McCain: Worse than Bush?

Hopefully we will never know the answer to the title of this post, but in order to inform the undecided, we need to visit this issue.  Would a McCain presidency be worse than Bush?  

When George W. Bush was first elected president in 2000, we were at the peak of the internet boom.  The business cycles has since been on a downward spin, most likely because we have not had a positive technological shock since the dot.com boom of the late 90's.  Whether we will have another such shock in the next 8 years is anyone's guess, but it is likely as these cycles run over 15-20 years.  

No matter if Bush or Gore was elected president, we would likely have faced a minor recession sometime over the past 8 years.  What would not have been predicted, however, is the massive cost of the Iraq War, which has been a major factor in the spike in oil prices, the fall of the dollar, and the loss of our rights to privacy, jury, and other freedoms.  

How would John McCain or Barack Obama confront such issues?

When it comes to the Iraq War, currently McCain is more gung-ho about it than even George Bush.  While the White House has recently flirted with the idea of setting a vague timetable for withdrawal, McCain remains steadfast that we should maintain permanent bases in Iraq, against the wishes of the Iraqis and more than 50% of Americans.  McCain's wishes would likely lead to at least a $1,000,000,000 level of spending over his presidency, from this issue alone.  

When it comes to oil prices, McCain favors "offshore drilling" and not much else.  Offshore drilling was already allowed, oil companies did not choose to partake in it.  All Bush just did was open up some more areas.  That point is moot, since we do not have enough refineries to keep up with this, so even if we did strike oil (this would take 5-10 years), we would have to have it made into gasoline by another country and then re-import it.  Even conservative oil-man T Boone Pickens does not see oil as the future.  Instead, he proposes we use a combination of wind power and natural gas.  I also think that geothermal power, nuclear power, and solar power have to be added to the first two to be our new backbone of electricity, which could power a new generation of vehicles.  McCain talks about alternative energies, but seems to be continuing Bush's legacy of paying lip service to alternatives while just drilling for more oil to further fuck up our planet.

McCain worse than Bush?  Maybe, but hopefully we will never know the answer.