Hoo, Boy

If we thought we were going to have a general presidential election based on just the issues, this first full week of the campaign snapped us to our senses.

In the 'gotcha' sweepstakes the winner is...no one. The loser is...the American people as honest debate gets replaced by sound bite one upsmanship.

Yesterday, there were two separate developments that had the campaigns firing shots and emails all over the place. First, on 'The Today Show', Matt Lauer's asked whether the success of the surge in Iraq has made it easier to predict when American troops could come home.John McCain started his answer with, "No, but that's not too important... casualties are what's important..." Mac then went on with his usual South Korea and Germany occupation analogy.

Predictably, the Dems jumped all over the '...it's not too important' line. Sen. John Kerry said on a conference call that this latest statement proved that Mac was, “unbelievably out of touch with the needs and concerns of most Americans,”. The McCain campaign responded with a full explanation of the statement. You can read some of the back and forth here .

While McCain's unfortunate statement gave the Dems an opening to hammer him on Iraq, their response has not elevated the debate or provided a 'different kind of politics' as Barack Obama has promised. And worse, it has squandered the opportunity to have a real debate about McCain's philosophy. The fact is, his premise about occupation versus casualties is flawed for this reason: Iraq, unlike South Korea or Germany or Japan, has an ongoing sectarian conflict that makes it impossible to eliminate casualties for our American troops. Unless there is an historic political settlement between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, American forces will always be in the crossfire of a potential civil war.

That's one argument. There are opposing viewpoints. But this is a legitimate disagreement that two reasonable candidates should debate for the elucidation of the American people. This latest round of 'gotcha' politics precludes that.

On the Obama front, the big news is that one of his three VP vetters, Jim Johnson has decided to resign. Johnson is the ultimate Washington insider, almost universally respected. However, he had recieved a $1.7 million sweetheart loan through his association with the CEO of subprime mortgage villain Countrywide. Though Obama first defended Johnson, it became clear that having a member of his team entrenched in the subprime industry would look hypocritical in the face of Obama's critisicism of that industry. When it also became clear that the story would not go away, Obama accepted Johnson's resignation.

For McCain's campaign this was a juicy nugget. They could hammer Obama on ethics and neutralize his attacks on their own staff issues surrounding lobbyists (one of whom worked for the military Junta of Myanmar). But again, this misses the more substantive debate. How does Washington really work? It is a free country, people can work for whomever they want, but where are the real ethical lines in the sand? Can candidates actually staff their campaigns with people who have never been lobbyists or who have never advantaged themselves within legal frameworks of the political/business nexus? Is it fair to ask them to do that?

These are real questions that go to the heart of why government may or may not be as responsive to the needs of the people. And to Obama and McCain's credit, they are trying to set the standard high for ethics within their campaigns.

I just wish they'd extend that committment to an ethical debate on the issues, as they've promised. This way, we'll know how well they'll run a government, not how fast they'll email reporters.

This election has the potential to be transcendant. But so far, it's looking an awful lot like business as usual.

Are the ethical bars that these candidates have set too high? And when is enough 'gotcha' enough? Talk about this or anything else by clicking on 'comments' below, bypassing the Google search and hitting the nickname or anonymous button.