Presidential Campaign

Tonight’s vice presidential debate features two Catholics squaring off for the first time in U.S. history. Joe Biden and Paul Ryan share the same faith, but dramatically different policy visions for our nation. Focus has predictably fallen upon their contrasting views on the legality of abortion. This is a bedrock moral issue for the Catholic Church, and a topic of political interest to both parties. However, there is another profound moral difference that will be on display in the debate. It concerns the morality of our nation’s budget and the growing influence of libertarianism on our politics and culture.

Most of the commentary about the first presidential debate focused on what it will mean for the two candidates on Election Day. But its just as important to consider what the debate means for America and whether those campaign themes will remain in tonight's vice presidential debate and beyond.

And if Barack Obama and Mitt Romney mean what they said, then perhaps a long and depressing era of gridlock and dysfunction in American government can come to an end.

In this digital age we have the benefit of looking back at Mitt Romney’s previous statements so we know exactly what he has said before. Apparently, when she wrote her blog “A President Romney will fix our immigration policy” Rosario Marin forgot to take a look at what Romney has been saying about immigration and what he might do if elected president.

Money and politics have always gone hand in hand. But this year, we are witnessing the first presidential election in which big corporations can contribute unlimited funds to media campaigns that directly support or attack candidates. In this brave new world, big money donors are coloring voters’ views of candidates which can make or break political careers at an unprecedented scale. The influence of big money interests continues once candidates are elected, with all of the access money can buy.
 
We must work to fix the massive structural issues that have allowed big money to distort our political landscape. But in the meantime, we also need to find ways to level the playing field for everyone. And that means protecting today’s greatest equalizer: the Internet.

You can’t even watch the playoffs these days without being bombarded by political attack ads by groups who won’t say where they get their money.  Some political operatives now tell us if party committees could just take unlimited donations, the ads by these outside groups will go away. If you’re buying that, I bet they’ve got a bridge to sell you as well.

The Hill’s October 4th regurgitation of a blog post by the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President, Ed Wytkind, was a sad distortion of the facts relating to who has actually left transportation workers behind. The labor leader’s long history of defending transportation union workers is understood but his rhetorical, shaded hyperbole about presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan is nothing more than an election year attempt to cover exposed Democrats’ rear ends left bare after they failed to pass key transportation legislation for years.

President Obama won’t have a chance to make up for his uninspiring debate performance until Oct. 22, when he will meet Mitt Romney in Florida with CBS’s Bob Schieffer moderating. The vice president’s debate comes before that, though, as well as a debate with a town-hall format that won’t allow the candidates much opportunity for oratory. So, as an old speech writer, I can’t resist offering suggestions for his last clear chance for summation. Here’s what I’d whisper in his ear the night before.

With polls showing Americans trust President Obama more on foreign policy and a debate devoted to the subject coming up on Oct. 22, Mitt Romney has been clarifying his positions in articles and speeches, including a major address Oct. 8 at the Virginia Military Institute.

Romney says he wants America to lead again, resuming the strategy that guided the United States for the 70 or so years prior to 2009. He has a good point, but much of his attention has been directed at what he considers Obama’s failings — leading from behind, apologizing, not being close enough to Israel — rather than toward delineating his own policy.

A good example was his pallid op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 30. It began with 10 paragraphs of throat-clearing (“President Obama has allowed our leadership to atrophy,” etc.) and offered precisely two prescriptions: make the ayatollahs believe “when we say an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability ... is unacceptable” and place “no daylight between the United States and Israel.”

Even in an election that will surely turn on economic issues, Americans deserve more from their candidates on foreign policy.

Though presidents are rarely judged by their role in protecting consumers, President Obama may have done more for consumers than any president in recent decades. That makes sense, given that he took office shortly after the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, a collapse caused in part by predatory lending, consumers not understanding what they were pledging to pay, and lenders granting mortgages without verifying that borrowers' incomes could cover their payments. In response, the president led the battle to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), passed new credit card protections in the 2009 Credit CARD Act, and, in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, blocked lenders from granting mortgages to borrowers who cannot repay their loans. When Senate Republicans vowed to prevent anyone from leading the CFPB unless the Bureau was significantly weakened, President Obama defied them by granting former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray a recess appointment to head the CFPB, so the Bureau could get on with protecting consumers.

Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech on Monday highlighted President Obama’s biggest foreign policy test and failure: Syria. I’ve been speculating that President Obama’s decision to ignore the Syrian genocide might cost him the White House. Yesterday, Governor Romney brought that possibility one step closer to home.
 
From Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) incessant call to action on Syria, to the Washington Post’s Editorial Board writing today “Mr. Obama has stood by — or pursued feckless diplomatic initiatives — while Syria has descended into a maelstrom of massacres”  and New York Times columnist Nick Kristof saying President Obama is AWOL on Syria, President Obama’s hypocrisy and inaction on Syria has become a bi-partisan issue outraging conservatives and liberals alike. Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team finally seems to be taking America’s pulse on Syria and responding.