Most of the commentary I have seen from the right on the debate last night followed a similar template. There was general agreement that McCain "won on points" but that such an outcome was a de facto win for Obama, who merely had to appear moderate and Presidential and not make a major gaffe. Aside from that formulation, there was also a general sense that the debate was boring and uninformative. As Bill Kristol put it on Fox News, the Town Hall format is designed to elicit unscripted interactions with the candidates, and between the moderation of Tom Brokaw and the canned nature of both candidate's utterances, any chance to learn something about how the candidates think about problems was lost. This is unfortunate.
What came across most strongly for me was the apparent lack of understanding of the nature of the economic crisis we face and the lack of any evidence that either candidate (or the advisers who do most of their thinking) have been able to come up with any creative ideas for how to either explain the current crisis or approach the crisis. I may agree more with John McCain than Barack Obama on the etiology of the crisis but in point of fact, both parties and the entire New York-Washington axis of movers and shakers had their fingerprints all over this crisis. The current crunch was not only foreseeable but inevitable and for the candidates o blame each others party is disingenuous.
As I discussed yesterday, what underlies the panic is that the scale and complexity of the world's global markets suggest that the usual approaches to solving the credit squeeze are unlikely to work. The credit reflects fundamental dislocations in markets and psychology that is a sign of a paradigm shift. Millions of individuals will suddenly be confronted with living within means that are significantly smaller than they had thought; credit can no longer be thought of as unlimited, the bills are coming due, and the impact of a lower standard of living on millions of middle class people, many of them newly minted in the developing world (new core) is unpredictable.
When people lose what they have come to see as a right or entitlement, after the shock and fear comes anger. Right now, most people are fearful, trying to figure out how to protect their retirement funds, their children's college funds, their access to the goods and services they have become used to taking for granted. In four months the next President will have to begin to deal with the residue. There is every reason to believe that the effect of the crisis on the real economy will resonate for years. The debts and losses being accrued are real; the wealth destruction is very real. As the after effects cause pain for millions for the next several years, the anger will simmer. How the next President deals with an angry people may well be the most important issue for the next four years and both candidates have offered reason for concern.
John McCain has a long history of taking populist positions. He has attacked Wall Street and Washington (though with an emphasis on Wall Street) since this crisis started. As well, part of his appeal to the Conservative base is that he is ready, willing, and able to identify and confront foreign enemies. AN angry population suffering prolonged deprivation combined with a dangerous world inhabited by people who make ti easy to demonize them (Iran and Ahmadinejad's rhetoric) makes it all too easy to externalize our problems. It is then a small step from such externalization, via miscalculation and chest thumping, to unfortunate incidents which have the ability to escalate out of control. This will be bad enough if Iran is merely making their usual mischief; once they have the nuclear bomb, the outcome could be disastrous.
On the other hand, Barack Obama has also been more than ready to demonize his enemies and has consistently identified his near enemies while minimizing his foreign enemies. The Obama campaign's comfort with intimidating opponents who exercise their free speech rights is deeply troubling since it suggests he doesn't value our fundamental rights as much as his right to not be criticized. This is potentially quite dangerous, especially in troubling times. Populists always risk losing control of the mob and it is not yet at all clear that Obama recognizes that danger. Further, while McCain may be too quick to externalize and escalate our conflicts with enemies around the globe, there is often an even greater risk when a President is seen as being too willing to internalize our problems and as a result, effectively, appease our enemies. Iran and their rival Islamic radicals do not differentiate between liberal and conservative Americans, except as ti affects their tactics. Their strategic goals, to gain hegemony over the Middle East's oil, and its attendant stranglehold over the world's economy, with a side offering of Jew hatred and genocide, will not be surrendered to a President who appears to be unconcerned about their goals. At the moment we do not know how Obama thinks about American power or what issues he considers to comprise America's vital strategic interests.
Over the next month, these issues will play out in the preconscious of millions of Americans. The American people will weigh the two in terms of their temperament (and Obama seems to have the edge there), strategic vision (McCain is ahead), economic vision (Obama has a clear lead, though once people pay attention they may realize that neither candidate has any particularly good ideas.)
However, the single most important factor may well turn out to be how the candidates appropriate and channel the electorate's anger. Much of the anger for the last few years has been most overtly on the left; the next four years, unless there is a remarkable turnaround in the economy, is going to see a shell shocked population whose anger will grow with every day that their 401Ks remain stagnant or contract.
One final note: When faced with extreme and potentially traumatic events, human beings and societies tend to regress. All of one's worst tendencies and most immature character traits tend to become more prominent at such times. Those who survive such crises best are those with enough internal resources and healthy defenses to attenuate the worst impacts and persevere despite terrible circumstances. Among the most useful and most mature defenses during times of extended crises, and especially once the worst of the crisis has passed, is humor. Judiciously applied, humor allows us to tolerate the barely tolerable and muster the resources necessary to place the crisis in context. We should be mindful of the fact that no matter how bad things get, this is not 1929. We are unlikely int he extreme to see 25% unemployment for 10 years or a world war claiming the lives of 100 million people, followed by a cold war that cost almost as many lives. No one in America will starve and no one will be left sleeping in tent cities. However, in order to arrive at some equanimity, much humor will needed (black humor is especially helpful at such times. Last night neither candidate gave any indication that he possesses a sense of humor. Perhaps this reflects the sense that in such parlous times, humor is unbecoming to a candidate yet there has been,, during this long campaign, a lot more anger and very little humor, and that is very troubling.
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