McCain Sounds A Bit Like My Mother

McCain Sounds A Bit Like My Mother

Don't get me wrong. I agree with the initial pundit response on the first McCain Obama debate: 1) namely that it was an actual debate and not just an exchange of sound bites; and 2) that both candidates performed well, playing to their strengths and minimizing most of their weaknesses,

But there was one area in which I found Senator McCain just a little bit irritating, and that was because his constant references to his age and experience, and his repeated mantra of “Senator Obama doesn't understand x, y, or z” started to sound a lot like my mother.

I well remember my mom saying to me as I reached my high school years,
I'm 62 years-old, and I don't need some smart-ass teenager telling me what I know about x, y, or z.”

Substitute McCain saying, “I'm 72 years-old, and I don't need some smart-ass 40-something junior senator telling me what I know about x, y, or z” and you have the same effect.

Senator McCain was born in 1936, a spring chicken compare to my mother who was born in 1918 and died in 1989, but the rhetorical effect is still the same: “I'm older than you, there I know more” had the same resonance in 1980 as it does in 2008. I still thought, “Hey, mom, you voted for Ronald Reagan, even though he's planning to cut the very social security benefits that are intended to help me fund my college education, and I personally think you're nuts for doing this.”

Similarly, Senator Barack Obama countered Senator McCain's condescension with a consistent reference towards his ill-judged decision to support the Iraq War in the first place when it has provided such a distraction from and diversion of resources from Afghanistan, which is the real center of Al-Queda insurgency.

Senator McCain's repeated, almost hypnotic use of the refrain, “What Senator Obama doesn't understand,” combined with his rude refusal even to make eye contact with his opponent, underscores the generational divide between them.

Many voters, from the 40-somethings on down, and I count myself among them, do not want want condescension from our presidential candidates. We want accountability for the terrible decision to go to war with Iraq and to continue to spend $10 billion per month on a conflict we never needed to engage in. Senator Obama has been much more clear-eyed and cogent about the real national security threat facing our nation, and this threat has never been Iraq.

If there is anything either Senator and the American public “needs to understand,” it is that as little money as possible must be expended in a war with Iraq than we can ill afford, and that resources need to reallocated to actual, contemporary threats, both military and domestic. That will be the true test of leadership for our next president, particularly if the next terrorist threat comes from Afghanistan or Pakistan, which are underfunded and underestimated by the current administration, and the current Republican nominee.