, he supported President Bush’s plan to allow workers born after 1950 to voluntarily invest their social security contributions. Since workers born in 1950 are not old enough to retire, the benefits of current retirees would not be affected. Additionally, since investment in the stock market would be voluntary, no one would lose money without making a decision to invest in the market.

• Sen . McCain and Sen.Obama accuse each other of consorting with unsavory characters. Sen. Obama has criticized Sen. McCain for his association with Charles Keating, a crooked S & L owner. Sen. McCain did intervene on behalf of Mr. Keating, but did it on a limited basis and has said that it was the worst decision he ever made. Sen. McCain has criticized Sen. Obama for his association with Bill Ayers, a one-time radical who bombed the Pentagon and the Capitol. Sen. Obama was only eight years old when the bombings occurred, so he could not have supported them at the time. On the other hand, Bill Ayers has never repudiated his violent past and has said that he wished he could have done more. He was more than a casual acquaintance of Sen. Obama’s, having hosted a reception for him and serving on a board with him. However, the fact that Sen. Obama associated with a one-time radical does not mean that he currently endorses his past violence.