These are the graphs of McCain and Obama's progress, starting from McCain's high point a few weeks ago.
Obviously, things didn't pan out quite the way I thought they would. Part of the reason for this is that McCain has been making one political error after another. When he proposed calling off the debate to work on the financial mess, his share value plummeted. Sarah Palin has received increasingly negative press after demonstrating a lack of knowledge about numerous key issues, and that cannot have helped McCain either. Also, the fact that Obama has pulled ahead by a measure of roughly 5 percentage points in the polls likely has a compounding effect on the Intrade predictions. McCain has to go on the offense; he must convince voters that experience matters.
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In the last debate, I felt he did exactly that. I took some notes as I watched the last debate. Though Obama certainly held his own, and spoke with a degree of eloquence that McCain lacks, I felt that McCain hammered home his main advantage as a candidate -- experience. Other, scattered observations follow:
McCain's backwards policy to buyout mortgages that homeowners cannot pay would help banks, in the long run. While this would have the advantage of injecting liquidity into the financial system, this is a dumb way to go about doing it.
When Obama was trying to cite experience of going against his own party, he only demonstrated an ability to go against certain special Democratic interests, while McCain has a long history of reaching accross the isle.
On trade issues, Obama said:
I believe in free trade. But I also believe that for far too long, certainly during the course of the Bush administration with the support of Senator McCain, the attitude has been that any trade agreement is a good trade agreement... [W]e should enforce rules against China manipulating its currency to make our exports more expensive and their exports to us cheaper.
And when it comes to South Korea, we've got a trade agreement up right now, they are sending hundreds of thousands of South Korean cars into the United States. That's all good. We can only get 4,000 to 5,000 into South Korea. That is not free trade. We've got to have a president who is going to be advocating on behalf of American businesses and American workers and I make no apology for that.
How is this free trade at all? A fixed exchange rate is by definition currency manipulation, and many developing countries employ this monetary strategy. I am unaware of what strategies a President could use to export more cars, aside from price controls, but I know that I don't believe in price fixing...
Regarding health care, both candidates had some good ideas. McCain's idea of having a natiowide compute system so any patient's history would be instantly avaliable would dramatically decrease testing costs. Obama's proposal of allowing anyone to buy into preexisting insurance groups is good. Saying that insurance companies can't discriminate (read: charge a higher premium) based on preexisting conditions is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Does anyone really believe that a 60-year-old smoker should get the same insurance rates as a 20-year-old athlete? I am very fearful of some of Obama's healthcare proposals.
On schooling, both advanced a proposal. Obama would provide more education subsidies, which would likely increase the average education level of our workforce. I was hoping that Obama would address the strength of teachers' unions, but he was sadly silent on that issue. McCain advanced charter schools and a voucher system, which would be a step towards a free market in education. Increasing charter schools would allow more talented students to escape the death that is the American public school system. Even a limited voucher system for procuring education would be an economist's dream come true. Rewarding and punishing teachers would provide them with the incentive to teach well.
In response to McCain's proposed voucher system, Obama said that "[w]here we disagree is on the idea that we can somehow give out vouchers -- give vouchers as a way of securing the problems in our education system". Too bad, because if Obama supported that I'd be much more likely to vote for him. Instead, he is in favor ofthe federal government stepping up its role in providing higher salaries for teachers. This wouldn't really solve anything, because teachers have been failing to deliver a quality education for decades, despite consistent salary increases. Allowing market forces to take effect would be -- and already is, as has been proven in other countries -- the best way to assure a quality education for children.
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