SUBSTANCE COUNTS: Obama won debate on important issues

SUBSTANCE COUNTS: Obama won debate on important issues
The commentary on the Oct. 7 McCain-Obama debate was sickeningly superficial.
Commentators not smart enough to understand issues or too lazy to pay attention are focused on absolute nonsense such as McCain’s off-hand "That one" comment – a comment that can only be read as contemptuous if you’re a mind-reader and McCain is expressing contempt.
What’s far more important to the nation’s future is substance – and Senator Barack Obama won convincingly on substance.
In my view, the two key moments of the debate were when Obama expressed his opinions on health care and Osama Bin-Laden. On health care, the senator answered moderator Tom Brokaw’s excellent follow-up question by declaring unequivocally that health care is a "right." His anecdote about his dying mother being worried about medical costs because of our immoral system was a great way of showing what happens when health care is not a right.
Obama’s answer could be important to the future of the nation if he presses forward on a health care insurance plan. I hope that he spends a lot of time as president selling Americans on the superiority of the system of other nations. We are ranked 37th in the world in health care and unnecessary deaths will continue as long as Americans continue to believe we’re No. 1.
The other key substantive remark was "if we have Bin-Laden in our sights, we should take him out." Hopefully, this presages an intensive hunt for the greatest criminal of our time – an endeavor which will probably necessitate redeploying troops now in Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Senator John McCain’s response that we shouldn’t announce an effort to pursue Bin-Laden for fear of offending a nation with a dictatorial past and contempt for its own citizens lacked moral conviction.
Obama also excelled on other issues that are important to our nation. They included:
* Favoring massive investments in energy, health care, and education while simultaneously calling for massive spending cuts while McCain advocated an across-the-board spending freeze. Said Obama about cuts: "I want to use a scalpel, not a hatchet." I wish he was more specific.
* Favoring talks with rotten leaders of America’s enemies. Obama pointed out that Bush pursued a policy of not talking to Iran and North Korea for several years and that this strategy failed miserably. He noted that Bush’s recent turnaround on this stand has produced results.
* Favoring a tax cut that benefits the middle class in contrast to McCain’s "tax cuts for everyone" theory that would give billions to already rich people.
On all five of the issues I mentioned, Obama’s responses were important to our future. Whether McCain looks at Obama is NOT important to our future. Whether he despises Obama is NOT important to our future. Whether McCain and Obama were whining about being confined to the rules of the debate is NOT important to our future.
If Americans focused on substance rather than style, this would be a better nation. Thank you.
Shalom,
ZWrite
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