Meet the new boss
Four predictions about the next president
By Douglas Schmidt
While the political scene is often unpredictable, the next four years will be anything but surprising. National polls show the Democratic candidates slightly ahead, with Sen. John McCain trailing Sen. Barack Obama by an average of four percent and Sen. Hillary Clinton by an average of five percent. The scores are too slight to predict the outcome of the race, but it is possible to predict a few things about the next administration.
1. The next president will start new wars.
Clinton and McCain both voted to invade Iraq. While Obama was not in office during the original vote, he has helped to prolong the war by voting for billions of dollars in additional funding. All three candidates’ foreign policy positions are likely to lead the U.S. into additional wars.
Both Clinton and McCain have spoken positively about invading Iran. McCain likes the idea so much that he can be seen on YouTube singing “bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys song “Barbara Ann.” More recently, during an appearance on Good Morning America, Clinton stated that the U.S. “would be able to totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel. As for Obama, as reported earlier in the semester, he is likely to launch a war against terrorist targets in Pakistan.
2. The next president will let the dollar continue to decline.
For decades, the U.S. had the most stable currency in the world; at the start of his administration, Abraham Lincoln paid the same price for a loaf of bread as George Washington did. However, this trend did not last forever. With the creation of the Federal Reserve and the abandonment of gold-backed currency, the dollar went into freefall. The dollar has lost around 96 percent of its purchasing power since 1900 and it continues to decline. No president in the last century, Republican or Democrat, has reversed this trend. As presidents have done ever since the Civil War, increasingly valueless paper currency will continue to be used to pay for wars and other government debts.
3. The next president will encourage the government to become more involved in the healthcare industry.
Whenever the government gets more involved in healthcare, it becomes more expensive. For example, a study in Health Affairs states that the cost of getting a new drug approved by the FDA averages between $500 million and $2 billion. This enormous expense gets passed along to consumers.
Both Obama and Clinton are proposing universal healthcare plans that would dramatically increase the government’s involvement in health insurance. McCain’s campaign Web site says that the government should “promote” everything from “walk-in clinics in retail outlets” to “the rapid deployment of 21st century information systems and technology that allows doctors to practice across state lines.” When politicians say that the government should “promote” something, they generally mean, “force taxpayers to foot the bill.” McCain's Web site does not explain why the medical industry cannot pay for these things itself.
4. The next president will not solve the problems behind the high price of gas.
Clinton and Obama have both proposed increasing the taxes on oil company profits, increases that would simply be passed along to consumers. The increase would be in addition to the already high taxes paid by oil companies. Exxon, for example, paid nearly three times as much in taxes as the net profits it earned for shareholders.
McCain and Clinton both favor temporarily suspending the 18.4 cent federal tax on gasoline. According to http://www.factcheck.org, their temporary federal “tax holiday” will save average drivers just $28, and that is only if prices do not rise to match the short-term increase in demand. Also, none of the candidates’ plans would affect state-level gas taxes, which are much higher. None of the candidates has proposed permanently ending all gas taxes, which add more to the price of gas than oil company profits, or fighting inflation and the declining value of the dollar.
This is not to say that there are no differences between the candidates. Electing any of the three would set a different record. Of course, Clinton would be the first female president, and Obama the first African American. If McCain were elected, he would set his own record by being the oldest president in U.S. history. However, when it comes to many policy issues, the differences between the major candidates are effectively negligible. Regardless of who wins, the next four years will be politics as usual.
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