Debate

It's all over the news that Senator McCain wants to postpone tonight's scheduled debate because of the financial crisis and proposed bailout. (If you somehow didn't know about this, you can read about it in the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox, etc. Pick your poison.)

This is a terrible idea. Right now, we the people need to hear from both candidates. I'm hardly a financial guru, but it seems rather likely that the economic issues of the moment are going to continue into the next administration. So not only do we need to know what the candidates support and propose doing and how each proposes doing it, but also what they think needs to happen going forward. And we need to hear it now. Not a week from now, not a month from now, not after whatever legislative fix is in place, but now. What better forum than this first scheduled debate?

Note that I am neither endorsing nor rejecting the bailout. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, if everything "they" are saying is true and we're looking down the barrel of near-certain economic collapse, I certainly don't want to risk a Great Depression by letting the markets go into free fall. On the other hand, the blatant socialism of this proposed bailout doesn't sit well with me. (And can anyone explain to me why it is that socialized health insurance is decried and defeated, but a socialized bailout of Wall Street seems to be OK?) Thankfully, I'm not running for political office, so I can sit here and dither. But McCain is running for office. That means that he doesn't have the luxury of dithering or asking for more time -- or saying that this one matter is so important that he can't turn his attention to anything else. At the very least, that doesn't say much about his ability to multi-task, an ability that one would think should be an important part of a presidential candidate's skills set.

And least it seems that I'm unfairly dogging on McCain, let the record show that I want this debate to happen because I want to hear from Senator Obama, too. If he's got a comprehensive plan for dealing with this both now and going forward, I don't know what it is. And that's not good.

Frankly, leadership seems to be in awfully short quantities right now.  To use an overused cliche, someone needs to step up to the plate. Tonight's debate is the perfect opportunity for that. Postponing the debate sells both the candidates and the voters short.