thoughts from a brokenSoldier

Many people in today’s political climate make continual references to a new kind of political methodology that has become prominent in recent years.  They call it "Rovian politics," and though it probably surfaced long before that gutter weasel ever did, he is the one that has made it so annoyingly efficient as of late.  It involves boiling down everything you talk about into slogans, and - in effect - running the nation in the exact same way politicians have come to run their campaigns.  The results of this have given us a political system that is utterly averse to deep analysis of the issues by the majority of the voters.  Naturally, it is easier for the great multitude of the population to be taken hostage by the production and marketing of political agendas that have been simplified down to the point that they can be conveyed in one phrase.  This also comes with the added bonus that such politicians can point to their opponent, who may have a more details-driven proposal, and say that his stance does not make sense, or is somehow "out of touch" because it cannot be explained in catch phrases. 

The effects of this are definitely not limited to our country, either.  In true American fashion, we have taken a product that works and exported it to the nations of the rest of the world.  If you ever catch The Daily Show, you might have seen an interview with James Harding, an English citizen who wrote a booke called Alpha Dogs: The Americans Who Turned Political Spin into a Global Business.  He tells a short anecdote about how American political strategists have worked their way into his country’s political scene, all while their patrons are promising a new kind of politics.  It is insidious because it is altogether dishonest, in that their "product" is what has driven our nation’s politics for most of the recent years past, and it has gotten us into a huge hole.

But, I digress.  To get back to my original point, I presented all of that in order to show a current example that centers around our upcoming Presidential election and the issue that will be the absolute most central to whether or not we will be able to climb out of that huge hole we’ve fallen into.  When it comes to the economy, we are going to need a President that can make serious moves to staunch the bleeding of our market, along with patching up our infrastructure and improving the situations of our citizens.  When it comes to such a monumental task, simple, catchy slogans and generic, easily memorized phrases are not going to fix the problem.  It is precisely because we are in such dire straits that we need to fashion a solution that takes longer than five minutes to explain.

I was reading through the New York Times site today, when I came across this article:

How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy

It is a long, detailed account of why Obama holds seemingly contrasting views on the economy at one time, and how he has come to hold those views.  It became apparent to me after about ten minutes of reading that this is something everyone needs to read, because once I did, the views were not contrasting at all.  It only seems that way because Obama’s economic ideology is well thought out, highly detailed, and cannot be bolied down into five minutes of rhetoric.  If you tried to simplify it like that, you’d get…you guessed it - the impression that he holds conflicting views on the economy. 

In the article, which will be released Sunday, David Leonhardt skillfully explains that Obama’s views are actually a melding of the two different schools of economic thought within the Democratic Party, the origins of which lie with two men from President Clinton’s administration, Bob Reich and Bob Lubin.  He goes on to show that in the days since the "Battle of the Bobs," these two men have changed their views somewhat:

To understand where Obama stands, you first have to know that, for 15 years, Democratic Party economics have been defined by a struggle that took place during the start of the Clinton administration. It was the battle of the Bobs. On one side was Clinton’s labor secretary and longtime friend, Bob Reich, who argued that the government should invest in roads, bridges, worker training and the like to stimulate the economy and help the middle class. On the other side was Bob Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive turned White House aide, who favored reducing the deficit to soothe the bond market, bring down interest rates and get the economy moving again. Clinton cast his lot with Rubin, and to this day the first question about any Democrat’s economic outlook is often where his heart lies, with Reich or Rubin, the left or the center, the government or the market.

Obama has obviously studied this debate, and early on during the flight to Chicago, he told me a story about Reich and Rubin. The previous week, Obama convened a discussion with a high-powered group of economists and chief executives. He was sitting at a conference table, with Rubin two seats to his left and Reich across from him. “One of the points I raised,” Obama told me, “is if you just use you, Bob, and you, Bob, as caricatures, the truth is, both of you acknowledge the world is more complicated.” By this, Obama didn’t simply mean that their views were more nuanced than many outsiders understood. He meant that both have come to acknowledge that the other man is, in part, correct. The two now occupy more similar ideological places than they did in 1993. The battle of the Bobs may not be completely over, but it has certainly been suspended.

In short, it takes the time to sit down and actually pay attention to what Obama thinks and how he has come to those viewpoints to truly understand where he thinks the nation needs to go economically, and how he thinks we can get there.  To contrast, I looked up McCain’s economic vision on his own campaign’s website, and I got the following.

McCain’s Economic Plans

If you go to that link and look around, you’ll find things such as this:

Health Care Reform -

Chronic Disease: Chronic conditions account for three-quarters of the nation’s annual health care bill. By emphasizing prevention, early intervention, healthy habits, new treatment models, new public health infrastructure and the use of information technology, we can significantly reduce these costs. We should dedicate more federal research to treating and curing chronic disease.

Cheaper Drugs: John McCain will look to bring greater affordability and competition to our drug markets through safe re-importation of drugs and faster introduction of generic drugs.

Gas and Food Prices -

John McCain believes we should send a strong message to world markets. Under his plan, the United States will be telling oil producing countries and oil speculators that our dependence on foreign oil will come to an end - and the impact will be lower prices at the pump.

John McCain’s policies will increase the value of the dollar and thus reduce the price of oil. In recent years, the declining value of the dollar has added to the cost of imported oil. This will change. Americans will have a stronger economy, a stronger dollar and greater purchasing power for oil, gas and food.

Balance the Budget by 2013 -

Reasonable economic growth. Growth is an imperative - historically the greatest success in reducing deficits (late 1980s; late 1990s) took place in the context of economic growth.

Comprehensive spending controls. Bringing the budget to balance will require across-the-board scrutiny of spending and making tough choices on new spending proposals.

Taxes -

Cut The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 To 25 Percent: A lower corporate tax rate is essential to keeping good jobs in the United States. America was once a low-tax business environment, but as our trade partners lowered their rates, America failed to keep pace. We now have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, making America a less attractive place for companies to do business. American workers deserve the chance to make fine products here and sell them around the globe.

Keep Tax Rates Low: Entrepreneurs are at the heart of American innovation, growth and prosperity. Entrepreneurs create the ultimate job security - a new, better opportunity if your current job goes away. Entrepreneurs should not be taxed into submission. John McCain will keep the top tax rate at 35 percent, maintain the 15 percent rates on dividends and capital gains, and phase-out the Alternative Minimum Tax. Small businesses are the heart of job growth; raising taxes on them hurts every worker.

That is by no means all-inclusive, but it does give you an idea of how he is presenting his plan.  All of the eight issues in his plan consist of no more than one or two pages worth of text, and rarely does it ever drop down into the weeds to tell us exactly how he is going to do all these things he is proposing.  Just look at his entire tax page for a good example.  Every single bullet point on his tax page addresses how he will cut, credit, or ban taxes.  This may sound great in a five minute sound bite, but dig a little deeper into the issue, and you’ll see that the rest of his proposals, such as his $300 million prize for a more efficient car battery and $5,000 tax credit for "each and every family" that buys a zero-emissions car, involve paying out or crediting huge amounts of money in order to reach his goals.  Low taxes sounds good, but exactly how are we going to pay for all of these new incentive-based programs if we’re paying substantially lower taxes?  (And cutting out the war cannot be a reason, because he has famously opposed such a thing, saying that the war can be ended by 2013 - the end of his first term, by which time he will have also balanced the budget.)

My point in all of this is that McCain is banking on the fact that voters typically - and especially in our current climate of oversimplification of vital issues in politics - will not dig too deep into his actual policies and plans.  The link I posted to McCain’s plan was his very own campaign website, and yet it still did not dip down to the level of explanation the would allow the voters to evaluate exactly how he proposes to carry out his policies.  If there is any place where it is feasible to go into that kind of detail, it would be a website where voters could go and spend as much - or as little - time as they pleased in an effort to understand his policies. (To be fair, Obama’s economy page - while going into more detail than McCain’s - still leaves a bit to be desired, but the site also gives you a link to his full agenda.  McCain’s site offers links to seemingly the same thing, but when you click on them at the bottom of each section, you get routed to another page where he lists almost the same topics and statements with additional platitudes added, but not much more in the way of detail and methods.)

I’ll wrap up this novel now, but the length of this post only goes to show my point even more clearly.  When it comes to things that are as vital to our future as how we can climb out of this rut we are in economically, the impetus is upon us all to take a good, hard look at our options and truly consider what we should do.  That takes longer than a few minutes, and it is damn well worth it.  Our unique form of democracy lives - and can very well die - upon the assumption that we have an adequately educated electorate that makes informed decisions.  Please, for your sake, and for the sake of our country and our future, take the time.