Obama, McCain face test of ideas

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: August 4, 2008

Wading into the dog days, the two campaigns for president wear the look of panting, sun-beaten hounds longing for the solace of shade. The cult of personality that is Democrat Barack Obama has been on presidential tour for 15 months, or more than a third of his 43 as a U.S. senator. Republican John McCain has been a presidential candidate since 2000, when Obama was a law professor, not even the apple of the slavish television media’s eye. McCain is tired, and looks it.
The product of all this, ephemerally, is that Obama, a speaker acutely skilled in transforming platitudes into rhetoric that stirs, was tied with McCain in one poll Monday and holding slim leads in others. Obama needs another political gear but cannot seem to find it. McCain has edged closer, but with an opening having formed he appears to lack sufficient energy to zip through.
Their choices winnowed to two candidates who seem disinclined to shuttle the other to history’s berm, voters project ambivalence. Political campaigns are contests of ideas. Obama likes them, particularly those that fit snugly on podium placards, but he disdains details. McCain likes an idea in particular, that of being president, so long as it strains neither his energy nor patience, both of which are high in demand but short in supply.
Ideas thus being important but uncommon things, we will offer three relative to the presidency. Few ideas are novel and one found is almost bound to be poor. We submit that it ought to be the quality not the age that matters. So we begin:
First, regarding the military: The foremost task of federal government is to defend her people. This is in accordance with the view of the founding fathers. The government’s use of the military ought to be restrained so much as necessity will allow and when it will allow no more, exercised with precision, decisiveness and clarity of purpose. America’s military reach long has extended beyond its proper bounds. This was true in Iraq and before it. Military strength is best expressed by capacity to defend, not by extent of presence.
Second, regarding the economy: Government’s duty is to facilitate productivity, and to regulate commerce only so much as necessary to ensure the common good. America’s great economic strength has been its free market, which compels ingenuity, investment and growth. Trust in the free market represents trust in the American people, that even when they have faltered they are better able to right themselves and the country than is government. The recent federal housing and securities bailouts are an indicator of flagging trust in the markets and thus the people. This makes for a different America than the one the founders envisioned.
Third, regarding liberty: Laws exist for the primary purpose of restraining and disciplining those who would infringe the rights of others. Attacks on an individual’s person or property should be met with swift justice. The government’s role is to establish clear and reasonable restrictions oriented around protecting individual liberty, and when those limits are breached, to punish the violators. Excessive laws, exorbitant taxes and authorized invasions of privacy all are forms of oppression. The federal government increasingly utilizes these means to restrain liberty. That trend should be reversed.
The contrast between the presidential aspirants in these areas is far duller than we would prefer. The change for which we hope is the emergence of two spirited and dissimilar candidates and one whose positions on the ideas that matter merit support.