Can you explain McCain’s goals and priorities?

McCain’s a fine man; his record shows he’d be an adequate President for those who are so wealthy that taxes are just a nuisance handled by an accountant - a number that never impacts their daily spending decisions.

The rest of us, the folks on Main Street still waiting for Bush’s economic policies to trickle down some personal prosperity or create jobs, need Obama~Biden. We don't understand why McCain wants the government to administer 11 million mortgages but says health care should be as deregulated as Wall Street has been - we think bureaucrats already impede our access to health care, and we haven't lost faith in the power of the Government to be a positive force.

In some ways, if you don't try to get inside McCain's head or worry about which of Bush's fiscalor tax policies are to blame for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, it's really a pretty simple choice.

You can choose between:
1) a guy who wants government to do less because he doesn't trust the competence of anybody and everybody below him - except evidently in areas it's politically expedient to say government must intervene like the mortgage mess - or
2) the guy who wants to make health care universally affordable and available while extricating us from Iraq, fixing some inequities in the tax policies Bush has established, and bringing a unified vision to our energy and environmental policies that he sees dovetailing with national security.

One of these guys is going to run the country, taking over the government in the midst of profound economic turmoil. If you're rich, and have no kids, you may pick the former if you so desire. After watching the final 2008 Presidential debate, I prefer the vision of the latter, and I'm voting for "that one."

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Open Letter to Obama Supporters

Call McCain's choices foolish if you choose to; question his judgment or decry his decisions; cite the choices he's made in comparison to other paths he could have taken, but don't call John McCain a coward, or be goaded into the sort of personal attacks you find problematic coming from the other side.

With over 150,000 jobs lost last month and the stock market in a veritable free-fall it’s no surprise that the economy is seen by many voters as a priority for our next president. It doesn’t take advisors for McCain to know that’s undermining his chances. His campaign is struggling to find any other topic that will eat into the time that electronic and print media devote to the economy. They’re “looking forward to turning the page on the financial crisis.” McCain's mistake is in heeding the wrong advice during the campaign, as he evidently did on deregulation in previous years.

"I'm not trying to excuse such behaviors, particularly since he asserted early on that he'd avoid them. The choice was his. Spinning the record of one's opponent was to be expected - this is politics, and a lot is at stake. My point is: the attacks, be they Palin's words, electronic ads, or the phrases and style in the debate are evidence that McCain has picked the wrong team. His campaign advisors have put him farther behind in the polls than he ever imagined he'd be - and don't forget, any savvy GOP insider knew the odds were bleak following the Bush administration even before the economy belly flopped."

The campaign reflects either the wishes of its leader or his inability to get his orders carried out - and in either case the trend is increasingly to go negative, to attack another Senator, to practice the divisive politics of smear mongering and character assassination. But both Biden and Obama have counseled against descending into adopting those tactics, and they're right.

"You may not like what John McCain stands for. You may deplore the strategies and tactics that are being employed with his approval (explicitly or tacitly.) You may question the motivation and/or goals of McCain and his advisors. You may not trust him based on something you've read, or overheard, or because you think his choice of a running mate is evidence of poor judgment. You may think his voting record is disastrous, or that he's simply too closely aligned with an administration you feel hasn't served the country well. But if you don't approve of the various and sundry attacks aimed at Senator Barack Obama for political reasons you should not - must not - be goaded into adopting them yourself."

Frankly, I find the use of Rovian tactics - the same tactics that caused him to defer to George Bush in 2000 - disappointing, and I hope McCain uses the debate on October 15th to reset the rhetoric rather than let his last campaign taint his legacy. He can take back control, or he can let the advisors exert their poisonous influence in a campaign that's no longer reflective of the integrity and honor we once associated with John McCain.

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