President George W. Bush is not running for office in November but he was a big topic of conversation in the final presidential debate between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.
Obama often says that his rival would represent a continuation of the policies of the unpopular current president, and at the debate pointed to McCain’s support for four of the last five Bush budgets, which he argued have led to record deficits.
“Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush you should have run four years ago,” the Arizona lawmaker said. “I’m going to give a new direction to this economy in this country.”
Obama acknowledged that McCain had broken with Bush on some important issues but argued that on economic matters, McCain was closely allied with the unpopular president.
“If I occasionally have mistaken your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending policies, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush,” Obama said.
“Now you’ve shown independence, commendable independence on some key issues like torture for example, and I give you enormous credit for that, but when it comes to economic policies, essentially what you’re proposing eight more years of the same thing and it hasn’t worked,” Obama said.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.
- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed
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8 comments so far
McBush did well for himself tonight. He looked like an angry old man some times but he had some zingers at other times. Obama didn’t have enough comeback or allowed his counter punches to be re-countered without re-countering again.
McCain probably won on points but he didn’t inflict enough damage to make a difference.
- Posted by DougHThis Joe Plumber is voting Obama. McCain’s health care plan will have me and my diabetes rejected from my employer’s insurance policy. $5k isn’t going to help my family, especially if one of us were to become terribly sick or injured.
- Posted by Joe PlumberI think this may be interesting.
- Posted by SangI think Obama tried his best to stick to answering the questions in good detail whereas McCain at times went off-topic and the moderator on a few occasions tried to remind him of the topic in question. It felt at times like McCain had gone to the debate, not so much to tell the American people why they should choose him, but more to ridicule Obama’s policies. I’m not saying that he did not outline any of his policies. He just did not give enough convincing detail.
- Posted by Derick Mugambi…I’ve just had a ruling from our replay officials. “Upon further review… I looks like Obama has an edge in this debate also…”
Between his angry man snarls and the eyebrow raises, he went down hill in the second half of the debate.
- Posted by DougHI think that obama tried to answer the questions to the best of his knowelege. McCain wnet on a wild goose chase and tried to feed some anwsers that had nothing to do with the topic of the question. McCain dodged some of the questions going off track and talking about non-sense.
- Posted by marlipObama’s tax plan will destroy the Social Security system.
Obama says his income tax plan will lower taxes for 95% of Americans. There is just one problem with this, 40% of Americans already pay no income tax. Obama’s response to this is that these people pay Social Security tax. Well, that’s not income tax, but a contribution to their retirement plan. So if he wins and implements his tax plan, for the first time in the history of Social Security, 40% of the people who will get retirement benefits will have paid nothing for them. Social Security will then loose all pretext of being a retirement plan, and will become a national welfare program.
This will cause Social Security to lose public support in a massive way. Leave Social Security contributions out of income tax plans. If you take some peoples income taxes to pay others Social Security taxes, Social Security will be destroyed forever.
http://strategicthought-charles77.blogsp ot.com/2008/10/obamas-tax-plan-will-dest roy-social.html
- Posted by Charles[...] to beat a dead horse, but a the Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday made me reflect briefly on the Bush years. Adam [...]
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