Obama, McCain: the Burr-Hamilton duel?
Obama, McCain: the Burr-Hamilton duel?
By Rima Abdelkader
This one, that one or the other ones. November fourth is about three weeks away before U.S. voters get to choose someone. We’ve already had two presidential debates and one veep presidential debate with many polls, including CNN, NBC, FOX, and the Reuters/C-Span/Zogby presidential tracking poll, showing Obama as the winner in the second presidential debate. But, we won’t know until that day.
What we do know is that the attack ads are in full swing. McCain is focusing on the danger of Obama’s policies from taxes to funding of troops while Obama is attacking McCain’s healthcare plan.
The Campaign Media Analysis Group reported that Obama has already spent $21.5 million on ads nationwide while McCain has spent $9.2 million. The Group’s representative reportedly said that McCain has no choice but to be negative given his performance in the polls.
Senator John McCain has already called Obama’s policies “dangerous” six times, counting both the first and second presidential elections. This led me to think of the duel between Aaron Burr, the third vice president under Thomas Jefferson, and his rival Alexander Hamilton after Hamilton accused him of being “dangerous.”
First Presidential Debate – Friday 26 September 2008
McCain said, “Admiral Mullen suggests that Senator Obama’s plan is dangerous for America.” Obama responded that Admiral Mullen said that the “withdrawal would be dangerous.”
McCain later said, “What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a “stinking corpse,” and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments. This is dangerous. It isn’t just naive; it’s dangerous.”
McCain then said, “And we ought to go back to a little bit of Ronald Reagan’s “trust, but verify,” and certainly not sit down across the table from – without precondition, as Senator Obama said he did twice, I mean, it’s just dangerous.” Obama, in response, said that McCain mischaracterized his opinion.
Second Presidential Debate – Tuesday 7 October 2008
McCain said, “If we had done what Sen. Obama wanted done in Iraq, and that was set a date for withdrawal, which Gen. [David] Petraeus, our chief – chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff said would be a very dangerous course to take for America, then we would have had a wider war, we would have been back, Iranian influence would have increased, al Qaeda would have re-established a base.”
Obama mentioned dangerous once when NBC’s Brokaw asked Obama if Russia was an evil empire under Vladimir Putin.
The Campaign Media Analysis Group representative Evan Tracey told CNN that “McCain is almost all negative because he needs to be” and that he is “behind in the polls and outgunned.”
McCain came out with an attack ad this past week calling Obama and his policies – you guessed it – dangerous. I guess we’ll have to wait and see on November fourth who will truly be outgunned – in the polls.
What do you think? Whose policies are more “dangerous”?