Investing in the Future of a Country: Vice Presidential candidates

Now that both the RNC and the DNC have ended and the federal election has “officially” kicked off after twelve months of campaigning there are still a number of issues that are open for discussion and examination. What we now have is an old senate veteran against an intrepid new comer. I write of course about the Vice president candidates. The issue that is dominating this race more than anything is of course the economy. Which candidate is best suited for dealing with the current financial problems that are sweeping the United States. How does Sarah Palin stack up against Joe Biden? Who has a greater level of experience in dealing with the economy, does experience actually matter? Which of the two candidates has some level of insight into the whole matter?  Gone are the days of issue based elections, we live in the era of the sound bite and the personal appeal. How does one candidate appeal over the other is more important these days than what they actually stand for. Let us forget the image game for a minute and actually look at some of the facts about both candidates.

When I was reading an article on the new republic website I noticed that the conservative movement has compared Sarah Palin to both Ronald Regan (exact line was Ronald Regan in a dress) and Margaret Thatcher. Her speech at the GOP convention drew 37.2 million television viewers. How many of those were actually party supporters versus the number of people who were just trying to figure out who this woman was remains to be seen. What is even more interesting is that conservatives and the right wing as a whole have begun to trumpet how much of breath of fresh air she is.

Thatcher had spent fifteen years as a member of parliament before she was the leader of the opposition. She was the youngest female candidate to ever stand for a conservative seat (she first ran in 1951 but lost to a labour candidate). Thatcher had a law degree and specialized in tax law. She was also an Oxford graduate. Palin is a graduate of the University of Idaho. She has stood in office since December 4th 2006 and is right next to Russia. Also she is right next to Canada and is really close to Mexico in a relative sense compared her closeness to Australia (based on GOP talking points).

Sarah Palin has had three significant encounters with economic policy since she has been in office. The first is that she had cut property taxes by sixty percent when she was mayor of Wasilla. The second is that she cut $231 million from Alaska’s $550 million capital budget. $150 million was cut in order to build up savings for the state in order to ensure that essential services will not have their funding cut later on. The third one s that she used $25 million from the $233 million ear marked grant set aside by Senator Ted Stevens (for the Bridge to Nowhere project) to build a road on an isolated island with no residents and no connection to the mainland. There is an overall lack of information about Sarah Palin’s economic policies but it is safe to assume that the besides increased tax cuts and deficit spending would be emphasized since that is the current GOP standard.

Palin has roughly twenty months of service as the governor of Alaska. She was a mayor of the second largest town in all of Alaska for two terms prior to being govenor. Granted being able to field dress a moose is impressive but unfortunately it is not a qualification for Vice Presidency of a country. If she does shoot a colleague in the face at least she can clean him/her properly though.

Joe Biden is touted as the middle class champion of America. His supporters view him as just the guy down the street. He was a lawyer, attended both the University of Delaware and Syracuse University. He was first elected in 1973, has served as the chairman of the Senate Committee of the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth by making bad/strange remarks and is a catholic. He is also not a baby boomer which is now becoming an important aspect of political candidates as a means of avoiding falling into older culture war traps.

Here is Biden’s more known record on the economy and some of his financial policies. He voted for a bill that reduced federal spending by $40 billion. He voted no on a bill that would have put tax cuts as a higher priority to national debt reduction. He voted yes on the balanced budget constitutional amendment (a law that would require the federal government to prioritize spending to ensure deficits do not occur or worsen). He has voted to cut military spending several times. He believes that the $200 billion tax cut to the upper 1% of Americans should be repealed and supports the initiative that in order for a country to receive favored trade status should comply with US labor and environmental practices. He also voted in favor of the 1998 GOP federal budget proposals.

What is striking about Biden’s fiscal policy voting practices is that he is rather centrist in his beliefs. Biden is not tied down by party doctrine of either tax and spend or cut and hold back. The difference between liberals and conservatives was that liberals would solve problems by throwing money at it and conservatives would with hold money. Neither response would solve the problem but were both touted at being the proper solution. Biden is aware that spending money is not the sole solution to a problem. Under President Eisenhower the one percent of America paid for 80% of government spending now they pays about 25%. How is that conservatives call these the good old days but do not support the fiscal policies that that era represented. Biden supports tax cuts for all members of US society except the top one percent.

The CIA world fact book has the United States’ GDP in 2007 being around 13.8 trillion dollars. The United States is the largest economy on the planet and is about ten trillion more than China’s. Forty percent of the global economy is produced by the United States. The European Union as a whole produces about 16.9 trillion. As a singular state, the United States is still the global hegemony, the current state though of the US economy is shaken at best and a bloody mess at worst. No single country comes close to the actual level of production, consumption or influence the US has over global finances. Which ever candidate wins the general election in November will step into the worst economic crisis the United States has faced since the 1930s. Not to mention that the federal government will is planning on stepping in to take direct control of the two largest lenders in the united states, the free market is currently under  to much strain to possible successfully weather such a move. What is to blame for most of this is the incredible level of de-regulation that was characteristic of not Bush but rather Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan. Those two Presidents had removed government controls that would have prevented large scale mortgage and debt investing in business or otherwise to occur.

No candidate can fully rescue the US economy. At this time it is a wise decision to support whichever candidate can come up with a new idea and a new goal for the US economy. It is not a wise decision to return to a path that has already failed, now is the time to begin searching for alternatives and it seems that the veteran of the senate has the ability to actually stand above the crowd and offer a new vision for American prosperity while the new comer still has not given much of what she believes in let alone what she is capable of.