"A proper debate"

The Economist gets at exactly the most pressing problem in the current race.

America at its best

"For what America's voters, and the world's fascinated spectators, have not had so far is much of a policy debate. Yes, there were bone-aching arguments between Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton as to whose plan for health care would work best. And yes, Mr Obama refused to endorse Mrs Clinton's bad plan for a gas-tax holiday. But on the whole, it has been a policy-light contest for the simple reason that there was very little to choose between the two Democrats either on domestic or on foreign policy. Small wonder, then, that the Democratic race focused on character more than content.

All that has now changed. With his victory speech in Minneapolis on June 3rd, Mr Obama took the fight to Mr McCain. Though there are a fair number of things on which Mr Obama and Mr McCain, admirably, agree (a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, the immediate closure of Guantánamo and a more multilateral approach to diplomacy, to name just three), there is a lot more that they disagree over.

The choice will be starkest over Iraq. Mr McCain backed the war in the first place, and he proposes to stay the course there no matter how long it takes. Mr Obama opposed the “dumb” war from the start and has pledged to withdraw all combat troops within 16 months, though he has lately wriggled a little on this commitment. Although most Americans now think the war was a mistake, polls suggest that Mr McCain's determination to see it through may stand him in better stead with voters than Mr Obama's determination to pull out whatever the consequences, especially since the tide of war seems at last to have shifted firmly in America's favour. In general, Mr McCain will offer a much more robust approach to security issues than Mr Obama—and that may help him.

That said, the war is clearly receding as a political issue, just as concerns about recession are growing. America no longer has a Hummer economy (General Motors is considering selling off the gas guzzler). And there are clear choices about how to fix it. Mr McCain offers orthodox supply-side solutions, stressing deregulation, free trade, competitiveness and the use of market mechanisms to cure the problems in everything from health care to education to pensions. The trouble for him is that America is already a pretty deregulated place, and many voters feel that globalisation has brought them much less than was promised (and bankers a lot more). Mr Obama offers a very different vision: more spending on education and training, an expensive expansion of health care to (almost) all Americans and better benefits for the unemployed. His problem will be convincing sceptics that his sums add up, though it may well be that voters, battered by falling house prices and rising oil prices prefer not to worry too much about that.

Both candidates have their flaws and their admirable points; the doughty but sometimes cranky old warrior makes a fine contrast with the inspirational but sometimes vaporous young visionary. Voters now have those five months to study them before making up their minds (and The Economist will be doing the same). But, on the face of it, this is the most impressive choice America has had for a very long time."

I'm not, at all, convinced that these two candidates are the most impressive choices America has had for a very long time. Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, among others, are tough competition for strong Presidential leadership. Plenty of candidates who didn't win their parties' nominations or general elections, like Bobby Kennedy and Barry Goldwater, to name just two, who were fairly impressive choices in the rear view of history.

But these two candidates were the strongest two choices, I thought at the beginning of this race, if only for the most important fact of politics: they were the two most likely to have an honest and open-ended policy debate and discussion. Every other candidate Democrats and Republicans had to offer were either too power-obsessed, one of the most serious problems for political leaders and observers to bring to the table in a liberal democracy, or too full of sanctimony and self-righteousness to be genuinely capable of an honest, open-ended, pragmatic policy discussion. When your whole modus operandi in politics and in life is to prove how right you are all the time and never be open to your mistakes or failures, you are no use to anyone, not even to your own ego. Because you have become incapable of learning from your own mistakes and not just the mistakes of others. And far too many in both packs, in 2008, suffered this folly.

The strength that these two candidates bring, amidst this power-obsessed and all-too-mindless electoral season, is a more honest and open-minded and open-hearted commitment to the welfare of their fellow citizens than any of their competitors.

Now the question is: will they put those open minds and hearts to good use and have an honest debate?

And it is the candidates, and not the various advocates, who will have to bring leadership on this question. And the candidate who can both bring better policy ideas - John McCain, on balance, at least in regards to the war in Iraq, the economy, and health care, to my mind, at this point; Barack Obama's better proposals around diplomacy are an important strength that weigh heavily in my mind to his advantage - and greater leadership to the matter of engaging an honest and sober debate and discussion and bucking the pressure from all quarters to engage more dishonestly, with strong-arming rather than debate, will win my vote.

If both candidates cave to the pressure from both their own wings and various circles that they must work with on critical issues, especially the war and matters of international security and diplomacy, we will all be the poorer for it. And not least because Presidential candidates caving to pressure is hardly leadership. Leadership is having a strong and largely accurate vision and being willing to tell activists to go to hell as you make the really important calls. Candidates who do what they are told are not leaders. They are puppets.

And America is worthy of more than puppets to run her government. She deserves leadership.

A proper debate is a good first step.