After he injected presidential politics into the rescue planning for The Street of Broken Dreams that prompted a dissent from laissez faire purists in the House, John McBush showed up in Oxford, Mississippi for the first presidential debate. But his performance is better described as a series of extended non-sequiturs. When asked how he would respond to the current financial crisis, he launched into a sometimes emotional discourse on government spending and the practice of budget earmarks. He never explained how government spending prompted capitalists to make hundreds of thousands of bad mortgage loans or create a shadow banking system free of government regulation. Nor did he explain how the discredited Reagan-era "trickle down" economics he advocates will restore economic health. He did however, indicate his distaste for bears, a singular bias he shares with his running mate, Sarah Palin. Gesturing with his "old pen" he vowed to eliminate the $3 million for studying ursine biology. No mention was made that the Pentagon spends $3 million about every 5 minutes[1] under the current fiscal program for which he voted. When Senator Obama reminded him of his intemperate language towards North Korea and Iran, he launched a sentimental paean to veterans, some of whom are still standing in line to get treatment for their war induced mental problems. He also had problems pronouncing the name Ahmed Ahmadinejad. May I suggest Senator you say, "Ah my dinnerjacket". That pronounciation is close enough, and we will all know who you mean. His favorite refrain for the evening was that the younger Senator from Illinois, "did not understand" foreign affairs because for one reason Obama refused to recognize the unqualified success of the "surge strategy" in Iraq. You just do not get it Senator: a "tactic" is something you use to implement a "strategy". Senator Obama rightly discounts the success of the increase in troop levels in Iraq. For one, it is merely one of several coincident reasons for less violence in Iraq. Two, the strategy of provoking jihadists in Iraq while discounting the actual locus of terrorism in Afghanistan is simply dumb[2]. McBush conclusively demonstrated last night that you can go to the forest (or Iraq, or Afghanistan or Vietnam), but still not see the trees.
[1] McBush did use the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship as an example of wasteful Pentagon spending. In August the National Defense magazine said the program could cost as much as $500 milion per ship due to delays and overruns. The original cost estimate was $220 million per ship. The first one built, USS Freedom, cost $631 million in actual dollars. The Navy is not sure the ship, designed for close shore operations of various types, can fill its intended functions.
[2] Senator Russ Finegold recently remarked at Georgetown University: "I have talked elsewhere at length about how this disastrous decision[to go to war in Iraq] has not only weakened our national economy – which is what bin Laden did to the Soviets in the 1980’s and has expressly set out to do to us -- it has created and worsened existing deficits in our global partnerships; jeopardized our national security; decreased the capacity of our military; and, in too many cases, sidetracked our diplomatic engagement and sucked up our foreign assistance resources." Senator Finegold refers to a video made by Bin Laden in September 2004 in which the master terrorist thanked Allah for the success of the "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan".