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By BRIAN A. HOWEY
INDIANAPOLIS - Republican John McCain had a forceful opening 30 minutes of his debate with Barack Obama on Wednesday night, the final time the two will meet prior to the Nov. 4 election. Talk of Joe the Plumber seemed to dominate the early part of the debate. But the most illuminating part of the debate may have been on issues such as future U.S. Supreme Court justices, abortion and education.
But the breakout moment was when McCain declared “I am not George Bush.”
Sens. Obama and McCain in their final debate Wednesday night at Hofstra University.
An aggressive McCain opened the plumber sequence by saying, “I would like to mention that a couple days ago Sen. Obama was out in Ohio and he had an encounter with a guy who’s a plumber, his name is Joe Wurzelbacher. Joe wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day. And he wanted to buy the business but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes. You were going to put him in a higher tax bracket which was going to increase his taxes, which was going to cause him not to be able to employ people, which Joe was trying to realize the American dream.” He reminded Obama that he had talked about “spreading the wealth” and said it was tantamount to “class warfare.”
Obama responded that he would help Joe out by a tax cut for 95 percent of the population and went on to mention Warren Buffet. “Warren Buffett, for example, could afford to pay a little more in taxes in order…,” Obama began. McCain interrupted: “We’re talking about Joe the plumber.”
McCain continued to score early points when Obama said he would only tax the rich and Exxon Mobil, “which made $12 billion, record profits, over the last several quarters, they can afford to pay a little more so that ordinary families who are hurting out there — they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to afford food, how they’re going to save for their kids’ college education, they need a break.”
McCain responded and said, “Nobody likes taxes. Let’s not raise anybody’s taxes, OK?”
Obama: “Well, I don’t mind paying a little more.”
A few minutes later, Obama attempted to draw McCain out over the economy. He said the U.S. must avoid the “policies that we pursued over the last eight years is not going to bring down the deficit. And, frankly, Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of President Bush’s budgets.” McCain bluntly said, “Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”
What McCain mostly passed on had been dominant chatter leading into the Hofstra University debate. He failed to link Obama with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as conservatives have tried to ignite that triumverate as one that will going on a spending spree.
McCain talked of an “across the board spending freeze,” but Obama cornered him when the topic turned to Gov. Sarah Palin’s special needs child saying that McCain’s budget “hatchet” would cut programs such as those for special needs children. “I think it’s very commendable the work she’s done on behalf of special needs. I agree with that, John,” Obama said. “I do want to just point out that autism, for example, or other special needs will require some additional funding, if we’re going to get serious in terms of research. That is something that every family that advocates on behalf of disabled children talk about. And if we have an across-the-board spending freeze, we’re not going to be able to do it. That’s an example of, I think, the kind of use of the scalpel that we want to make sure that we’re funding some of those programs.”
Both candidates passed on saying to the other’s face what their negative campaign commercials were saying at each one.
Asked about whether Joe Biden and Sarah Palin were prepared to assume the presidency, Obama refused to take that bait. McCain, however, noted that Biden had been wrong in his vote against the first Gulf War. “In Iraq, he had this cockamamie idea about dividing Iraq into three countries,” McCain said. Obama said of Palin, “You know, I think it’s — that’s going to be up to the American people. I think that, obviously, she’s a capable politician who has, I think, excited the base in the Republican Party.”
When the debate turned to Obama’s relationship with Weather Underground radical William Ayres, McCain said, “We need to know the full extent of that relationship. We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”
Obama said of Ayers, “Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan’s former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg. Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that’s Mr. Ayers.”
As for ACORN, now involved in controversy in Lake County, Obama said, “ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they’ve done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn’t really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names. It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.”
McCain said that he would wean the U.S. off foreign oil within four years and balance the budget that could have close to a $1 trillion deficit when the next president takes office. Obama said his goal would be to end America’s consumption of Middle Eastern oil in the next decade.
McCain said he would not have a pro-life litmus test. Obama agreed to an extent, saying, “Well, I think it’s true that we shouldn’t apply a strict litmus test and the most important thing in any judge is their capacity to provide fairness and justice to the American people. And it is true that this is going to be, I think, one of the most consequential decisions of the next president. It is very likely that one of us will be making at least one and probably more than one appointments and Roe versus Wade probably hangs in the balance. Now I would not provide a litmus test. But I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided. I think that abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue and one that I think good people on both sides can disagree on.”
This could have been the point that Obama turned the corner on the debate. This is a position that will play well with undecided independent voters who could decide this election.
Both candidates support charter schools, but McCain took aim again at Obama over school vouchers. While Obama opposed vouchers, He asknowledged, “I’ll just make a quick comment about vouchers in D.C. Sen. McCain’s absolutely right: The D.C. school system is in terrible shape, and it has been for a very long time. And we’ve got a wonderful new superintendent there who’s working very hard with the young mayor there to try…”
McCain broke in: “Who supports vouchers.” He later sarcastically said, “Because there’s not enough vouchers; therefore, we shouldn’t do it, even though it’s working. I got it.”
And, once again, Obama sited his relationship with Indiana U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, as an example of how he will reach out across the aisle.
If there was an intangible, it was McCain’s audibles - sighs, groans, chuckles - that seemed akin to Al Gore’s 2000 performance that may have cost him the presidency. At some points, McCain appeared as if he were about to jump out of his skin. This occurred more and more as the debate progressed and it seemed to sap McCain of some of the momentum he forged early in the debate.
Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain
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This entry was written by and posted on October 16, 2008 at 12:02 am and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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