Neither presidential candidate stood out in Tuesday’s dull debate. John McCain and Barack Obama mostly repeated the same answers from their first debate, and neither effectively explained how he would respond to the financial meltdown and stalling economy.
As far as the horse race goes, McCain needed a game-changing performance to stop Obama’s momentum, and he didn’t deliver it. By large margins, viewers surveyed said that Obama won the debate.
But viewers wanting specifics and a recognition of our new economic reality likely were disappointed by both candidates.
How does one reconcile the frightening news about the global economy with the upbeat forecast of 6,100 new jobs for 2009 heard at Tuesday’s Wichita Area Economic Outlook Conference? By recognizing that Wichita has its own unique strengths, including a roaring aircraft manufacturing sector with sizable order backlogs, and that it mostly sat out both the housing bubble and bust at the root of Wall Street’s woes. Wichita isn’t an island, especially when it comes to credit availability and energy costs, but cautious optimism seems in order. With a company such as FlightSafety International able to announce new plans this week to add buildings, simulators and 250 to 320 jobs at its Wichita facilities despite these uncertain times, Wichita is looking like a great place to ride out this financial storm.
Sarah Palin indicated during last week’s debate that she agreed with Dick Cheney’s (in photo) “unitary executive” theory of the vice presidency. “We have a lot of flexibility in there” under the Constitution, she said, adding that she was “thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.” But as a New York Times editorial noted: “The Constitution does not state or imply any flexibility in the office of vice president. It gives the vice president no legislative responsibilities other than casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when needed and no executive powers at all. The vice president’s constitutional role is to be ready to serve if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.”
Presidential nominees have used the vice presidency to balance the ticket by naming a running mate from a different region, or one who speaks with a different ideological accent to a specific constituency. This means that a president’s death generates a double shock: The nation not only mourns a fallen leader, it must deal with a replacement who may push in a new direction.
Teddy Roosevelt (in photo) – who replaced William McKinley when he was assassinated in 1901 – may have been a great progressive president, but he had been named as vice president by the archconservative McKinley simply to carry New York. The country elected a right-winger but ended up with something else entirely.
Recent elections have lulled us into a false sense of security. But John McCain’s surprising choice should lead us to think again. We should designate the secretary of state to be in charge until a special election can be held to replace a president. – Bruce Ackerman, professor of law at Yale University, for the Los Angeles Times
That’s rather like saying that football teams don’t need a backup quarterback because, after all, the other guy is likely to have a different style and we’d therefore be better off having the kicker fill in.
The death of a sitting president is a national shock. If it comes as a result of assassination or other unnatural cause, it’s a genuine national crisis. That’s not a great time to be fumbling around for a successor, let alone scrambling to hold a special election.
It’s hard to think of a modern example when the secretary of state was both more prepared for executive leadership and closer to the president’s ideology than his vice president. We choose secretaries of state by an entirely different process than presidents, emphasizing different skill sets. To the extent that people are genuinely afraid of John McCain dying and Sarah Palin being given the launch codes, they’re less likely to vote for McCain. – James Joyner, outsidethebeltway.com
Neither presidential candidate stood out in Tuesday’s dull debate. John McCain and Barack Obama mostly repeated the same answers from their first debate, and neither effectively explained how he would respond to the financial meltdown and stalling economy.
