Looking at the analysis of McCain's acceptance speech compared to Obama's acceptance speech, the answer is pretty clear.
I'm ex-military and I have great deal of respect for both POW's and injured veterans. Frankly I trust military and ex-military individuals more than I do civilians. Those who have been military are more reliable. They've been trained to give their word and then live up to it. Not all - but most. Civilians? It takes time and effort to find out what they are worth as individuals. So I trust military and ex-military people more than civilians. I may not like them, but I trust military people.
But I also live on a (short) block in which three homes are currently for sale by the investors who bought them last Spring on the Courthouse steps in foreclosure. In the next block someone is even more honest with a sign that says "Foreclosure. Make offer." And I'm in Fort Worth, Texas. Dallas - Fort Worth is the second best market for for real estate in the US after Charlotte, NC. Our prices didn't go up fantastically during the time of free money from the Federal Reserve and similarly they aren't currently going down. The problem here has been the rotten mortgages which should never have been issued, and if the Federal Reserve had done its job under Greenspan they wouldn't have been. But then the economy would have defeated George Bush for reelection in 2004, and Greenspan and his bankers could allow that.
Now there are more problems as a result.
My kid just lost her job because UPS was cutting her hours down, gas prices went up and her car broke down and she doesn't have the money left to fix the car. She literally can't afford to drive to that job any more. Only the health benefits kept here there for the last two years. Fortunately my retirement still covers the mortgage, utilities and food for us both. Barely. She now has no health benefits as well as no job and no car.
Somehow I don't have too much sympathy for someone who was a POW four decades ago and has lived the rest of his life waving the bloody shirt -- though I still tear up a bit when I remember those two Ranger Sergeants in Mogadishu who told the chopper pilot to drop them into the fire fight around the downed Blackhawk, knowing they weren't coming back. Each was married with two children. We've got a lot of heroes in America, military and otherwise, but not too many of them marry a wealthy beer heiress who buys them a seat in Congress and then a seat in the Senate.
For President I am looking for someone who has a clue regarding the problems America faces today, not someone who survived a five year miserable experience four decades ago and doesn't have a clue that time has passed since the formative experience in his life.
Has anyone done an analysis of the acceptance speeches of both candidates based on which focuses on the credit crisis, the foreclosure mess, the energy crisis, the Iraq war and terrorism, Bush's incompetent handling of the federal government (Katrina as an example), rising unemployment, middle class jobs fleeing overseas and so on? There was no indication in the Republican National Convention that these problems exist.
The President's real power consists of his ability to shine a light on those problems he considers most important and thus direct America's energies to solving them. McCain seems to focus on those problems left over from Vietnam and the related terrorism problems he thinks can be solved by use of military power. He seems unaware of the real problems the rest of us face.
I'll take a community organizer over a military man as President these days because that's where America's biggest problems are.
If anyone has done an analysis of the acceptance speeches of the two candidate from that point of view of the current problems I listed above, where is it? Please email me.
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