[Straight From The Maverick] It's Still the Economy, Stupid!

I'm sure there will be people who support John McCain that say that he did a fine job representing himself in tonight's presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi, against Barack Obama. The same thing will also be said by those who support Obama.

I think what tonight's debate did was firmly establish the distinct contrast in the two of them: McCain has a very narrow and near-sighted approach to dealing with this nation's problems both domestically and abroad; Obama is willing to have a much wider perspective on dealing with the same problems that confront us, making emphasis that the problems of this world requires a 21st century solution to 21st century problems.

For that reason, Obama may have kept his challenge from his Democratic Party convention speech that if McCain wants to talk about who has the disposition and judgment to serve as commander in chief of this country, that would be a debate he's ready to have.

Point well taken, point well served. The question is whether the rest of the country saw the same thing that I did?

I will not get into many specifics on the topics that were discussed, but one thing that I did notice throughout the debate was that McCain never looked in Obama's direction when making any points or rebuttals the entire 90 minutes.

By his actions, Obama did take the debate as he needed to by not only making eye contact with the moderator, Jim Lehrer, but also looking in McCain's direction when articulating his points. The fact that McCain would not look his rival's direction was an obvious sign to me that he's intimidated by Obama. If this country is to elect a new leader, it needs somebody who is willing to confront his rivals and enemies.

It was clearly obvious that McCain tried to paint Obama by being inexperienced and naïve when it comes to all facets of being a leader, particularly on foreign policy. He advocated experience meant something. He freely dropped names of political leaders abroad and the cities. He reached back into his vast knowledge of history of specific world affairs.

The one thing, however, that bothered me was the fact he held fast that Iraq is linchpin to dealing with many of the problems in the Middle East, this country's fight against Osama bin Laden and his Al-Queda operatives in Afghanistan, even when it has long since been proven that the Iraq was never the place that harbored weapons of mass destruction, and it never should have been the focal point of this country's military efforts for much of this decade.

Obama managed to hold ground by making assertions about judgment and proper strategy for entering into the military situations the United States is now fighting. He noted this country's spent $600 billion over in Iraq and what has it produced? That more than 4,000 Americans are dead. That more than 30,000 soldiers have been wounded. A world standing that is not the same as it was a decade ago. Bin Laden's yet caught. Al-Queda has re-tooled itself. And this country is now dealing with its own economic issues. The only thing that he didn't mention was this country operating in a $500 billion deficit; he did mention that this country is probably indebted to China by borrowing at least $600 billion and soon approaching $1 trillion.

I think because of the immediacy of media news cycles we'll probably forget about this debate in a matter of days. I think what remains on the minds of people across this country is the economy.

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Posted By Sam B. Redd to Straight From The Maverick at 9/26/2008 11:10:00 PM