Website comparing candidates policies

[kelake]

I’m looking for a website that details and contrasts the American presidential candidates policies without the bias and hyperbole found in most sites I have seen (just the facts jack). There must be someone somewhere with a balanced view on American politics - right?

Does such a site exist or am I doomed to firing up excel and doing it myself (which I will be too lazy to do)?

[Dragonbones]

The policies they claim they will support, the policies as misrepresented by the candidates’ own campaigns, or the policies they are expected to actually support? :s

[kelake]

Good point. Maybe all.

[kelake]

I found one site which visualizes the news on either candidate over time. It’s called Everymoment Now (http://everymomentnow.com/) and was created by the great Tokyo based developer Craig Mod.

[Chewycorns]

Don’t know about websites, but why don’t you read the Economist? I would say their articles are pretty balanced and fair. Agree with many of the positions but not all.

[Gao_Bohan]

Here’s one:

On The Issues

It’s impartial and fairly comprehensive, but rather than summarizing candidate’s views into a coherent narrative, the site has multiple one line bullet points for each candidate on each issue. I’m sure they’re just trying to avoid any editorializing, but it gets a little tiresome to read. Still, it has what you’re looking for, even if the format is a little unfocused.

[Tigerman]

@Chewycorns

Don’t know about websites, but why don’t you read the Economist? I would say their articles are pretty balanced and fair. Agree with many of the positions but not all.

As usual, good advice from Chewy. Let’s look at what the Economist has to say:

@The Economist on 9 October 2008

Voters anxious for change are warming to [Obama’s] message. And he has a gift for wrapping centre-left (by American standards) policies in language that has wide appeal. [color=#0040FF][Obama] often says, for example, that he will cut taxes for 95% of Americans[/color]. That is an attractive promise. The “cut taxes” bit appeals to conservatives, while the “95%” part appeals to liberals and moderates. [color=#0040FF]Fact-checkers quibble that[/color], according to his written plans, [color=#0040FF][Obama] really means 95% of families with children, not 95% of Americans. But his real sleight-of-hand is to count handouts administered through the tax code as “tax cuts”[/color]. You might think that a tax cut means keeping more of what you earn. [color=#0040FF]The way Mr Obama uses the phrase, however, it can also mean being given a chunk of money that someone else has earned[/color]. That is how he is able to offer “tax cuts” to “95% of Americans” when about a third of American households already pay no federal income tax. [color=#0040FF]Such re-packaging is effective[/color].

@The Economist on 9 October 2008

[color=#0040FF]The way Mr Obama describes his opponent’s tax plans is also deft[/color]. Mr McCain plans to reduce the corporate tax rate. That sounds boring. So [color=#0040FF]Mr Obama describes it as a “$4 billion tax break for big oil companies”. He is not lying[/color]. Big oil firms would indeed benefit from a lower corporate tax rate. [color=#0040FF]But [Obama] makes it sound as if Mr McCain is doing special favours for an industry many Americans regard as villainous[/color].

So Obama is just being misleading. Why would he need to mislead?

Let’s look at the healthcare issue:

@The Economist on 9 October 2008

Mr Obama offers detailed and mostly sensible plans for dealing with problems from energy to health care. But [color=#0040FF]it is not the details of [Obama’s] policies that voters recall after hearing him speak. It is the zingers[/color]. Consider health care… The two candidates’ health plans are quite different. Mr Obama wants to expand coverage with an infusion of public cash. Mr McCain wants to curb costs through greater competition and end the rule that says that only insurance provided by an employer enjoys a tax break. Both ideas make sense. But if you listen to either man’s description of the other’s plan, you might be alarmed. Mr McCain says Mr Obama wants to socialise medicine, which is a stretch. [color=#0040FF]Mr Obama tells a more plausible but equally deceptive story[/color]. [Obama] notes that Mr McCain offers families a $5,000 tax credit to buy health insurance. He then adds, ominously, that there is something Mr McCain is not telling you: a typical family’s health-insurance premium each year is about $12,000. Because Mr McCain is going to tax health benefits that you get through your employer, your employer may stop covering you. You may end up like Mr Obama’s mother, who died of cancer at 53 while battling insurance firms from her hospital bed. [color=#0040FF]Many people walk away from Mr Obama’s speeches convinced that, under Mr McCain’s plan, they will lose $7,000-worth of health insurance. In fact, since Mr McCain’s tax credit is substantially larger than the tax break on employer-provided insurance that it replaces (which is typically worth less than $3,000), the vast majority will be better off[/color]. But that is tough to explain to an electorate that has always struggled to make sense of America’s insanely complex health-care system. And Mr McCain is no great communicator.

[Mawvellous]

Excellent idea Chewy and Tigerman, let’s see the Economist’s view of the campaign. Remember this publication is certainly not noted for its left-wing views.

economist.com/opinion/displa … d=12262173

[quote]America not quite at its best

Sep 18th 2008

The election has taken a nasty turn. This is mainly the Republicans’ fault

AS RECENTLY as a few months ago, it seemed possible to hope that this year’s presidential election would be a civilised affair. Barack Obama and John McCain both represent much that is best about their respective parties. Mr Obama is intelligent, inspiring and appears by instinct to be a consensus-seeking pragmatist. John McCain has always stood for limited, principled government, and has distanced himself throughout his career from the religious ideologues that have warped Republicanism. An intelligent debate about issues of the utmost importance—how America should rebuild its standing in the world, how more Americans could share in the proceeds of growth—seemed an attainable proposition.

It doesn’t seem so now. In the past two weeks, while banks have tottered and markets reeled, the contending Democrats and Republicans have squabbled and lied rather than debated. Mr McCain’s team has been nastier, accusing Mr Obama of sexism for calling the Republican vice-presidential candidate a pig, when he clearly did no such thing. Much nastier has been the assertion that Mr Obama once backed a bill that would give kindergarten children comprehensive sex education. Again, this was a distortion: the bill Mr Obama backed provided for age-appropriate sex education, and was intended to protect children from sex offenders.[/quote]

Ouch! The Economist calling the Republicans out on their lies, and mainly blaming the Republicans for the “nasty turn” the campaign has taken.

[quote]These kinds of slurs seem much more personal, and therefore unpleasant, than the more routine distortions seen on both sides. Team McCain accuses Mr Obama of planning to raise taxes for middle-income Americans (in fact, the Democrat’s plan raises them only for those earning more than $250,000); Mr Obama claims Mr McCain wants to fight in Iraq for 100 years (when the Republican merely agreed that he would gladly keep bases there for that long to help preserve the peace, as in Germany) and caricatures him far too readily as a Bush toady (when Mr McCain’s record as an independent senator has been anything but that).
An issue of life and life

The decision to descend into tactics such as the kindergarten slur shows that America is back in the territory of the “culture wars”, where the battle will be less about policy than about values and moral character. That is partly because Mr Obama’s campaign, perhaps foolishly, chose to make such a big deal of the virtues of their candidate’s character. Most people are more concerned about the alarming state of the economy than anything else; yet the Democrats spent far more time in Denver talking about Mr Obama’s family than his economic policy. The Republicans leapt in, partly because they have a candidate with a still more heroic life story; partly because economics is not Mr McCain’s strongest suit and his fiscal plan is pretty similar to Mr Bush’s; but mostly because painting Mr Obama as an arrogant, elitist, east-coast liberal is an easy way of revving up the Republican Party’s base and what Richard Nixon called the “silent majority” (see article).

The decision to play this election, like that of 2004, as a fresh instalment of the culture wars is disappointing to those who thought Mr McCain was more principled than that. By choosing Sarah Palin as his running-mate he made a cynical tryst with a party base that he has never much liked and that has never much liked him. Mr McCain’s whole candidacy rests on his assertion that these are perilous times that require a strong and experienced commander-in-chief; but he has chosen, as the person who may be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency, someone who demonstrably knows very little about international affairs or the economy.[/quote]

Ouch! Harsh words on the choice of Palin as VP.

What Mrs Palin does do, as a committed pro-lifer, is to ensure that the evangelical wing of the Republican party will turn out in their multitudes. Mr McCain has thus placed abortion, the most divisive cultural issue in America, at the centre of his campaign. His defenders claim that it is too big an issue to be ignored, that he has always opposed abortion, that culture wars are an inevitable part of American elections, and that it was only when he appointed Mrs Palin that the American public started to listen to him. All this is true: but the old Mr McCain, who derided the religious right as “agents of intolerance”, would not have stooped to that.

Well that’s a pretty damning indictment from a publication recommended by Chewy and Tigerman. Although Obama doesn’t entirely escape censure, by far the harshest criticism is reserved for McCain and the gutter campaign he has fought-this was before even Palin’s attempts to link Obama and Bill Ayers.

[maoman]

@kelake

I’m looking for a website that details and contrasts the American presidential candidates policies without the bias and hyperbole found in most sites I have seen (just the facts jack).

Here are a few:
NPR: 2008 Election Issues: Candidate Positions
On the Issues: Every Political Leader on Every Issue
2008 Presidential Election Candidates on the Issues

[Chris]

McCain: anti-choice.
Obama: pro-choice.

[maoman]

[quote=“Chris”]McCain: anti-choice.
Obama: pro-choice.[/quote]
To be fair, I think McCain would consider himself to be pro-life, not anti-choice. Just as Obama probably doesn’t consider himself pro-death.

[Chris]

[quote=“Maoman”][quote=“Chris”]McCain: anti-choice.
Obama: pro-choice.[/quote]
To be fair, I think McCain would consider himself to be pro-life, not anti-choice.[/quote]

Sure, McCain would. But I’m not McCain: I prefer reality. The reality is that oppose or support abortion, we are all pro-life.

[politbureau]

[quote=“Chris”][quote=“Maoman”][quote=“Chris”]McCain: anti-choice.
Obama: pro-choice.[/quote]
To be fair, I think McCain would consider himself to be pro-life, not anti-choice.[/quote]

Sure, McCain would. But I’m not McCain: I prefer reality. The reality is that oppose or support abortion, we are all pro-life.[/quote]

When does human life begin in your system of ethics?

[Jaboney]

Via Politico possible policy priorities should Obama win, suggested by Rahm Emanuel, the third-highest ranking House Democrat.

@"[url=http://nymag.com/news/politics/51570/

NYMag[/url]“]“My view is that we gotta be the party of reform,” Emanuel begins when I reach him on his cell phone. “There are four reforms. There’s financial regulatory reform, tax reform, health care reform and energy. Regulatory will kinda come down the chute fast. Tax reform will take a little longer, because it’s not until 2010 that Bush’s tax cuts expire. Energy, you can do some things immediately. And with health care, you’ve got the children’s health insurance as the first piece of a series of things you gotta do.”

I’m not so sure how fast the complete package of regulatory aspects will come down. A lot of that’s going to be tied up with new, or strengthen international financial institutions.