So I'm not a huge fan of politics, but I feel that November 4, 2008 is a monumental election year. So I'm just posting a general entry of the candidates and their background & issues. Purely for historic sake.
AND... I hate to admit, but this is the FIRST time I have ever voted! I went to the polling center this morning at 7am and stood in line for 1 hour!!
This is a long post so bear with me.
Barack Obama VS. John McCain
JOHN McCAIN (Republican Candidate)
John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona and presidential nominee of the Republican Party in the 2008 presidential election.
McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.
He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981, moved to Arizona, and entered politics. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily in 1992, 1998, and 2004. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for having disagreed with his party. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the Keating Five, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work towards restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, has opposed spending that he considered to be pork barrel, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.
McCain lost his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. He ran again for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and gained enough delegates to become the party's presumptive nominee in March 2008. McCain was formally nominated at the 2008 Republican National Convention in September 2008, together with his chosen running mate from Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin.
BARACK OBAMA (Democratic Candidate)
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major American political party for president.[1] A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70 percent of the vote.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Obama announced his presidential campaign in February 2007, and was formally nominated at the 2008 Democratic National Convention with Delaware senator Joe Biden as his running mate.
The Issues:
ECONOMY
McCain - The McCain approach is more market-oriented and includes cuts in corporate taxes to stimulate job creation. McCain promises to balance the federal budget by 2013, in part by cutting earmarks and freezing non-military discretionary spending.
Obama - Obama favors a more “bottom-up” approach, focusing his tax cuts on small businesses and individuals earning less than $250,000 a year - a plan he says would produce lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans. Obama also promises to cut earmarks and to reduce or eliminate the deficit by enforcing pay-as-you-go budget discipline.
ENERGY
McCain - McCain would promote renewable energy by locking in a long-term system of tax credits to reduce its cost.
Obama - Obama's plan would cost producers more and aims for steeper cuts in carbon emissions. Obama would promote renewable energy through direct investment and mandates for its use. Both support biofuels and clean-coal technology.
Both - Obama and McCain advocate a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions, which would make coal a more expensive fuel to use to generate electricity. Both say they support nuclear power, although McCain's support is more specific, and he sets targets for the expansion of nuclear energy.
MILITARY
McCain - The son and grandson of an admiral and former Navy flier and Vietnam War veteran, McCain believes in the “Powell Doctrine” - that the U.S. should use overwhelming military force or none at all. He said winning the Iraq war would be “fairly easy” and initially praised former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's controversial handling of the war. He later criticized the lack of troops and supported escalation of the war that drastically reduced violence but significantly increased ethnic separation and Sunni refugees. He opposes withdrawing most troops by 2013.
McCain, who said in 2003 that the U.S. could “muddle through” in Afghanistan, now supports escalating war. He criticized Obama for advocating U.S. military strikes against al-Qaida on Pakistani soil on the Afghanistan border. He says Iran must not be allowed to develop or obtain nuclear weapons and warns of a “second Holocaust” if it does. He rejects direct negotiations with Iranian government. He wants to increase the size of the military, but wants greater oversight of spending to avoid pork-barrel projects.
Obama - Obama has no military background and is a believer in the use of the “soft power” - limited military strike with clearly defined goals. He opposed the Iraq war, which he called a “strategic blunder,” and wants to withdraw most troops by mid-2010. He wants to escalate the Afghanistan war by sending up to 12,000 more U.S. soldiers there.
He says Iran must not be allowed to develop or obtain nuclear weapons, but does not rule out direct negotiations with the Iranian government. He wants to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 and Marines by 27,000.
EDUCATION
Both - Even though the issue hasn't caused any large debates - or small talk, for that matter - both McCain and Obama have taken stances, and even similar at that, on education.
Both would want changes to No Child Left Behind, which was an initiative under President Bush to have all students nationwide passing state assessment tests. Obama would like to see a complete overhaul, while McCain would favor more tweaks, according to their respective campaigns.
Both would like to see the charter school program expanded. Regarding school vouchers, McCain wants more funding in Washington, D.C., for those schools but has made no mention of that elsewhere, while Obama opposes the use of vouchers.
Both would support more funding in schools from early childhood to higher education, as well as offering additional incentives to teachers to work in difficult areas. Their plans on how to accomplish this differ, however.
HEALTH
McCain - McCain's plan focuses on expanding the private insurance market to encourage more competitive rates and individualized options. Low-income people or those with chronic diseases could obtain coverage through high-risk pools formed across state lines. He proposes eliminating tax exemptions for employer-based benefits while giving tax credits to individuals and families to buy their own plans, with any savings on the purchase placed into a health savings account.
Obama - Obama's plan, although closer to universal coverage, mandates coverage only for children. He would develop a private-public system in which employers must offer health insurance or contribute to a new national plan or an employee's private plan. Those who fall through the cracks - small-business owners, the self-employed and people who do not qualify for Medicaid, for example - could purchase insurance through a new National Health Insurance Exchange. He would expand Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program eligibility and mandate all insurance carriers offer plans to any applicant, regardless of health.
CRIME
McCain - McCain supports traditional Republican tough-on-crime strategies: increased executions, stricter sentencing for habitual criminals, restricting judicial discretion in sentencing. “A judge's decisions must rest on more than his subjective conviction that he is right or his eagerness to address a perceived social ill.”
He supports spending $360 million on recidivism reduction programs in the next two years. He wants to involve local and state prosecutors in deporting illegal immigrants guilty of felony crimes. He supports increasing community policing, but rejects earmarking of federal taxpayer grants for law enforcement, saying funds must be awarded on merit and need.
Obama - Obama has voted to increase taxpayer spending on community policing and domestic violence prevention. He supports executions, but only for heinous crimes. He wants to reduce racial profiling and sentencing racial disparities. As an Illinois state senator, he sponsored a bill that became law mandating videotaping interrogations of homicide suspects.
He is a strong supporter of recidivism-reduction programs because he said that as a teenager he “dabbled in drugs” and understands why some young men, particularly young black men, engage in self-destructive behavior. “If I had been growing up in low-income neighborhoods in Chicago, there is no reason to think I wouldn't be in jail today.”
