By Brian Bohl

In a little more than two weeks, all the campaign palaver will finally cease as millions of Americans will finally be able to cast their ballots to elect the next leader of the free world. Election Day will mercifully conclude the stump speeches and occasionally bizarre comments from both Republican nominee Sen. John McCain and Democratic hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.

To win their parties’ respective primaries, both candidates had to achieve some level of eloquence to articulate a particular platform. But as the campaign hits the figurative stretch drive, both candidates are turning toward negative advertisements, petty bickering and gross oversimplifications of issues in order to smear an opponent or distract voters.

McCain will never be able to galvanize a crowd through speech-making like Obama. That doesn’t mean he’s a poor public official or less qualified to be president. Yet his remarks during Wednesday’s debate at the University were obviously a last-ditch attempt to present Obama as an out-of-touch elitist bent on socialism.

Just days before the event, budget officials revealed the deficit surged to a record $455 billion. Combined with a massive federal bailout that flirts near the trillion-dollar mark, McCain used last week’s debate as a platform to tell the world about a plumber and what Obama’s tax plans mean for his opportunity to own a business.

McCain’s criticism was that Joe’s taxes would go up under an Obama administration, making it slightly harder to run a business. Of course, Joe’s taxes would only go up if he was making more than a quarter-million dollars, which isn’t exactly a common occurrence. As unemployment skyrockets nationally, many people are worried about simply finding a job instead of setting up a small business.

It’s not like business ownership would be an impossible dream. Obama would raise taxes on those making $250,000 or more by just 3 percent. McCain’s propensity to highlight small business owners sounds like a noble idea, conjuring images of a mom-and-pop owned drug store. But a very small percentage of people actually earn a quarter-million annually, and McCain has a history of siding with business owners instead of the average worker his campaign says they represent.

McCain and running mate Gov. Sarah Palin continue to use Joe the Plumber as a microcosm for every other small business owner. With all major polls showing McCain is still lagging far behind, the ticket is getting desperate, spitting out the “S” word on the campaign trail. That’s right, Obama’s plans are being called “socialist.”

Obama responded to those charges in his own stops across swing states. His quote to CNN summed up his response, when he directly addressed what his administration’s policies would mean for Joe and others in his situation.

“If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re going to be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you,” he said. “Right now, everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody. And I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

In 2005, McCain, along with Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, helped to block a Democrat-backed minimum wage increase. McCain did not support raising the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. On Long Island, living on $5.15 an hour is impossible, and it is incredibly difficult to live with any comfort almost anywhere else in the country with such a wage.

McCain and others argued the wage increase would make it harder for companies to hire people. That’s a poor argument. Business owners who can’t afford to pay workers a living wage should get out of business. If the only way to ensure a company doesn’t go bankrupt is to pay workers pittance and offer no pension plans, then those institutions do not deserve tax breaks, especially at a time when the country needs to find new ways to curtail excessive spending.

Obama came across only slightly better at the debate, though his plans also seem overly optimistic. Like McCain, Obama has also been prone to oversimplification and distortion on numerous facts, claiming that 100 percent of McCain’s ads have been negative.

Obama has also provided his share of ironic statements. The Illinois senator repeatedly inveighed against McCain’s economic plans despite the high costs of his own platform. Obama’s healthcare plan provides more coverage for the uninsured while also extending coverage to all children, though that plan is estimated to cost between $50 billion to $65 billion a year according to Obama’s own campaign staff. Those internal figures are always best-case scenario totals, meaning the true cost could be much higher.

During the third and final debate, Obama used the forum at the Mack Sports Complex to vent his frustration over negative remarks made about him at rallies for McCain and Palin. Obama’s remarks came after McCain also called on Obama to repudiate negative statements made about him from others. The entire sequence was a waste of time that would have been better spent discussing specific facts and plans from two candidates who said they want to cut spending while also proposing expensive programs for medical coverage, the banking industry and military operations.

There was a time when it looked like an Obama-McCain race would be a welcome departure from the increasingly nasty, partisan hate-fest that has marred this country’s political landscape over the past few years. Sadly, those expectations have dwindled. Obama did not keep his pledge to accept government financing, contributing to an ominous cycle of record campaign spending that will undoubtedly only go up from its current astronomically high levels in 2012. McCain also seems desperate to make up ground in the final stage, reverting to using hurtful terms like “socialist” to try and score points with his conservative base.

Last week’s debate at the University had the potential to change the tone and make the final two weeks before the election all about the issues. Both candidates started to make some strides before ultimately missing the mark.

Brian Bohl is a master’s candidate for journalism. You may e-mail him at [email protected].