McCain Obama: Round 2

As McCain is down in the polls that I’ve seen, and as he’s got that fighter pilot mentality: likes to shoot from the hip (nominating Palin, “suspending” his campaign to help resolve the economic crisis), I expected him to do something else out of the (wild) blue (yonder), but aside from offering to resolve the economic crisis by letting families who are threatened with foreclosure renegotiate their mortgages based on the current value of their homes, I didn’t hear it. In fact, I had problems staying awake at some points. Too much Talking Heads - without David Byrne.

To me they both sounded like parents talking to children who had just awakened from a bad dream (seeing their 401ks drop like a rock); telling us what (they perceive) we wanted to hear: weighing the economic crisis against their desire to get elected and not let voters play kill the messenger with either of them. But we are in deep economic shit, and I thought they each missed one specific opportunity to gain an advantage, tell us what we want/need to hear, and take a true leadership role.

Someone asked, "What would each candidate ask the American people to sacrifice, to turn the country around?", and I kept waiting to hear the 21st century version of JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you” riff, but instead each candidate continued to demonize Wall Street while tucking us back into bed with our blankies.

Maybe I’m alone on this but I think we the American people are ready to hear that we need to take our share of ownership for what’s occurred. Did anybody put a gun to our heads to sign those balloon mortgages, or to buy SUVs whose gas gauge moves faster than the speedometer? Doesn’t it take a crisis like this to galvanize us as a society?

I can only hope that while that question caught them both by surprise, it’s percolating inside the heads of their speech writers and will result in a quality response within the next 4 weeks, or at least during the winner’s inaugural address.