{"id":56,"date":"2008-10-08T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T09:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/obama-mccain-debate-ii-the-bes.html"},"modified":"2008-10-08T09:00:48","modified_gmt":"2008-10-08T09:00:48","slug":"obama-mccain-debate-ii-the-bes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/obama-mccain-debate-ii-the-bes.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama McCain Debate II: the best question"},"content":{"rendered":"

I confess that I wasn’t really watching the debate because I had any interest in what McCain would say. I already know who I am voting for and I already know where McCain stands on all the issues, except for his astonishing mortgage bailout plan, about which the less said, the better. I really wanted to get a better sense for the general governing philosophy for an Obama administration. On that score, the bulk of the debate was a rehash of Obama’s technocratic campaign, but this exchange (from the transcript<\/a>) really stood out in my mind and was the highlight of the debate. <\/p>\n

\n

Brokaw<\/b>: Sen. McCain, for you, we have our first question from the Internet
\ntonight. A child of the Depression, 78-year-old Fiorra from Chicago.<\/p>\n

\nSince World War II, we have never been asked to sacrifice anything to
\nhelp our country, except the blood of our heroic men and women. As
\npresident, what sacrifices — sacrifices will you ask every American to
\nmake to help restore the American dream and to get out of the economic
\nmorass that we’re now in?<\/p>\n

McCain<\/b>: [spending cuts, entitlements, earmarks, blah blah blah. Defense? ooookay.]<\/p>\n

Obama<\/b>: You know, a lot of you remember the tragedy of 9\/11
\nand where you were on that day and, you know, how all of the country
\nwas ready to come together and make enormous changes to make us not
\nonly safer, but to make us a better country and a more unified country.<\/p>\n

\nAnd President Bush did some smart things at the outset, but one of the
\nopportunities that was missed was, when he spoke to the American
\npeople, he said, “Go out and shop.”<\/p>\n

That wasn’t the kind of call to service that I think the American people were looking for.<\/p>\n

\nAnd so it’s important to understand that the — I think the American
\npeople are hungry for the kind of leadership that is going to tackle
\nthese problems not just in government, but outside of government.<\/p>\n

\nAnd let’s take the example of energy, which we already spoke about.
\nThere is going to be the need for each and every one of us to start
\nthinking about how we use energy.<\/p>\n

I believe in the need for
\nincreased oil production. We’re going to have to explore new ways to
\nget more oil, and that includes offshore drilling. It includes telling
\nthe oil companies, that currently have 68 million acres that they’re
\nnot using, that either you use them or you lose them.<\/p>\n

We’re going to have to develop clean coal technology and safe ways to store nuclear energy.<\/p>\n

\nBut each and every one of us can start thinking about how can we save
\nenergy in our homes, in our buildings. And one of the things I want to
\ndo is make sure that we’re providing incentives so that you can buy a
\nfuel efficient car that’s made right here in the United States of
\nAmerica, not in Japan or South Korea, making sure that you are able to
\nweatherize your home or make your business more fuel efficient.<\/p>\n

And that’s going to require effort from each and every one of us.<\/p>\n

\nAnd the last point I just want to make. I think the young people of
\nAmerica are especially interested in how they can serve, and that’s one
\nof the reasons why I’m interested in doubling the Peace Corps, making
\nsure that we are creating a volunteer corps all across this country
\nthat can be involved in their community, involved in military service,
\nso that military families and our troops are not the only ones bearing
\nthe burden of renewing America.<\/p>\n

That’s something that all of us have to be involved with and that requires some leadership from Washington.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I can’t overstate the importance of this. Most serious analysts have long observed that energy lies at the crossroads of most of our 21st-century challenges: national security, environment, economy, and arguably liberty itself, since the track record of oil-producing nations in that regards has not exactly been great (OPEC stands as an exception to Fareed Zakaria’s general observation that political liberalism increases with per-capita GDP in his excellent book, The Future of Freedom<\/a><\/i>). So not only did Obama answer the question, but he answered it in the right context – Americans should be asked for sacrifice, but not for something of minor importance. This is the essence of leadership – to draw people forward and lead<\/i> them in positive action, not just treat the American public as passive entities along for the ride. <\/p>\n

Interestingly, Obama’s answer is fundamentally conservative. First, it is literally conservative by definition – since we are being asked to conserve energy for our own collective sake. Politically, Obama’s answer is conservative because it places the responsibility for action directly upon the individual – McCain mentioned numerous times how great and resourceful we are as a people, but Obama here is actually paying more than lip service to that idea. Fundamentally, the concept of national service is also conservative – a protection and contribution to the home and hearth, an “energy militia” of citizenry in a sense. This is critical in fostering that sense of ownership that a citizen should feel at a gut level towards not the “government” but the society and nation.<\/p>\n

Related – Daniel Larison’s extensive<\/a> discussion<\/a> on “patriotism<\/a>” vs “nationalism<\/a>“. It’s not an arbitrary distinction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I confess that I wasn’t really watching the debate because I had any interest in what McCain would say. I already know who I am voting for and I already know where McCain stands on all the issues, except for his astonishing mortgage bailout plan, about which the less said, the better. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}