Never has a man talked so much but said so little than Barack Obama in Tuesday night's debate. The Illinois senator is a boor who nearly put me to sleep. Because he didn't say anything substantive, I will focus my substantive criticisms on his counterpart from Arizona. John McCain, particularly on economic policy, treads dangerously close to "me-tooism," of the type accepted by the Willkie-Dewey sacrificial lambs the GOP nominated in the aftermath of the New Deal that accepted the parameters of debate the big-government liberals had set. McCain did this on the mortgage problem, in which he vowed to solve by having the government buy up bad mortgages and refinance the loans to reflect the current (lesser) value of the home. This will help banks and hurt taxpayers. He objected to the characterization of the near-trillion dollar reverse bank robbery as a "bailout," noting, "I believe that it's a rescue." In light of his embrace of the transfer of spending power from Congress to the Secretary of the Treasury, his abhorrence of Obama supporting a $3 million overhead projector for Chicago came off as hollow. He embraces the liberal consensus on global warming. Tom Brokaw reinforced the idea that the liberal consensus is the mainstream consensus by asking the candidates if they were for the government funding one massive Manhattan Project-style program, or the government funding 100,000 garages, for the pupose of creating a more fuel-efficient automobile. The debate's coda proved why neither of these men should be president. A viewer asked, "What don't you know and how will you learn it?" The imaginative question provoked two unimaginative responses. What decided voters don't know is that None of the Above is a better candidate than their favorite, and the plurality of them will learn this in the years following inauguration day.

IMO the least Obama said was in defense of Israel - there was no defense offered. It was a Dukakis like excuse for his opposition to the death penalty. Israel & their supporters here in the U.S. better be prepared to get thrown under that bus in an Obama administration.

What happened to the day when a Politician got elected to office based on their beliefs, not how much they could tailor to everyone else's. It seems that elections used to be for finding the individual with whom most people agreed, not finding the man who agreed with the most people.

In today's political landscape that is merely a fantasy, but it would be nice is people started to wake up and avoided the rhetoric, focused on their own true beliefs, and voted for the man who aligned closest to those instead of the man who looks the best or sounds the best.

It should be required for every voter to read “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”. Based on its content, Obama should be disqualified from seeking the Presidency.

This guy is one confused screwed up individual who has his values in the wrong places. Scary.

That's what I been tryin' to tell you.

One of the frustrations Hoover encountered was his inability to get F.D.R. to discuss any meaningful plans to attack the serious ongoing depression the Harding, Coolege and Hoover trio was walking away from. The Rs complaints sound familar.

Guido

Guido,

It seems to me that FDR's covert plans only ended up prolonging and exacerbating the depression.
However, McCain does remind me of Hoover, that one who introduced the first New Deal programs.

Tim

This is the first presidential debate in thirty-two years that I slept through. Unfortunately, I was awake for the "buy up bad m_________" part.