HispanicVista Columnists

World-Views, Obama and McCain
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

September 1958 was a huge month in my development. I was a wide-eyed 17-year-old taking my first classes at the university. Knowledge poured into my empty teenaged head like a waterfall at flood. The phrase nature abhors a vacuum was applicable that September.

One of the questions I had when I walked into my first Political Science class was why were most retired military officers Republicans and most retired enlisted men Democrats.

Two things made me ask, One, I was just months away from enlisting in the U.S. Marines and, two, the instructor was a retired Marine Corps Colonel.

Why were most retired officers Republican, I asked the retired Marine Corps Colonel.

Well, he replied, two reasons – First, officers, especially higher-ranking officers, have much wider responsibilities than, say, a sergeant. Then, there’s a world-view of the world that is wider than of a sergeant’s platoon or a corporal’s fire team.

In university terms he said Republicans take a macro view of the world of nations and mass populations. Democrats, on the other hand, take a micro view of the world that seems restricted to individuals and groups of individuals usually distinguished by color, gender and sexual orientation.

Take Barack Obama’s views of a G.I. assistance bill currently working its way through Congress. He is for a massive enlargement of educational benefits that would give full college scholarships to any serviceman with three years service. He blasts Republican John McCain for opposing the version he supports as if, of course, only he can be right.

His view is that individual veterans need this bill as fairness brought forward from the original G.I. bill in 1944.

McCain, on the other hand, introduced his own bill that grants educational benefits based on length of service that allows those benefits to be willed or given to spouses and dependents, something Obama doesn’t know anything about. McCain reacted to Obama’s slam by simply stating that a man who purposefully chose not to serve in the United States military was not in position to "lecture" McCain about any subject regarding veterans or the military.

His view is that you can’t grant full benefits to someone with only three years because that wouldn’t be fair to those who serve six or twenty years.

Obama is blinded by his view of individual soldiers who, unfortunately, could dump the service after three years costing the services prospects for non-commissioned officer ranks and billions of dollars in training new people to replace them. McCain, a career Navy man, knows that it is unfair to grant full educational benefits to short term enlistees when career men and women would get the same. Moreover, McCain knows that recruiting may or may not equal the exodus of three-year vets but he is certain that being able to transfer the benefit to a spouse or child/dependent would be most welcome by all soldiers, sailors and Marines. This is an all-encompassing view that looks far beyond Obama’s.

For example, say a vet has two years of college when he goes in. He serves an enlistment but only needs two years of tuition to graduate. In Obama’s plan if he doesn’t go to graduate school his two years on account would disappear, he’s out of luck. In McCain’s plan, the remaining two years could be transferred to a wife or husband or granted to a child/dependent. Which plan is better?

Another example would be Obama’s plan to hike the capital gains tax, which was cut by President Bush to 15%. This tax, of course, is that applied to gains in value of investments in property, buildings, a house or stocks and bonds and other such investments held for longer than a few months. History shows the lower this tax, the greater the revenues for government because more investments are made and more businesses are formed. Such investments and activity produce higher taxes when turned over.

Obama considers this a "rich man’s" tax break so he calls to double or triple it to raise more tax money from "rich people" because that’s "fair."

McCain declares that he would keep the tax where it is, as it produces more revenue at 15% than it did when higher. This was the experience in the 80s also when President Reagan cut capital gains taxes.

Obama seems ignorant that unlike the 80s over half of the American population is invested in the stock market directly or indirectly through pension plans with a large percentage of the remaining population invested in businesses, homes and condominiums that will produce taxable capital gains when sold.

That retired Marine Colonel who explained macro and micro views to me over coffee fifty years ago was right on the mark. The 50 intervening years have taught me that. His other message, choose whom to vote for carefully, very carefully.

Good advice! The choices are John McCain or Barack Obama. Choose very carefully between world-views as well as who answers the White House phone at 3:00 A.M.-- our very existence depends on it.
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Contreras produces and anchors a daily newscast "News and Views 61" on San Diego’s Channel 61…His books are available at amazon.com…