“When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad, ‘Where’s the beef?’“

- Walter Mondale to Gary Hart, 1984

I just finished watching the first Presidential debate. As is most often the case, each side will claim to have “won” the debate when it’s not at all clear that either side did. In my opinion, Barack Obama did what he needed to do, but he could have done better, while John McCain stuck to his portfolios of generalities, lies and attempts at denigration.

The minimum Obama needed to show was that he could go toe-to-toe with McCain and portray himself as fully creditable a future Commander-in-Chief as McCain portrays himself. This he unquestionably accomplished. To any rational person who watched the debate, there can be no doubt that Obama is as fully capable and prepared to be President as is McCain.

When the moderator, Jim Lehrer, tried to pin Obama and McCain down on the alterations the forthcoming financial bailout will force on their plans, neither would be specific. This should have been expected by Lehrer, but he dogged it anyway.

In the first place, the terms of the bailout are not yet finalized, so it would be premature to expect either candidate to be in a position to state just what the impact will be on his plans. Obama did admit that some of his programs might not be able to proceed as quickly as he has planned; McCain allowed as how he would support a “spending freeze,” whatever that is.

Throughout the debate, McCain kept sputtering, “Senator Obama just doesn’t get it,” while, in reality, Obama very often showed that he does “get it.” Obama had more specifics than did McCain and presented a more thought out program than McCain, who consistently fell back on his now worn out mantras of “cut government spending” (without saying how or where), “weed out the greed in Washington” (while taking no note of his own culpability in that greed) and “win in Iraq” (without defining just what winning would be).

McCain also continued his litany of lies, and I wish Obama had called him on some of them. McCain stated, “I have opposed the president on spending, on climate change, on torture of prisoner, on - on Guantánamo Bay.” This is a flat out lie. John McCain has never voted against torture. Earlier this year, when the Senate brought to a vote the bill to restrict the extent to which both military and civilian arms of the U.S. government can go when interrogating prisoners, McCain, voted against the bill.

Speaking to the current financial crisis, McCain said that he, along with a lot of others, “saw this train wreck coming.” Yet he continues committing his lie of omission by failing to acknowledge, as columnist Robert Scheer says, “He [McCain] voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. The two main bills accomplishing that, which McCain enthusiastically supported, were the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm is former Sen. Phil Gramm, chair of the Senate Banking Committee when he acted as chief sponsor of both pieces of legislation. The same Gramm that McCain picked to co-chair his presidential campaign.”

McCain again repeated his advertising lie that Obama “has voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year.” This statement has been shown to be false over the past three months by several reputable journalists, yet McCain insists on spouting it as gospel.

On the subject of energy independence, John McCain said, “I have voted for alternate fuel all of my time…” Yet, as Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times writes, “…on July 30 [2008], that the Senate was voting for the eighth time in the past year on a broad, vitally important bill — S. 3335 — that would have extended the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and the production tax credits for building wind turbines and other energy-efficiency systems.

“Both the wind and solar industries depend on these credits — which expire in December — to scale their businesses and become competitive with coal, oil and natural gas. Unlike offshore drilling, these credits could have an immediate impact on America’s energy profile.

“Senator McCain did not show up for the crucial vote on July 30, and the renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time. In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote. “

So, another McCain lie exposed.

But beyond all of this, I was left wishing Obama had gone after McCain harder on several points –

1. McCain continues to insist the surge worked. Never mind that he never defines just what “worked” means, he touts this as though the increase in the number of U.S. troops alone was the reason for the success, choosing to ignore the other salient factors that contributed to the reduction in violence and the loss of American lives.The sectarian cleansing that had taken place during the first five years after our invasion had already reduced the level of conflict between the Sunni and Shi’a sects.The sheer numbers of Iraqis available for fighting was substantially reduced. By the time of the surge, estimates are that over 2 million people had fled Iraq and another 2.5 million were refugees within Iraq. Estimates are that another .5 million Iraqis had been killed. So, the effective population within Iraq was reduced by 5 million people when the surge began.
2. McCain continued to brag about his care for American Veterans and the support he receives from them. In truth, the nation’s largest Iraq veterans organization, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonpartisan organization, grades members of Congress on how they vote on legislation that “affect[s] troops, veterans or military families.” This includes votes on such issues as expanded health care services for veterans and reservists, military death benefits, traumatic brain injury research and adequate rest for service members between deployments, just to name a few.Of the 155 votes tracked by IAVA since 9/11, John McCain received a grade of “D.” While no senator earned a grade of “A,” Barack Obama got a “B.”A separate veterans group, Disabled American Veterans - with over 1.4 million members - maintains a “Federal Vote Scorecard.” DAV is also a nonpartisan organization and says the purpose of its scorecard is “simply to report the facts - how [legislators] voted on issues important to us and our members.”

   McCain’s score in the last Congress? 20%. Obama’s? 80%. (In the previous two Congresses, McCain’s record goes a little bit higher - to 25% and 33%, respectively; Obama’s is 92% for 2006; in 2004 he was not yet elected to the Senate.)

   As a war veteran, I would like to see Obama publicly expose McCain’s duplicity when it comes to American Veterans.

3. And on his healthcare plan? McCain said, “I want every family to have a $5,000 refundable tax credit so they can go out and purchase their own health care.” I wish Obama would ask McCain just where a family of four can purchase adequate health care insurance for $5,000 per year. If he believes that Christmas present is available to all Americans, he is even further out of touch with reality than I previously believed.