Barack Obama and John McCain will be debating tonight as the inertia that has always given American society stability, albeit at the price of slow social change, is endangered by a sudden plunge into economic turmoil and uncertainty. Ironically, neither of the voters’ possible choices is designed to calm them.
Not since 1932 has the electorate been so roiled by fear of the future and so hungry for change. Yet, in Obama, they face someone relatively new and unfamiliar and, in McCain, an all-too-familiar connection to policies that have failed and, to compound their worries, a volatile temperament.
In the Depression, Republicans tried to tar Franklin D. Roosevelt as a radical who would raise taxes, as they are picturing Obama now but with the added edge of distorting his positions on issues such as health care and questioning his patriotism.