Change vs Experience

Change vs Experience

  • Submitted By: mishel
  • Date Submitted: 10/23/2008 11:28 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 932
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 1

Scoping Out Obama vs. McCain The race would pit change vs. experience, fresh vs. tested, green vs. gray. Jonathan Alter NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Feb 25, 2008 The democratic race isn't over yet. Hillary Clinton may still prevail. But the debate featuring Barack Obama and John McCain has already begun. The good news is that a contest between them has the potential to be spirited without being ugly. It may even focus on issues that actually matter to Americans. Imagine that! Instead of an examination of Al Gore's personality traits (2000) or a refighting of Vietnam (2004), we may get a real debate about war and peace, taxes and spending, duty and hope. Or maybe I'm dreaming. The contrast is already stark. Obama is 46 and looks 40; McCain is 71 and looks closer to 80, though he's got more energy than someone half his age. Their matchup would represent the largest age gap between major-party presidential candidates in American history. The campaign would pit change vs. experience, fresh vs. tested, green vs. gray. Once their niceties about one's heroism and the other's inspiration are dispensed with, Obama would try to make the Arizona senator look like a hypocritical, clueless and warlike geezer, while McCain would suggest that the Illinois senator is a naive, liberal and dreamy kid. The night of the Chesapeake primaries offered a preview. Obama reminded a Wisconsin crowd that McCain had recently said we might be mired in Iraq for 100 years. He suggested that his early stance against the war would strike a better contrast with McCain than Hillary's early support. He also signaled that he would hit McCain for reversing his opposition to President Bush's tax cuts. Obama quoted McCain as saying in 2001 that the tax cuts offended his "conscience" because "so many of them go to the most fortunate." But that was then. "Somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination, the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels," Obama said, trying to make McCain...

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