So I watched the final McCain-Obama debate last night, and while McCain did noticeably better than he had in the two previous debates, there were still numerous times where he frustrated me either with his refusal to hit back at some of Obama’s obvious fibs, or with his inept responses to Obama’s rhetoric that squandered genuine opportunities to articulate basic conservative principles and contrast them with Obama’s big government liberalism. It’s not as if Obama didn’t leave him some openings and weak spots to attack, and with a more articulate and clear-thinking and debater, going after Obama could have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Instead, McCain did worse than bring a knife to a gunfight, he brought a gun without a full clip, or, to symbolize a tool both candidates made mention of, he could have been shooting fish in a barrel but was only armed with a hatchet.
I will never run for President and it’s quite unlikely that I’ll ever be a candidate for any other elective office, as running a campaign and trying to be all things to all people and being deathly afraid of saying something that might upset one constituency or another is just not something I have the personality for. But I could see myself as being someone who engages in policy debates, that is, discussions that are substantive and don’t rely on the sort of tit-for-tat embellishing or distorting of records that candidates will engage in during heated election years.
So, in that spirit, I’ll say what John McCain could have and should have said in response to some of Obama’s statements.
During the discussion on taxes and the economy, Obama, for the third straight debate, characterized McCain’s capital gains tax cut and business tax cut proposals as being ones that would help “some of the wealthiest corporations in America”, as if Exxon Mobil was a specifically-targeted beneficiary, when that proposal would affect all businesses, which would necessarily include the largest ones. Obama also repeated his claim that under his own tax plan, “95 percent of working families, 95 percent of you out there, will get a tax cut”, which is a patently false and misleading statistic since not every “working family” pays income taxes, and in fact only about 60% of workers actually make enough money to owe income taxes, the top 50% of income earners pay about 97% of the total income tax burden. So McCain has had multiple opportunities to point out the discrepancy between Obama’s fantastical claims of how many people will get a tax cut and the reality of how few people actually pay taxes.
And if I had been sitting across from Obama when he invoked the name of Exxon Mobil and said my plan would give them “an additional $4 billion in tax breaks”, this would have been my response when my turn came up:
“First of all, my plan covers all companies and not just the extreme example you have given. You know that, Senator, but rather than debate the merits of cutting taxes on businesses and corporations, you have chosen to engage in class warfare by trying to stir up the worst kind of resentment and wealth envy in people, and by essentially promising to punish businesses large and small that make a lot of money because they are well-run and successful. Now you mentioned Exxon Mobil and said under my plan that company would pay $4 billion less in taxes. I ask you here tonight, what’s wrong with that? Exxon is a company just as Joe’s plumbing company is, and I’m not going to discriminate against them or deny them a cut in their business taxes just because they are one of the very largest corporations in this country. Exxon employs over 106,000 people, which is roughly the population of Erie, Pennsylvania. There are a lot of people who pay their electric bills, gas bills, home mortgages, car loans, and their kids’ college tuition with money they earned working for Exxon. When you tax Exxon, you don’t tax a person named Exxon or even a group of suit-wearing executives sitting in a boardroom; you tax the customers of that company, who will probably have to pay more for that company’s product as they raise their rates to be able to pay for increased taxes, or you make it harder for that company to hire additional employees. Now, you’ll probably respond by telling the American people that Exxon can afford it because they posted a profit of over $11 billion in the 2nd quarter of this year, although what you either don’t know or don’t care to point out is that their profit margin was less than 10%, that is, they earned less than a dime’s worth of profit on every dollar they invested. That is hardly an excessive profit margin, and nowhere near as high as those regularly posted by companies such as Google and Microsoft, two companies whose profits you and your fellow Democrats have been considerably less vigorous in attacking. Google’s profit margin was over 25% last year, their profit on every dollar they invested was two and a half times what Exxon’s was, and I’ve never heard you or anyone in your party decry Google for having excessive profits, let alone threaten to “take those profits“, perhaps because its executives mainly support Democrats.
“Our business tax rate is the second largest in the industrialized world. Cutting business taxes will make American companies more competetive internationally and will give them less of an incentive to, as you put it, “ship jobs overseas”, to countries whose taxes are more business-friendly. Domestically, it will free up more money so that those companies can hire new workers, invest in new equipment and technology, or open new branches and expand into new markets, which would help create new jobs in more areas and lead to increased local sales tax revenues in more towns and cities across the country. That, Senator Obama, is how you spread the wealth around, by encouraging investment and growth, not by taking more and more tax money from companies that have been successful and profitable and have employed thousands of people whose jobs earn them income to provide for themselves and their families. Such a thing would only create a disincentive to hire additional employees, and basic economics suggests it will lead to increased prices for consumers and/or lower wages for employees of those companies.
“Joe’s plumbing business might employ only a handful of people, but his company would benefit from a cut in his taxes. There are many tens of thousands of people working for Exxon and other large and profitable companies who depend just as much on their jobs for their livelihood and whose jobs depend just as much on their company’s success as Joe’s employees and their jobs would depend on his business and its success. Are you saying that because Exxon is so large and employs so many people and earns billions in net income, that it should not have its business taxes cut along with all other businesses? And do you think that the federal government punishing their success by taking more of their money in taxes and arbitrarily redistributing it will do more to “spread the wealth around” than rewarding their success by cutting their taxes and giving them an incentive to hire more workers?”
I’m sure Obama would have loved having to answer that. McCain did mention that our business tax rate was one of the highest in the world but he didn’t press that point and he’s never disputed Obama’s false claim that he would cut taxes for 95% of workers when fewer than 2/3 of workers pay income taxes.
I also would have had some words to say in response to Bob Schieffer’s question about the negative tone taken by both campaigns, and the use of guilt by association. McCain was very defensive about comments made recently by Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), where he repeated a dubious claim that McCain rallies were filled with people expressing vitriolic hatred for Obama and shouting racial slurs and death threats directed toward him, and he had the audacity to compare that with the late Alabama Governor George Wallace, who fought against desegregation as long as he could and had fire hoses sprayed at civil rights protesters and other such cruel acts. (Such a comparison comes across as hyperbolic on its face, but then again John Lewis is the same man who earlier this year claimed that giving his support to Obama over Hillary Clinton was a more difficult decision than participating in the Selma march. McCain might have gone beyond simply saying he was hurt by the baseless comparison, and said something like this:
“I know Congressman John Lewis. He has served his district in the House of Representatives for over 20 years. He was on the front lines of the civil rights movement in the 1960s; he was beaten badly for participating in the Selma march, and has the scars to prove it. He is to be admired for his history with the civil rights movement. But that does not give him the right to take the idiotic speech of a few people at one of my rallies and claim that they represent all or even most of my supporters, let alone compare me and my running mate with a racist southern governor who met civil rights protesters with fire hoses, police dogs, and beatings.
“Now, to be fair, your campaign has rebutted those remarks by Congressman Lewis, who is a strong supporter of yours. While I am hurt by his statements, I will not use his support for your campaign to tie him and his comments to you, and I say this now because the story is still fresh in many people’s minds. I remember during your acceptance speech at your party’s convention when you mentioned comments made by my friend Phil Gramm and tied them to me, as if I had spoken his very words myself and approved of them. You said this a full month after I had disowned his comments and he had stepped down from his position within my campaign.
“When it comes to guilt by association, I don’t find it very useful or fair to ask a candidate to respond to or repudiate every objectionable thing said by anyone who happens to support him, let alone to tie those comments to the candidate. Campaigns can get heated, and they can get emotional. You can’t always choose your supporters and you can’t control what all of them say. But you can choose your friends and people who you associate with. I’ve been in the Senate for over two decades, you’ve been in the United States Senate for two-thirds of one term. I’ve been involved in several campaigns at the state level and the national level, and so people have a lot of statements, votes, and personal history with which to judge me by. A relative newcomer like yourself is not nearly as well known, and when there are few votes to judge your record by, I don’t think it is out of bounds to examine the kind of people you have had long associations with. You were a close associate of Tony Rezko, a convicted money launderer and corrupt businessman who gave you your first ever campaign donations and who was a member of your campaign finance committee. For 20 years you were a member of a church pastored by a man who preached racial hatred and presented a distorted gospel based on Afro-centrism and socialism. This man was your spiritual mentor and more for two decades, and while you distanced yourself from him this year, it took you twenty years to do so and you gave shifting explanations for how much of his teachings you were aware of and when you knew about them.
“If Rev. Wright were merely a pastor who had given you his public support, I wouldn’t think it the least bit consequential what his teachings were, let alone ask you if you agreed with them. Some of your supporters have tried to do that very thing with me over Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement of me, as if because of his endorsement I should be made to answer for his anti-Catholic views, as if I had expressed them myself, when I have never been a member of his church or counted him as a spiritual mentor. If Rev. Wright’s was a church you attended infrequently as you worked and lived in Chicago and served your constituents, then it might be plausible that you didn’t know what Rev. Wright stood for. But the fact is that you came to him, talked with him, became a member of his church, sat and listened to 20 years of sermons that he preached from the pulpit, you married your wife in his church, had your two daughters baptized there, and named your second book after the title of one of his sermons. You had a very close friendship with this man for 20 years and yet you told the American people that you were surprised and shocked by his much-discussed comments earlier this year, which I won’t repeat here.
“This election is as much about character and judgement as it is about our resumés and qualifications, and those who you have freely chosen to align yourself with, accept spiritual advice from, tie your political fortunes to, and used your position of power to enrich with taxpayer-funded programs says more about you, your character, and your judgement than 30 years of Senate roll call votes could have.”
Okay, that’s way longer than McCain would have been allowed to speak, and much farther than he would have gone on the attack. But I felt the need to get that out while it was on my mind. This is directed more at Obama because I feel he would do far more damage to this country than McCain would, but this is not to say I think McCain is without his faults, as he has many, some of which I’ve written about before.
