To be honest I still think Gore would best represent the issues I care about (bleeding heart liberal that I am), but McCain has broader appeal, and shows the character, integrity, and resolve that Gore seems to internalize. In the past few years he’s become quite a divisive topic. Increasingly Republicans can’t stand him because he’s losing allegiance to their party on some issues. Liberals love him for the same reason. He is one of only two men in the Senate who had the bravery, integrity and selflessness (qualities quite lacking in politics) to advocate campaign finance reform. He shows a real appreciation and love for his country, and a love of freedom; five years in Vietnamese prison probably does that to a person.
He’s the ultimate hybrid politician; a cautious and traditional conservative with a modern liberal’s social conscience and a libertarian’s skepticism. He wants to ban abortion except in rape and incest but allow fetal tissue research. He advocated using only a quarter of the surplus on tax cuts and the rest on making Social Security solvent for future generations. He supports gay rights but not same-sex marriage. He voted to protect class action lawsuits, but limit punitive damage rewards. To some he seems unsure of where on the political spectrum his ideology lies; I see him as picking his battles and walking the fine line of true moderate governing.
He wants to scrap billion-dollar programs that are going nowhere and cut back on the size of the military, but modernize it, increase the pay scale, and deploy National Missile Defense as soon as possible. Up until 1999 he supported the War on Drugs, now he thinks it’s a lost cause and treatment should play a larger role in US drug policy. He favors merit pay & competency testing for teachers, but voted to not spend any of the surplus on education. I can’t agree with any part of his decision to spend $75 million on abstinence-only education in schools, which would mean that public schools in the western nation with the highest teen pregnancy rate would be prohibited from discussing methods of contraception. He supports domestic environment laws but not the Kyoto treaty, and he supported ANWR drilling. Another issue I cannot agree with him on his stance that violence in the media is largely to blame for school shootings.
In foreign policy, he wants to sanction Russia until they leave Chechnya and doesn’t agree with trade sanctions against Japan, but he wants to maintain good trade relations with China regardless of their activities in Tibet and Taiwan. And he is against a Palestinian state. In a move I find downright foolish he voted against background checks for gun buyers and against banning all assault weapons. The way I see it, there is no reason anyone should be allowed to buy a gun if they have a violent criminal record, and if you need an automatic or semiautomatic weapon to kill a duck or a deer hunting just isn’t your sport; get a bolt-action rifle or a bow and do it like a sportsman. He also doesn’t think we should require background checks at gun shows. Trigger locks, harsher gun penalties, and censorship of the media are his solution to America’s world leading levels of violent gun death. I can’t agree with that, but you can’t have it all.
In healthcare, he wants to expand coverage to the uninsured (although not universally), provide matching federal funds for prescription drugs to seniors, and he thinks HMO’s should be able to provide affordable health insurance without drastically infringing on “patient’s rights.” His stance on taxes is straightforward, he wants them flatter, lower, and simpler, and with benefits shifted from the wealthy to the middle and lower classes. He also wants to make the Internet Tax moratorium permanent, which I think is a nice idea that can’t play out. Eventually a majority of transactions will be mediated in a network environment.
Election reform is where I agree with him most. In his own words he wants to, “replace a battle of bucks with a battle of ideas.” Special interests have pumped so much cash into corrupt politicians who care more about their reelection chances than the good of the public that the term grass-roots has become stigmatized as outdated and ineffective. If you want to get your issue addressed you need nothing short of hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. Iron triangles, pork barreling, log rolling, prohibitively expensive TV campaigns, soft money, and the hundreds of loopholes that keep these institutions in place need to be attacked head on. Senators McCain, Feingold, the late Paul Wellstone and a handful of others are the few leaders with the integrity to place this problem on the agenda. With the exception of them, it’s a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse. It’s a shame the small progress McCain/Feingold made has already been undermined by new loopholes and classic political ambiguity.
Well, there you have it, McCain in 2004…who’s with me?