I've been thinking about that last question at the 2nd debate, from Patty in New Hampshire - "what don't you know and how will you learn it?"
It was such a wide-open question that it took me by surprise. At first I dismissed it as almost a joke, a fluffy, job interview trick question, like "what's your greatest weakness?" I was relieved that Barack handled it deftly, albeit kind of blandly.
And then I thought about it, and I realized that he really missed a huge opportunity. Thankfully, so did John McCain.
Armchair quarterback is the easiest job in the world, so let me take a crack:
- I don't know whether it is true that George Bush forged the Habbush letter to Saddam that claimed that Mohammed Atta trained for 9/11 in Iraq with Saddam Hussein's knowledge, as Ron Suskin reported in his book, The Way of the World.
- I don't know if it's true that the Bush Administration was using the Department of Justice for political ends, and if that is why they too the unprecedented act of firing 9 U.S. Attorneys that Bush appointed in the middle of his term.
- I don't know if the Bush Administration ordered or authorized the acts that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal.
- I don't know which energy executives that Dick Cheney met with in early 2002 in forming the Bush Administration's national energy strategy that somehow resulted in Exxon Mobil earning record profits all these years and consumers losing at the pump.
- I don't know if the Bush Administration has been cooking the books on Global Warming by pressuring scientists to change their findings to downplay the threat of climate change.
- I don't know what John McCain was referring to when he recently said that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" at a time when it appears that our financial system is built on sand.
- I don't know what John McCain thinks we should do about the foreclosure and financial crisis because he keeps giving different answers to different people, including a whopping, brand new proposal tonight to purchase everyone's mortgage on the taxpayer's dollar.
There's a lot I don't know, there's a lot we don't know, and as President, there's a lot I intend to find some of this stuff out.
Postscript
Thank god that John McCain also missed the opportunity. He could stolen the debate with a witty "I don't know if Barack Obama knows who Barack Obama is, and maybe that's why he has to ask his wife every morning" or some such.