McCain has spoken about other metrics, btw. I’m trying to find my audio from last November, when we had an especially spirited discussion about, as I recall, such things as quality of life as measured by admittedly subjective standards such as the percentage of “safe” and “liveable” neighborhoods (i.e., not just places that are basically occupied by the US, but places with low street crime and limited US involvement), and even how many Iraqis read newspaper or have Internet access. (Brookings tracks the latter.)
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The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy
More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.
