Notes on the Debate

[Disclosure: I live in Chicago, and have finan­cially sup­ported Obama already.]

The first note is about the orga­ni­za­tion that McCain cited at the begin­ning of his speech, Citizens Against Government Waste. The one he was using as his cita­tion for the 900-million-dollar fig­ure he was hang­ing around Obama’s neck. They’ve are a lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion, which has the fol­low­ing accu­sa­tions against it:

  • Astroturfing for Microsoft, against the anti-trust actions in the late 90s.
  • Astroturfing for Phillip-Morris, to label a pub­lic health cam­paign that was show­ing results in reduc­ing smok­ing “gov­ern­ment waste,” and for a tobacco-industry sup­ported anti-tobacco bill.
  • Labelling the YMCA “gov­ern­ment waste” after tak­ing con­tri­bu­tions from pri­vate health clubs.

And per­haps most damning:

  • Laundering money for Jack Abramoff

That’s who McCain was using as his source when he obliquely accused Obama of corruption.

Also worth not­ing was Obama’s descrip­tion of the prac­tice of sup­port­ing friendly dic­ta­tors the prod­uct of “a 20th cen­tury mind­set.” A bril­liant state­ment, in no small part because Obama knows how to get your mind going in the direc­tion he wants it to go. The rest of the debate I had the recur­ring sen­sa­tion that McCain sounded like a throw­back to the late 1980s — great for ironic, trashy, brit­pop. For a U.S. President? Not so much.

6 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:
    2008-09-26 at 11:50 pm

    I don’t endorse smok­ing, but at the same time I don’t see it as the government’s job to get peo­ple to stop. Similarly, I don’t see it as the government’s job to pro­vide money to the YMCA. “gov­ern­ment waste” doesn’t mean “bad” in gen­eral, it just means “not some­thing the tax­pay­ers should pay for”.

  2. marku says:
    2008-09-27 at 10:00 am

    you were not only one sup­port­ing obama. now it is known that “fanny mae” which is a gov­ern­ment agency gave cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to –chris dodd-barry obama among oth­ers in lib­eral arena. this is a doc­u­mented fact.

  3. James Cape says:
    2008-09-27 at 11:48 am

    Anonymous:

    You’re miss­ing the point: CAGW takes money from the tobacco indus­try, and sup­ports gov­ern­ment efforts to help peo­ple stop smok­ing when those efforts are backed by the tobacco indus­try, but opposes efforts (which have been shown to reduce smok­ing) which are also opposed by the tobacco industry.

    marku:

    Wrong on mul­ti­ple counts. Fannie Mae was started as a gov­ern­ment agency, but was pri­va­tized into a stockholder-controlled cor­po­ra­tion in 1968. Secondly, cor­po­ra­tions are not allowed to donate to cam­paigns, so the “Fannie Mae sup­ports X” is spin: Fannie Mae employ­ees (i.e. sec­re­taries to Vice Presidents) have given more money to Obama than McCain. However, if you include the direc­tors of the com­pany and it’s paid lob­by­ists, then McCain is actu­ally the “choice”.

  5. James Cape says:
    2008-09-27 at 11:36 pm

    So far as I’m aware, my blog is not aggre­gated on Planet Ubuntu, so you’re ask­ing the wrong fellow.

    If you would like it kept off of Planet GNOME, that debate has been had again and again, and the short answer is no, you can­not. I vol­un­tar­ily keep my most “vig­or­ous” posts off of PGO, but this is not a vig­or­ous opin­ion, so I’m not going to self-censor. If you dis­like that you are free to ignore my postings.

  6. JD says:
    2008-09-28 at 12:19 pm

    I’ve recently been watch­ing sea­son four of the West Wing and I couldn’t help com­pare McCain to Governor Richie in the pres­i­den­tial debate episode. Of course, I have a biased opin­ion already.

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