OBAMA-ROMNEY: THE FIRST DEBATE

Here is my flash reaction to the first Presidential Debate between President Obama and Challenger Romney, having just ended a few minutes ago today. The subject was the economy and the taxes.

…It is always easy to criticize the sitting President, particularly, when the country is experiencing problems. The President is inevitably vulnerable, on account of these real and present problems. The Challenger can get away with 100% demagoguery, as the nation has not tested him in action yet. There is an added problem for President Obama here as well. The word socialism being taboo in America, he must at all costs avoid an impression of socialist leanings in presenting his economic credo to the public, whereas Mr. Romney can play the role of an unabashed capitalist with a gusto. As a result, Mr. Obama’s government philosophy is genuinely unconvincing, causing him to appear unenthusiastic and unsure of himself. Mind you, Mr. Obama is not a socialist, and he finds himself in the unenviable position of defending himself on shaky ground, against both friend and foe. Fortunately for him, the Presidency is not decided by a debate like this, where he is clearly too handicapped to shine.

Another serious criticism on my part is not limited to this particular debate, but can be equally applied to all other such debates in the past, and I daresay will still apply to the debates of the future, four or twenty-forty years from now, unless a drastic social change happens to America. Every debater over the issue of taxation has become accustomed to referring to certain tax brackets, dividing the very rich from the rich, not so rich, etc. It is somehow assumed that any person making $300,000 a year falls into exactly the same category as another person making $300,000. Nobody, to my knowledge, makes an explicit distinction between a creator of value and a financial speculator making the same kind of money. There are obvious tax provisions, of course, regarding certain business incentives, etc., but no debater so far, including today’s debate, has dared to highlight this egregious dissimilarity of principle, suggesting added incentives for the productive capitalist and higher taxes for the parasite, and a general reform of the American tax system which would make an explicit distinction of this nature. Otherwise, any reasonable American politician attempting to raise the tax on the parasite will keep being defeated by the disingenuous but very effective argument using the good capitalist as a shield to protect the repugnant earnings of a greedy scoundrel.