It would appear that the Los Angeles Times came to the end of the week without fulfilling their quota for empty-headed Broderism, so today we've got an obfusctory epistle that purports to demonstrate that McCain and Obama are pretty much the same person, and it doesn't matter who you vote for, except that maybe you should remember that where Obama "hedges," McCain bravely "defying the GOP party line," which the Times asserts is the primary reason for this "convergence."
Naturally, they are precisely wrong on this matter: McCain has, on balance, more or less, embraced the party line this time out. If you don't believe me, ask him! He will say that he criticized Donald Rumsfeld and the lack of a Surge, and that he's more "environmentalish." Those are the same two things he always says when he's asked to distinguish himself from Bush. What McCain in 2008 is bravely defying is McCain from 2000.
Anyway, the Times finds a number of small-bore issues on which McCain and Obama are said to be similar: "immigration, nuclear weapons, global warming and stem-cell research."
For Amy Rick, the 2008 presidential election is a win-win situation. Both Barack Obama and John McCain support an expansion of stem-cell research that she has battled for in vain under President Bush.
"Both are very solid," said Rick, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. "We are definitely looking forward with optimism to a change in policy in 2009."
John Isaacs, an arms control advocate, feels the same way, because both candidates have made nuclear nonproliferation a priority. "We'll have major progress on nuclear issues no matter who is elected," said Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World.
The nuclear proliferation issue is one that deserves some attention, because here, we've seen McCain absolutely "refine his position" on this matter, but he's not been made to suffer any of the high-toned, hysterical skepticism that critics have tossed Obama's way when the Illinois Senator said he would adjust his Iraq withdrawal plans according to "information on the ground."
There simply is no utility to newspapers such as the Times even bothering to pen this sort of article. They would be better served to note the key distinctions between the two candidates, instead of smoke-and-mirroring their way to a false point on their similarities. "To be sure, a McCain presidency would look far different than an Obama presidency," says the paper, burying the lede in it's TWELFTH paragraph.
Meanwhile, it's great that both men support stem cell research, but the fact is, under a McCain presidency, there will be far fewer Americans around to benefit from it, since many of them will be in Iraq in perpetuity. Just one way in which differences make a hell of a lot of difference.