Decision '08 Debate: Our Choice in Candidates is No Choice at All

By: Jason Lowder

Posted: 10/2/08

A fascinating picture of the presidents of the College Democrats and College Republicans squaring off as if preparing to fight appeared in the Sept. 11 Courier.

The picture was fascinating because the grins sported by the two men revealed a truth in not only 'Decision 2008' but about the modern U.S. political landscape. Not only do the two factions of our one-party system like each other, there really is little difference between them.

Sure, there exist policy differences between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, but are they terribly noticeable? They are like soda cans: one is red, one is blue; one represents the choice of a new generation and the other is the old classic that won't let you down. But if you wade through the all the marketing and slogans and actually crack the can open, you'll find they taste remarkably similar.

Both candidates are gung-ho about escalating the war in Afghanistan, but for different reasons. Obama wants to shift troops from Iraq, "a dangerous distraction" in the so-called war on terror, and "take the fight to Al-Queda in Afghanistan and Pakistan," he told the crowd at a recent campaign rally, according to CNN.

While Obama wants to escalate war in Afghanistan because we have lost the war in Iraq, McCain's reason for escalation is the diametric opposite. "It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan," McCain told a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, N.M.

Economic policy is another area where the candidate's rhetoric would lead voters to believe McCain and Obama are on opposite ends of the corporate boardroom.

While the economy is facing its most challenging times since the Great Depression and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is calling for an overhaul of bank regulations, Obama has hired disciples of Milton Friedman from the University of Chicago as economic advisers to his campaign.

One of the foundations of the "Chicago Boys" theory is deregulation; exactly the policy that allowed banks to offer adjustable rate loans (liar loans) to people who clearly did not have the capacity to repay the interest, not to mention the principle.

According to economist and journalist Naomi Klein, "Obama - who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade - is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School."

McCain, like Obama, has been traversing the rust-belt of America, championing the American worker like 21st century manifestations of Eugene Debs and Bill Haywood, but the rhetoric is a ruse. Like Obama's Chicago Boy sidekicks, McCain, according to Democracy Now, "has extensive ties to 83 lobbyists of the financial industry he's been criticizing."

Until July, McCain's campaign co-chair was Phil Gramm - famous for telling the U.S. public that the recession was "in your head," and that we lived in a nation of whiners. But more importantly, "Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown," according to journalist David Corn.

But the tentative embrace given by both candidates to the $700 billion dollar giveaway to the financial institutions that created the economic tsunami we are currently riding truly highlights why the candidates are so similar.

They are beholden not to the people, but to the corporations and elite individuals that finance their multi-million dollar campaigns and stuff the coffers of the two factions of the business party.

If either of the candidates were interested in reform, or hope, or change, their response to the Wall Street welfare check might sound something along these lines: "What we have is a transfer of wealth.

All the wealth of the country goes from the pockets of the people into the hands of a few. And frankly, there is no trickle down here. There's just rewarding bad behavior," said former presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

The College Republican and the College Democrat shouldn't be squaring off; they should be embracing.