I disagree with my father all the time. Despite the fact that he taught me everything I know about politics, we rarely, these days, see anything from the same perspective. It leads to interesting dinner party conversations and a few heated arguments – all part of the discord between the generations.

But when your dad is John McCain and you have been trained to stand by and smile while his career in politics careens towards the presidency, disagreements take on a new significance.

That is why I think it matters that Senator McCain’s wife and daughter have come out publicly in support of gay marriage. 

There is something powerful in the image of the two women undermining the patriarch of the family publicly, especially in suggestive, bondage related images (loving that duct tape). It is an emasculation of the father, but also an expression of the father’s disconnect from the social values of both his wife’s and daughter’s generations. Not only does the hip Republican daughter think gay marriage is ok, but her older, more conservative mother agrees with her. This is just how out of it gay marriage opposition is.

Do I think these ads will revolutionize the gay marriage movement? No, of course not. But I do think we have to give these women credit (as much as I disagree with their stance on pretty much everything else). Congratulations on standing up for something. I bet it feels good. You should do it more often.

I’m wondering what all the fuss is about. I mean, she’s a Republican. And, though she may be smart, her political experience is just beginning, shaped mostly by family connections.

But this recent interview on Larry King made it click. Meghan is a young reasonable Republican who thinks getting all fired up about gay marriage is a waste of time. Her support for an open policy on spousal benefits is, according to her, because of her youth and her desire to break from the old men in charge (read, dad).

Is this an indication of things to come? I hope so.  I’d much rather be arguing with the right about fiscal policy than whether I’m allowed basic equal rights because I happen to be in love with another woman.

It made sense to me that a group who took pains to remember their own exclusion and suffering at many times since the days in the desert would worry about the same prejudice against others.

No wonder I am proud to be Jewish.

But on Friday, the GOP in Pennsylvania sent out a letter to Jewish voters encouraging them to vote for McCain because an Obama presidency would threaten the existence of Israel.

They likened the vote next week to the mistake many families (including some of my own) made when they didn’t flee Germany in the 1930s.

This kind of scare tactic is nothing new, but it never fails to infuriate me.

There is a perception that American Jews choose their candidate based on Israeli foreign policy issues and nothing else. Now no doubt Israel is one important issue, but to relegate a people to that kind of over-simplistic knee jerk voting is its own kind of discrimination.

To equate Barack Obama (a candidate who supports Israel) with Hitler presupposes that Jewish voters are just plain stupid.

If we want to talk about similarities between this election and past historical wrongs we could intelligently discuss book censorship (Palin supported it, so did the Nazi party) or the relegation of a group of people to second class (gay people who can’t marry and can’t adopt know something about that).

We could expect Jewish voters to care about these kinds of injustices and vote for a candidate who promotes equality and free speech rather than hindering it.

But let’s also keep in mind that blanket comparisons to the Holocaust are not useful because they are too general and not powerful because they ridiculously characterize the great tragedy of that time as equivalent to a difference in foreign policy experience between two candidates who have promised to protect and support Israel.

Jewish voters are not dumb, knee-jerk or simplistic in their political analysis.

They won’t fall for that kind of ploy.

The good news is that the debate was entertaining television.

Unlike last time, both candidates moved from their stump speeches into an actual conversation about political issues.

And surprisingly, McCain looked in control of the questions and often ended answers with good sound bites. It seemed like Obama was hanging back, letting McCain throw a few punches.

Spending was a perfect example of this. McCain accused Obama of increasing spending, repeated his mantra of a spending freeze and then outlined programs to help schools and create walk-in clinics, all of which cost money.

Obama barely pointed this contradiction out.

Obama’s passivity was particularly problematic when it came to the discussion of Ayers and Acorn. He allowed, even encouraged, time spent on those issues. It wasn’t smart politics and it didn’t help him in the overall debate score.

The truth is, this kind of analysis would have mattered if McCain hadn’t been so immature. He often breathed loudly, made sickening smiles, blinked in disbelief…  I can’t list them all.

He even rolled his eyes.

For voters, especially women voters, this kind of activity is alienating and distracts from any issue debate.

At the end of the day, McCain may have won on the content of the debate. He didn’t win by enough mind you, but he very well might have ended up ahead.

The problem is that he only managed to annoy voters and made this writer, who has never held a negative feeling to McCain personally, feel quite angry towards the man.

If he wants to appear measured and experienced, tonight was a failure. Plain and simple.

http://www.salon.com/

There were a lot of dials on the television to keep track of and it looks like the men and women around the table think Obama won.

Sure, he might have sounded better and I’m inclined to believe him more when he talks about the plight of the common American. And McCain was struggling, obviously, trying to make himself seem more friendly to low income voters. He even pulled an unexplained house mortgage buyout out of his hat.

Still, there was a little too much recycled material to call one candidate the clear winner. 

There are two important points that deserve more discussion:

1. McCain doesn’t understand that health care is still a big issue.

As Americans feel the economic squeeze, they are worried about taking care of their families, about maintaining employment and benefits. They are wondering what will happen as they age and their chances of illness increase.

When Obama tells viewers that McCain’s plan will cost them more and that the across state lines purchase option will lead to forum shopping, McCain needs to respond. He needs to talk about how individuals will actually pay for the plans they need under his policy. He failed to do this. And his campaign fails to address these issues in their literature.

2. Obama missed his chance to provide a specific plan, in new language, to deal with the economy.

This was his opportunity. I firmly believe that with his educational background and contacts with economists across party lines, he could have had a pre-prepared answer. He certainly had many answers that touched upon economic issues. He backed down from that challenge.

Perhaps playing it safe when you are ahead in the polls is the best strategy, but he could have scored many points by stepping up to a challenge we knew McCain would avoid.

A few other observations:

Since when is working with Joe Lieberman “reaching across the aisle?” Isn’t he famous as an independent? Wasn’t he a potential McCain running mate?

Why does Obama keep repeating the promise to kill Bin Laden? Since when is the murder of one individual the key to an international terrorist problem? Couldn’t he be a little more sophisticated?

McCain voted against the GI Bill that would have increased educational benefits for veterans. So how exactly can he be for veterans?

All in all, it was disappointing. Luckily, the polls will likely remain unchanged tomorrow and Obama will still be in the lead.

It was exactly how I remembered it, with just as much screaming and “I love you”s from the crowd. And DiFranco held up her end of the bargain with political commentary in between guitar tunings.

Midway through the show, she stopped fiddling with the strings and asked, “Now, what is the government for if not to collect money through taxes and spend it on things people need?” It led her directly into a song about hurricane Katrina.

A perfect example, according to DiFranco, of what happens when governments fail to fulfill their basic job requirement.

Tonight, the town hall debate will likely focus on economic issues. And, in true McCain style, the Republican candidate will emphasize how much Obama spent in Illinois, how much he intends to spend as President and how taxes, under his government, will surely rise.

He is trying to scare you. You see, under a McCain administration, governments don’t collect taxes, especially from the rich, and they don’t spend money on the things people need.

According to the Republican candidate, taxation, especially of the rich, cripples jobs, causes corporate flight and endangers economic growth.

This kind of thinking encourages a race to the bottom. We can’t hope to compete with countries that charge virtually no taxes for corporate entities. And a certain number of American companies will choose, every year, to ship their operations overseas to take advantage of that tax haven.

Lowering the corporate tax rate ten percentage points won’t stop that from happening.

A better plan is to use taxation to support an educated, specialized workforce that can compete for the jobs that require training, skills and an advanced understanding of production and marketing.

This plan relies on affordable education, secondary education, health care, housing etc. The list is long. Obama, while raising taxes for the rich, says he will redirect the money that comes in to exactly these kinds of social services.

Anyone who has ever been to the hospital or attended a public school or hoped to go to college knows that each average citizen needs things they can’t pay for on our own.

This election should not be about saving a few dollars in taxes, but about demanding the right kind of spending once the money is in government’s hands.

In newly produced television ads and on the stump, McCain is casting Obama as untested, unprepared to lead the country and too aloof to connect with voters. If he has an audience in mind, it’s likely to be working-class voters, disaffected Democrats and independent-minded white women.

McCain’s weapons? Democrats themselves.

The McCain camp gleefully raked through the Democratic primary archives to find Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton archly questioning Obama’s forthrightness. Clinton’s comments ended up featured in a new ad produced by the McCain campaign.

On Saturday, swiftly pivoting off Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, McCain aides created an ad in which Biden questions Obama’s readiness to become chief executive. The clip was from a Democratic primary debate when not many of the candidates had kind things to say about each other.

It’s unclear whether any of the ads have aired yet. Evan Tracey, a media analyst who tracks ad placements, said Sunday there still was “no sign” of either ad appearing in television markets.

McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said the Clinton ad would air “in key states, markets where Hillary Clinton performed well, and Denver.”

Still, whether as ads or elaborate news releases, the McCain videos are seeking to intrude on Obama’s week.

“The power to this message is that you’re using the Democrats’ own words,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign and is close to the McCain camp. “The McCain guys have successfully used the rapid response to set the terms of the debate on the eve of the Democrats’ convention.”

But Reed believes it’s a message the McCain camp will ride all the way to the November election.

In the newest ad, McCain uses clips from a February interview Clinton gave Politico.com and WJLA Channel 7 in Washington remarking that “you never hear specifics” from Obama on issues, that “we still don’t have a lot of answers about Senator Obama” and his relationship with a now-convicted Chicago real estate developer, and that “Senator Obama’s campaign has become increasingly negative.”

The ad is also a bit of mischief aimed at Clinton supporters who still passionately believe she should have been chosen his running mate.

An announcer states: “She won millions of votes. But isn’t on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth.”

In a statement Sunday, Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said Clinton’s support for Obama is clear. “She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq and expanding access to health care,” Strand said. “John McCain doesn’t. It’s interesting how those remarks didn’t make it into his ad.”

Both candidates are sticking so closely to their defined messages that they are leaving little to chance. In Phoenix on Sunday, McCain and his wife waved at a gaggle of reporters as he left church, the closest thing to an interaction with the media he’s had for days.

At the North Phoenix Baptist Church on Sunday, Pastor Dan Yeary aired clips of interviews McCain and Obama gave a week ago to Pastor Rick Warren. Seated, with his second wife, Cindy, at his side, McCain watched himself describe his “greatest moral failure” – the failure of his first marriage.

Yeary described the exchange as a “seminal moment” in the presidential campaign. For balance, Yeary showed Democrat Barack Obama’s confession in the same interview that he was too self-absorbed.

“I couldn’t focus on other people,” Obama said.

McCain, the hometown favorite, got a solid round of applause from the congregation, yet another odd moment in a presidential campaign where the two major rivals are growing increasingly isolated, even as voters use the convention season to begin paying attention to the campaign.

McCain was once known for his spontaneity – his bus is the “Straight Talk Express” – and he spent hours sparring with reporters in the campaign’s early days.

Over the weekend, McCain took some time off at the family compound in northern Arizona, while a tiny group of reporters was housed miles away at hotels in Sedona. Reporters were taken to an isolated road near his retreat each morning to join a motorcade to Cottonwood, where he hopped out of his sport utility vehicle and headed into a coffee shop for his morning cup. Reporters watched from about 50 yards away.