[Peace-discuss] The Debate in Nashville

[C. G. Estabrook]

"Of the two performances, Obama's was the more appalling since he is meant to be 
the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to change 
and no new ideas. Neither does McCain..."

	October 8, 2008
	Imbecilic Tedium
	By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The presidential campaign plummeted into imbecilic tedium last night in 
Nashville as Barack Obama and John McCain faced off in the second debate. The 
encounter took place against the vivid backdrop of economic catastrophe, the 
obvious failure of the $700 billion bailout to turn the tide, Tuesday's market 
averages hurtling into the abyss, a paralyzing credit freeze, the prospect of 
savage deflation and prolonged world depression.

Scant intimations of these disasters penetrated the walls of the Belmont 
University auditorium, where the Gallup polling organization had mustered a 
crowd of "independents", people canny enough to claim to Gallup's emissaries 
that they hadn’t yet made up their minds. The affair was billed as a "Town Hall 
Meeting", meaning only that the candidates were permitted to pace about, or walk 
up to their carefully selected, ethnically and sexually balanced interlocutors 
in the crowd and praise them for the acuity of their questions.

It was as though the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, even though apprised 
that fire and brimstone had already consumed substantial portions of their 
cities, with prospective destruction of the remnant, spent a vainglorious 90 
minutes vying with each other in proclaiming the fundamental soundness of their 
economy and the greatness of their civilization.

McCain said he had a plan. He would require his Treasury Secretary to bail out 
beleaguered homeowners. Obama said he'd do the same. It's a sensible idea.   A 
few days earlier both men had voted on a bankers' bailout that explicitly does 
not rescue homeowners but exposes the defaulters to foreclosures superintended 
by the Treasury. The testy and self-important moderator, Tom Brokaw, could have 
swiftly asked them about this but he didn't.

McCain said he'd consider a spending freeze. Obama could have asked him whether 
this would include a freeze on the war in Iraq, which has so far cost nearly a 
trillion dollars. He did finally circle around to this matter, but way too late 
and much too feebly.

In a week when only the government stands between Americans and ruin, one would 
have thought McCain's Reaganesque attacks on government could have drawn telling 
barbs from Obama. The auditorium had plenty of veterans who, like McCain, have 
access to hospitals run by the Veterans' Administration. Obama declined the 
opportunity.

As a debater Obama is pitifully slow on his feet. This is not a time when any 
Republican candidate wants to be reminded that a cause dear to President Bush's 
heart was Social Security "reform", shorthand for handing over peoples' 
pensions, now held in government accounts, to Wall Street. Yet when McCain 
agreed with Brokaw that America's Social Security system needs "reform", Obama 
promptly accepted the faulty  premise that the Social Security system is in 
crisis. Why didn't he point out that had privatization been enacted, millions 
would have already seen the monthly checks standing between them and utter 
destitution go down the tubes, destroyed by the sharks at now bankrupt 
institutions like Lehman Bros?

Obama is too timid even to invoke the greatest hero in the Democrats' pantheon, 
Franklin Roosevelt. If ever there was a moment to quote FDR, to pledge a new, 
New Deal it is surely now.

The discussion of foreign affairs was even worse, with the added burden of being 
mostly repetitions of the first debate in Oxford, Mississippi. McCain invoked 
the uniqueness of America and its mission to bring freedom and light to the rest 
of the planet. Obama solemnly agreed. Neither man saw fit to address the fact 
that America is only able to shoulder these imperial burdens because China has 
been prepared to finance the war in Iraq. The difficult word "China" passed no 
one's lips. Nor did the issue of an immense and unsustainable Pentagon budget 
intrude, nor the thousand or so US military bases overseas.

Both men once again bravely declared they would not allow another Holocaust to 
happen. Both pledged constancy to Israel. Both men said that an Iran with 
nuclear weapons was unacceptable.

Brokaw could have asked them for their reactions to outgoing Israeli prime 
minister Olmert's stunning disclosure in an interview with the Hebrew-language 
newspaper Yediot Aharonot that he thinks  Israel is on a totally misguided 
course, should "actually withdraw from almost all the territories, if not from 
all the territories", agree to the division of Jerusalem and give Syria back the 
Golan Heights.

Brokaw  didn't, though he did raise the recent British assessments from Kabul 
saying the West's war is lost. This elicited scant reaction from Obama who 
continued to pledge higher US troops levels in Afghanistan plus forays into 
Pakistan, whatever the opinion of Pakistan's government might be. Will anyone 
ask the Democratic candidate how he feels about stoking up a replication of the 
Iraq disaster, with a possible war between nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India as 
lagniappe?

The dawn of  an Obama administration is now scheduled, on the candidate's 
pledges, to see escalation of a doomed and pointless war in Afghanistan and 
perhaps also the assassination of Karzai, now square in Uncle Sam's sights as a 
failure and probably scheduled for assassination. There's the heritage of JFK 
and Vietnam for you. It's back to 1963.

Asked if Russia was evil, just like the Soviet Union in Ronald Reagan's eyes, 
Obama said yes, McCain "maybe". Trade? Latin America? Africa? Europe? Nothing 
from either man, though they both agreed that they would flout the UN at will.

Of the two performances, Obama's was the more appalling since he is meant to be 
the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to change 
and no new ideas. Neither does McCain. Yet the post-debate panelists mostly 
claimed the Town Hall Meeting an absorbing affair, rich in content.

We have one more debate, in which McCain will have another chance to reduce 
Obama's commanding lead, something he failed to do last night, even though it 
now seems Sarah Palin did slow McCain's slump with her performance last week.

McCain and Palin are trying to get traction by slurring Obama for association 
with Bill Ayers, a leader of the the bomb-throwing antiwar Weathermen in the 
60s. Obama was eight when they threw the bombs. It doesn't seem a productive 
line of attack for McCain and Palin, particularly when many Americans wouldn't 
mind blowing up Wall St themselves.

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