Home >> United States & Canada >> Elections & Politics

     Email   Print 

Presidential gutter debates

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 2/26/2008

Presidential primary debates in the United States of America has spawned media coverage and caught the public’s attention, but the debates however has failed to lived up to its expectation - it has been labeled as monotonous and too personal by the public.

Just as races are not always to the swift, nor battles to the strong, so elections are not always to the candidates who preaches, complains, gets too personal, and verbally attacks other opponents on socio- moral grounds, to win the race. But in America, that is certainly the way to bet.

With factional verbal fighting dominating the scene like the parliamentary scenes in South Asia- mainly in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal, most Americans are going to have their work cut out trying to elect their next president.

The debate between Obama and Clinton has crossed all the limits and John McCain is trying hard to save his image after The New York Times referred his campaign to a "smear campaign" and "gutter politics" suggesting an improper relationship with a female lobbyist.

Nonetheless, John McCain has all but sealed the Republican nomination; while on the Democratic side, the race remains as competitive as ever.

The last few weeks of the presidential campaign managed a sense of sleepless drama worthy of some Hollywood’s best selling movie scripts. Few months ago, across the country, it had been assumed that Hillary would be too strong for Obama to handle, but today it’s just the reverse case.

Obama is gaining momentum and Hillary is finding hard to stop him. These setbacks are disappointment for Hillary and her supporters. Had Hillary won the last few caucuses her stock might have risen enough for her to contemplate the presidency.

But it was not to be so, and she is praying for her victories in the March 4th primaries in Ohio and Texas to preserve her candidacy.

The road ahead for Hillary is tough. She has lost 11 straight primaries and caucuses to Obama and has fallen behind in the race for the number of delegates needed to become the presidential nominee.

It takes 2,025 delegates to claim the nomination. The Associated Press' delegate count Thursday revealed that Obama is way upfront than Clinton. Obama had 1,358.5 to 1,264 for Clinton.

For now, at least, Obama has won and there are every chances of him winning the Democratic nomination.

Optimists call America’s president the world’s last political frontier. But are these presidential candidates justifying the optimists call. No, they are not.

The surge of personal attacks in the recent presidential debates among the candidates has shown that when it comes to politics even American political players can get as dirty as they can - a bad model for the emerging democracies of the world.

The debate between Obama and Hillary has lost all rules. They are going too personal. At times, during the course of the debate they look like two school kids fighting in the kitchen for a pie cake.

Critics say they are moving away from the real issues and are spending all their time and energy in a finger- wagging showdown.

Their presidential debates have shifted from the issues. Attention shifted from the suffering of the American public due to economic turmoil, soaring healthcare cost, and mortgage crisis to the alleged personal abuses in their desperate attempt to win the Democratic nomination.

Forget the bigger issues like Iraq, Education, Environment, Healthcare, Economy and all. These are bigger issues and the problem won’t be solved by the magic wand, everybody knows it takes some time, but they have not addressed other issues properly either.

In the interim, the younger generation of America wants to know if elected what these candidates will do to lift the status of the 17.4 percent of children in America said to be living below the poverty line in 2006.

Older generation wants to know what they will do to close the gap between the rich and poor in America as it is greater now than it was 40 years ago.

“Will they be able to drop the American poverty rates and stand face to face with Europe as poverty rates are much lower in most European countries than in the United States?”, most analysts are asking.

Numerous other issues need to be addressed. For instance, why is it that the Americans have to pay 50 percent more for health care than the Germans or French, and why 46 million Americans or so have no health insurance?

Considering so, what both these democratic candidates need to do is to give Americans a chance to choose the best, and to prove that they mean it.

A cat and dog style presidential debates would lead them nowhere and their take on Cuba where Raul Castro is set to take charge matters not much to the American public but their take on life insurance policy, health policy, taxation policy does. And American public wants them to debate in issues such as these because these issues can make direct impact in the lives of millions of Americans. Thus, Americans need a tough president to address these tough issues and implement solutions.

Meanwhile, at the top of everybody’s list is Economy - no one can state with 100 percent accuracy whether there is a recession or stagflation in America. Considering so, what are their plans to revive the economy?

The next question to be answered by them, therefore, is how they are going to pull their troops back from Iraq as sudden pull out may ignite other problems - practically it is not as easy as it look on the paper.

If we look at their manifestos, each has an answer to the American problems - both domestic and international, ranging from Iraq and Afghanistan to the plight of the illegal immigrants, healthcare cost, sub-prime mortgage debacle and economic turmoil.

The biggest paradox for America is this: Their solutions are not new. They are old wine in a new bottle.

Meanwhile, what these three prime presidential candidates - McCain, Obama and Clinton needs to understand is this fact: The US suffers from healthcare cost inflation and the long-term costs of social security.

These are the major issues and enough emphasis must be shown in these issues if America is to enhance its future prosperity. At the moment it’s too early to envision anything drastic happening in the United States upon the end of the Bush regime.

May be, perhaps, the end of the Bush regime is a good beginning for America.