Compare Obama and McCain side by side on issues.
- Economy
The focus on economics today is on the financial services sector. Obama favors stricter regulations over the market as a part of the solution to the current problems, especially in light of the abuses and fraud in recent years that led to the mortgage crisis.
"Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair and open and honest," he said. "We have done this not to stifle, but rather to advance, prosperity and liberty."
McCain, on the other hand, favors a "take it slow" approach.
As the crisis unraveled "he always said ... 'Let's watch, let's monitor, let's just see what this is going to be like,' " Mr. Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and economic adviser to President Bush, said in an interview last week. "Quite frankly, we still don't know. There's still some discussion about what the depth of the housing crisis will be. ... Monitoring is the right thing to do in these circumstances."
Whether as a result of caution or a focus on other issues, Sen. McCain's financial services platform is less detailed than that of Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Sen. McCain "believes there is a role for the government," but "he demands that the government be judicious in its use of taxpayers' money," Mr. Holtz-Eakin said.
Another important issue on economy is that of tax cuts. This FP story summarizes it pretty well. This image says it all:
http://images.dailykos.com/...
(I just found out that I can't hotlink to images hosted by dkos!)
Obama's tax cuts are essentially budget neutral. He will cut taxes for those who make 200k or less, and raise taxes for those who make 600k or more. In contrast, McCain's tax cuts are mostly for rich people making 600k or more, and it will significantly increase the budget deficit.
- Iraq
Obama opposed the Iraq war before it was started. McCain strongly supported it from the beginning. That's not to say that their positions never changed. In fact, both have gradually evolved their positions as the situation in Iraq changed.
Early in the primary, Obama stressed that "we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in." Eventually he offered a detailed 16-month withdrawal plan, that was the first offered by any major candidate. But he later clarified that this plan was not cast in stone:
And my guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable. And I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold.
Obama wants to quickly reduce the troop levels in Iraq so that we can increase effort in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban and catch Bin Laden.
McCain's change in his Iraq position has been quite dramatic. Before the war started, he predicted in January 2003:
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said he expects "some kind of resolution of the Iraq crisis, one way or another," within weeks.
If war comes, "We will win this conflict. We will win it easily," he said. "That does not mean we won't experience the tragedy of the loss of some American lives. We will have an opportunity to instill a democracy in Iraq which will be an example and perhaps force other nations in that region to move in the same direction."
His view changed dramatically four years later:
One of the worst aspects of this conflict was all this rosy scenario, few dead-enders, last throes, that raise the expectations of the American people to a unrealistic degree. I never begin a conversation about Iraq without saying it's long and hard and tough. It will not be easy.
Naturally, McCain strongly supported the "surge" of the military force in Iraq when it was apparent that Iraq was descending into civil war. Obama believes that the political solution is the only way out of the Iraq mess. Obama called for talking to Iran which was ridiculed by McCain as "reckless." However, Bush administration apparently took this advice, reversed its long refusal that McCain still adheres to, and did start to talk to Iran.
- Health care
During the primary, Obama proposed a combination of an expanded Medicare, an insurance exchange market, and cost reduction for health care reform. In essence, his plan builds on top of the existing health care infrastructure, and adds to it reforms needed to bring the cost down and increase coverage to uninsured.
McCain's plan is similar to all other Republican candidates. His plan emphasizes the role of "private market place" in regulating health care cost. Like most other Republican proposals, his plan calls for a revolution rather than evolution of the health care system. The health care system as we know it will be basically dismantled and replaced by a number of for profit companies who will compete for your business.
This is still a work in progress. I will modify this as we go along. Other topics that can be covered are environment, corruption and government reform, abortion, racism.