I’m a bit late on this particular topic, having just got back from vacation. I watched part of the presidential candidates’ debate in the airport yesterday and finished watching it this evening, all thanks to YouTube. The fact that I can do that, especially given how none of the major news networks were even playing clips of it on Saturday morning (there was no shortage of talk about it, of course), is really astonishing. Add to that that I’ve just spent the last few hours watching clips from the 1992, 2000 and 2004 debates — which I’ll write on shortly — through the same service and one wonders whether you could undersell it. (Matt Good also liked the BBC’s coverage of the debate, which I’m looking forward to trying this week.)
As for the first 2008 presidential candidates’ debate itself, I was happy to see that Afghanistan got its own question: there’s a policy that will directly affect Canadians next year. As with most of the debate, I thought that both candidates made good points on this topic: McCain was right to link it to Iraq: Iraq must be part of any plan to combat islamic extremism. (Much has been written about the incorrect links that were drawn between the conflicts in 2003, so I won’t get into that whole kettle of fish.) I suppose it’s a bit early to say whether the bleed over concerns of last year were overblown, but even if they were, the presence of troops on foreign soil will always insight extremism. Obama was also right: Afghanistan, and particularly the tribal areas of North Waziristan, should be the focus of all those who oppose islamic extremism: the core of al-Qaeda is likely still there, and free to operate (at least under the old regime in Pakistan).
However, Obama’s repeated calls for bin Laden and his failure to distinguish between AQ core and those they inspire did annoy me a bit. I do understand that these sorts of semantics can really muddle a message, but if he really were for change, you’d think he would step away from this silly rhetoric around safety and security and acknowledge that the country has bigger problems right now. I was skeptical of his claim that the biggest threat the country faces is nuclear material in the hands of terrorists. But McCain’s view of the challenges was even narrower: his comment about major spending freezes was completely unrealistic, and Obama blew him out of the water on the Iranian sanctions point: any president who fails to include China and Russia — I loved Obama’s “which I’m sure John will agree are not democracies” in reference to McCain’s “coalition of democracies” — and their associated investments in the equation does so at their own peril.
In some of the commentary on the 2000 debates, it was noted that no issue dominated them, or the campaign in general. The state of social security was discussed, and it came up again in 2004. Nader called it an invented crisis in an interview with Charlie Rose during the 2000 election, quoting some source on how it could pay out to the 2030s right now. National security didn’t come up once in the clips I watched, and one commentator said that foreign policy was uninteresting to voters — unless there was a war or something, which is a great quote the year before the GWOT.
Nader also talked about the need for campaign funding reform in that same interview; he said it would be his highest priority. Interestingly, he also pointed out that McCain gave Bush Jr. a run for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination on that very issue. I don’t hear much about that these days (or Nader, for that matter, unfortunately).
I wasn’t paying much attention to politics back in 2000, so the commentary that framed VP Gore as the incumbent was new to me; there was talk of his foreign policy experience, and some issues with his image: he didn’t want to be seen as the “mean guy” attacking the congenial Bush Jr., which sounds like a joke after the success of An Inconvenient Truth.
There was also a montage of Bush Jr. clips on foreign policy from around 2000 that were jaw-dropping, frankly: talk of humility on the world stage, keeping the troops off foreign soil and encouraging the locals to build their nations. One of the recent comments said, “9/11 happened to this guy,” and I’m inclined to agree; his policies were turned upside down.
