Week 2 - Election Post

- In my opinion, the most important national issue in the 2008 presidential campaign has been the War in Iraq. I think that the decision to get involved in the conflict has created new problems in virtually every area of government and has negatively touched most of the lives of U.S. citizens. But I also think that we will have to handle getting out of the war responsibly, as McCain is proposing to do. Obama’s plan to leave Iraq ASAP will be good in the short-run for the troops and their families, but will also leave Iraq in a state of ruin and as McCain said in the debate on Friday, we would end up having to go back to fix the damage.
A local issue that I am finding more and more important is the financial crisis. While I know that this is an issue that will cause problems on a national scale, I find that it will have the most severe effects on the individual citizens. I agree with Bush’s proposal to bail out the country’s failing mortgage companies and banks. Of course the $700 billion cost of the plan is not within the realm of our countries budget, but I believe that if those companies went under, our nation would be worse off individually than if we went into debt as a whole.

- In the debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, I believe that both candidates were pretty clear about what they had to say about the topics discussed. However, I also felt that both candidates rarely answered the questions directly and probably just stuck to what they had said in practice for the debate.
Overall, I found McCain to be more effective in the debate. While I felt that at times he was being a bit too hard on Obama, I realized that it is possible that McCain was just sick of his competitor trying to fool the voters with his smooth talking. I believed that it was very effective when Obama would discuss his support for certain pieces of legislation and McCain would directly reference an instance when Obama had voted against what he said he had.
Without television and the Internet, next to no one would see the debate as it actually happened. Electronic media in the 2008 election allows only a small margin for reporters to completely twist the words of the candidates. Imagine if the debates, conventions, etc. were not televised. It would be much easier for political parties to badmouth the other candidate and tell utter lies to the voters without their knowing.

Current Event #1

Article Title: “McCain Health-Care Article Fuels New Clash Over Economy”
Writer: Dan Balz
Source: The Washington Post

Essentially, a juvenile banter started between Obama and McCain’s spokesmen this week over an article that McCain had published in Contingencies magazine. The article discussed McCain’s healthcare plan and how he intends to create competition for insurance companies and compared this proposal to how the government has been dealing with banking in the past few years. Obama jumped on the opportunity to criticize a flaw in his opponents plan and discussed the event with a Florida audience, saying that McCain’s health care plan would fail just like the banks have in the past week. I found it very childish of men that are supposed to lead our country to be acting on the maturity level of kindergarteners.

Week 1 - Election Post

- While I have only recently begun learning about the 2008 presidential election, I have so far found McCain to be a more worthy candidate. I am constantly crossing the line between the Democratic and Republican parties in terms of how I agree with their positions. For example, I fully support the pro-choice movement, which is associated with the Democratic Party. However, I am also drawn to the plans of national defense that John McCain would bring with him to the presidency. Overall, I think that I lean towards McCain because I trust his experience more so than that of Obama.

- On the topic of energy, Obama supports developing clean coal technology where McCain is interested in harnessing the energy of nuclear power. In my opinion (biased by my fathers strong thoughts on the subject) if President Carter had not destroyed the research efforts of nuclear power, our country would be in a much better position (in terms of energy) today. If McCain were to become president, I believe he would be very efficient in taking care of the issues that our country is having with our involvement in Iraq. Obama has always been opposed to the war, and has proposed a plan for withdrawal. McCain on the other hand, intends to take the opposite route of ending the war responsibly instead of just fleeing and leaving Iraq in ruins, as Obama is suggesting.

First Post!

I don't know what to write, I just wanted to have a post on my blog!