so maybe they won't debate

McCain questions


Obama questions


For McCain the big one I'd actually want an answer to is the premise and purpose of judges and judicial review. McCain-Feingold smacks of unconstitutionality, and even McCain is having to evade his own funding restrictions during his campaign now. Sort of ironic. Foreign policy I think is pretty obvious what he'll do (things I won't generally agree with in principle, but possibly in execution.. McCain was a strong advocate of counter-insurgency warfare, which was really the only hope of the idiotic Iraq campaign).

As for his global warming campaign, I think it's known where I stand. Spending trillions of dollars to accomplish not very much doesn't give our grandchildren a better world. I have no argument with being anti-pollution, energy independence, and so forth. I'm not sold that we have the capacity to control nature and climate though, or even that we should try to.

The rest: politicians love to talk out of one voice and use another. Punishing "greed"?, sounds like political pandering. Common people don't understand the utility of "greed". To be fair there are some needs to examine the practices of trading firms or banks, but some of those same practices that supposedly were made by these evil firms were mandated by government in the first place (sub-prime loans for example).

As for Obama: The most interesting one is the anti-Affirmative action laws in CA, WA, and MI, which Obama campaigned against. The premise of these laws is to end both discrimination, which is generally both bad and unproductive, and reverse discrimination, which is generally both bad and unproductive. There are valid concerns in as far as social contexts. But those same social contexts that make success difficult still exist regardless of whether we use preferential treatment or not. Perhaps it would be best to focus on removing the social problems that have so poisoned the possibility of successes in some minorities (even Obama's rhetoric has acknowledged this point).

Again, it's unclear what his judicial relationship is. "Empathy" is a rather vague premise, and as Will points out, goes in directions that we clearly do not anticipate. At least legal precedents and constitutionally strict interpretations are predictable on most counts, whereas human emotions are hardly a model of consistency.

And of course, his rhetoric is that of a Marxist (not that McCain is often different in his pandering). Anti-trade, anti-profit, anti-corporate. Thanks, but no thanks. Give up your profits, tax your profits, or don't go into business and thus make profits.. so.. how exactly do people get jobs in Obama's world?