In a functioning democracy, one would normally expect that candidates who develop plans for governing in accordance with the needs, desires and values of a nation’s people would win elections by landslides over candidates who have no such plans. Instead, the 2008 U.S. Presidential race defies such common sense assumptions. The race is nearly a dead heat, despite the fact that Barack Obama’s agenda is basically in tune with the needs, desires and values of the American people, whereas John McCain’s agenda is much more in tune with his corporate backers, a small wealthy American elite, and a radical right wing ideological fringe of the American electorate.
The explanation is fairly simple: Lies, lies lies. The McCain campaign feels free to lie about everything under the sun, and the lack of an independent American press ensures that most Americans are clueless about those lies. Since democracies cannot function without an independent press, this state of affairs is one of the clearest indications of the sick and perilous state of democracy in the United States today.
Why the 2008 presidential race should not be close Here are just a few of the many reasons why the Presidential race should not be close:
Health careThe American people have for a long time been overwhelmingly in favor of a universal national health care plan. More specifically,
64% believe that our government should guarantee health insurance for all, compared to 27% who are against that.
Obama’s plans are fully consistent with that sentiment. He has developed a
national health care plan for all Americans that would enable them to buy affordable (through government subsidies) health care coverage “similar to the plan available to members of Congress.” 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.
John McCain offers nothing remotely similar to that. Though
he says on his website that “We can and must provide access to health care for all our citizens”, he puts forth no serious plan to do that. All he offers are generalities about “promoting competition”, “reform”, and “reducing costs”, in addition to tax credits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families, which families could use towards the purchase of private health insurance. McCain provides no indication that he understands that our current for-profit private health care insurance system leaves huge gaps in health care coverage. Nor does he evidence an understanding that $2,500 per individual is woefully inadequate to cover health insurance costs. In addition, the McCain plan would require Americans to
pay taxes on health benefits provided by employers, thus cutting into the already inadequate tax credits offered under the McCain plan.
Tax policy and the economyJohn McCain and his campaign have continuously repeated the lie that Barack Obama “will raise your taxes”. In a
recent speech, McCain tried to nail Obama on the liberal “tax and spend” stereotype:
Senator Obama proposes to keep spending money on programs that make our problems worse and create new ones that are modeled on big government programs that created much of the fiscal mess we are in. He plans to pay for these increases by raising taxes on seniors, parents, small business owners and every American with even a modest investment in the market.
Where on earth does Mr. “straight talk express” come up with the idea that Obama would raise taxes “on seniors, parents, small business owners…”? Obama has laid out plans to
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.
In stark contrast, McCain’s tax plans are tilted heavily towards the wealthy. According to his own web site, his idea of an
economic stimulus plan is to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. 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.
So, let’s be absolutely clear about this. The difference between McCain’s and Obama’s tax policies is not lowering taxes vs. raising taxes. The difference is that McCain’s tax policies would benefit the wealthy, whereas Obama’s would benefit everyone else. And McCain would pay for his tax breaks for the wealthy by cutting the social programs that he so much abhors, such as those dealing with health and education, which have been used since FDR’s New Deal in an attempt to equalize opportunity in our country.
The U.S. occupation of IraqThe American people
want the U.S. occupation of Iraq to come to an end. Specifically, 59% favor a timetable for withdrawal, whereas only 35% oppose such a timetable. But the only reason why opinion in favor of withdrawal isn’t much more lopsided is that our corporate news media has misrepresented the “Iraq War”. That “war” is not really a war at all. It is an occupation. It is an occupation in which the civilian population, whom we have
killed by the hundreds of thousands and
displaced by the millions,
wants us to leave. That’s the main reason we’re fighting there. We’re not fighting terrorists, we’re fighting a people who are resisting our occupation of their country. Neither McCain, nor Palin, nor George Bush have ever offered the American people a legitimate reason as to why we should occupy a country whose people desperately wants us to leave.
McCain co-sponsored the
Iraq War Resolution that facilitated George Bush’s plans for war. His
saber rattling has been as aggressive as anything we heard from Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld. McCain accurately
announced 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”.
In marked contrast, Obama plans to withdraw from Iraq, while committed to meeting our humanitarian responsibilities there.
He has stated on his website:
Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war… Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. He will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces
Veterans’ benefitsThe vast majority of Americans believe that our war veterans and soldiers should be treated reasonably and fairly for their service to our country. Then why has John McCain, along with most other Republican Congresspersons, consistently
voted against health benefits for veterans,
against minimum rest periods for troops in Iraq, and
against adequate safety equipment for our troops?
Barack Obama
voted in favor of our troops and veterans on all of these issues since he became a Senator in 2005. But McCain, in order to support the Republican Party’s ideology against social programs that are paid for out of the taxes of the wealthy, voted consistently
against them. And he calls himself a “maverick”!
So how does McCain defend these votes when he tries to appeal to our veterans and those who support our veterans? He doesn’t have to. Instead, when
Obama criticizes him for his voting on veterans’ issues, he
indignantly asserts that Obama has no right to criticize him on veterans’ issues because Obama isn’t a veteran:
Republican John McCain said Thursday that Democrat Barack Obama had no right to criticize McCain's position on military scholarships because the Illinois senator did not serve in uniform.
"And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did," the Arizona senator said in a harshly worded statement...
Energy and global warmingAs with so many other issues, John McCain has made a big point of breaking with his party over the issue of global warming. As recently as June of this year McCain gave
a speech emphasizing the importance of combating global warming, while separating himself from George W. Bush on the issue, and even some Democrats whom he claims are in the pocket of special interests:
With forward thinking Democrats and Republicans, I proposed a climate change policy that would greatly reduce our dependence on oil. Our approach was opposed by President Bush, and by leading Democrats, and it was defeated by opposition from special interests that favor Republicans and those that favor Democrats.
But McCain’s “climate change policy” is a bunch of malarkey. He recently
reversed his long held position on a moratorium against offshore oil drilling, though the
U.S. Energy Information Administrations notes that this “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030”.
His plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States relies mostly on
voluntary emission cuts by industry. He is
against subsidizing the development of clean renewable energy sources. And he has no plans whatsoever to improve energy efficiency.
So on what basis is John McCain able to claim “maverick” status for his positions on global warming? Certainly it couldn’t be the fact that the non-partisan League of Conservation Voters (LCV) gives him a
24% lifetime score for his global warming policies, and a 0% score for 2007.
A blizzard of liesThe frequency and audacity of McCain campaign lies about Barack Obama and about John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s records are so blatant and dirty that when I try to find words to describe them my anger virtually causes me to become speechless. So, I won’t even try. Paul Krugman
says it better than I can anyhow:
Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000… trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.
But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful – you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
Krugman goes on to cite some examples, including McCain’s claim that Obama advocated sex education for kindergarteners, based on Obama’s proposal
to help them avoid sexual predators. Then he tries to explain how McCain gets away with it.
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong…
Krugman then goes on to explain the meaning of all this:
Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that… One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues…
But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern…. I’m talking about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country? What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
How is it possible for a national political campaign to get away with all this?Though Krugman is right on the money with regard to the abject failure of our corporate news media to provide us with useful information, I feel that he falls short of the correct explanation for that failure. It is not simply a matter of our news media trying too hard to “appear balanced”. Rather, their failures as news organizations are due to a concerted effort to serve their own interests rather than the interests of the public.
Bill Moyers, speaking at The
National Conference for Media Reform on January 12, 2007, long before John McCain or Barack Obama received their respective party nominations, explained our current situation. Moyers notes the importance of the control of information to a society:
From the days of royal absolutism to the present, the control of information and knowledge had been the first line of defense for failed regimes facing public unrest…
Then, on the current situation in the United States of America, and the reasons for it:
For years a series of mega-media mergers had swept the country, each deal even bigger than the last… Both parties bowed to their will when the Republican Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the
Telecommunications Act of 1996. That monstrous assault on democracy… was nothing but a welfare giveaway to the largest, richest, and most powerful media conglomerates in the world – Goliaths whose handful of owners controlled… everything in sight. Call it the plantation mentality… It permeated and corrupted our course as a nation…
For years our media marketplace has been dominated by a highly disciplined, thoroughly networked “noise machine”… creating a public discourse that changed how American values are perceived. Day after day, the ideals of fairness, cooperation and mutual responsibility have been stripped of their essential dignity and meaning in people’s lives. Day after day, the egalitarian language of our Declaration of Independence is shredded by sloganeers who speak of the “death tax”, the “ownership society”, the “culture of life”, “compassionate conservatism”, “weak on terrorism”… They have even managed to turn the escalation of a preemptive war into a “surge”… We have all the Orwellian filigree of a public sphere in which words conceal reality and the pursuit of personal gain and partisan power is wrapped in rhetoric that turns truth to lies and lies to truth.
So it is that “limited government”… now means corporate domination… “Family values” now means imposing a sectarian definition on everyone else… And “patriotism” means blind support for failed leaders…
The question of whether our political and economic system is truly just or not is
off the table for investigation and discussion by our dominant media elites. Alternative ideas… rarely get a hearing…
Moyers then explains what we need to do if we are to regain our freedom and our democracy. Here are some excerpts from that portion of his speech:
So if we need to know what is happening, and Big Media won’t tell us… it’s clear what we have to do” we have to tell the story ourselves…
This is what the plantation owners have always feared. Over all those decades in the South when they used human beings as chattel and quoted scripture to justify it, they secretly lived in fear that one day… those field hands would suddenly stand up straight and announce…: “The boss man’s been lying to me. Something is wrong with this system.”
This is the moment freedom begins – the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself… The greatest challenge to the plantation mentality of the media giants is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution… We now have in our hands the means to tell a different story than Big Media tells. I mean the other story of America that says free speech is not just corporate speech, that news is not just what officials say it is, that people are not just chattel in the field… The Internet, and cell phones and digital cameras… make possible a nation of storytellers.
As for the 2008 electionBut as it stands now, our corporate news media has a stronger voice than we do. That is why Obama doesn’t have a 20 point lead in the race for President. And there are not likely to be any great changes in that regard between now and Election Day 2008. So, with all that is riding on this election, what can be done between now and then?
Faced with a national news media like the one we have now, which is determined to either move Democrats to the right or to bury them, Democrats have basically two choices. They can either obey the wishes of the corporate media, or they can fight back. I believe that Americans are more than fed up with what has been going on in our country, and most of them will respond positively to a Democratic Party that fights back against corporate news media whores whenever it is appropriate to do so. If that happens we just may see a real landslide this November.
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