by Richard Meese

Created on: August 01, 2008

Obama would make a better President than John McCain based on superior judgement, creative thinking and flexibility in dealing with a fast changing world. These qualities are much more important to the challenges we face today than McCain's perceived edge in experience and expertise in national security.
Obama's position against the war in 2002 proved to be not only courageous (he was in the distinct minority in the face of overwhelming public opinion supporting the war), it also proved prescient. He warned that an invasion would mire us in a long and divisive conflict that would leave us weakened in the Middle East. John McCain supported the war and said it would be an easy victory that would make us safer. It's pretty obvious who showed superior judgement on that issue.

Obama's position to roll back the Bush tax cuts is also well reasoned. In the face of a 9 trillion dollar deficit run up by the Bush administration and a middle class that is losing ground for the last 8 years in their standard of living, the correct approach is to raise taxes on the wealthy to help reduce that deficit while giving more tax cuts to the middle class, whose spending always drives the consumer economy. McCain obviously saw the wisdom of this approach in 2000, when he initially criticized the Bush tax cuts as "unconscionable" at a time of war. After all, how can you embark on a long and expensive war against terror without a plan to pay for it? McCain showed good judgment then. His flip flop on the issue since is a clear case of sacrificing morality for political expediency.
Perhaps the most egregious example of McCain's poor judgment is his current position on offshore drilling and suspending the gasoline tax. Both are short term fixes that will not bring about the desired result of removing our dependency on foreign oil. Drilling offshore is particularly foolish since the numbers required to make the plan tenable simply don't add up. With, at best, 5% of the oil reserves in the US (DOE estimates), and a current consumption of 24% of the world's oil reserves, proponents of this position don't have an answer as to where the additional 19% shortfall is going to come from. And since offshore oil won't be available to the market until 10 years from now, and our consumption of energy is expected to grow by 5% by then, the best we can hope for is a break even fool's errand, still short the 19% and still dependent on foreign oil. The numbers are actually worse when you factor in the

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