Barack Obama pledged to improve America’s standing on a host of issues during the Democratic National Convention, ranging from increasing employment to improving America’s image abroad. As Sen. Obama spoke at Invesco Field in Dever, he didn’t elaborate on specific policies relative to key issues and the few that were won’t meet Obama’s goals for the nation, or those goals America should pursue.

Obama claims McCain’s only reaction in foreign policy is “more tough talk and bad strategy.” Negotiations, however, are meaningless to al-Qaida and other terrorists in Iraq who don’t want a broad, democratic national government in the country and would lead to America’s unconditional surrender and a terrorist stronghold.

Obama insists that “McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war,” but Sen. Obama fails to acknowledge that the Iraqi situation has drastically improved, or that it was McCain’s “stubbornness” that is allowing the war to end in success. Obama states he “will end this war in Iraq responsibly,” but this comes after earlier statements suggesting he would withdraw from Iraq even if genocide occurred.

Agence France-Presse reported Sept. 26, 2007 that Sen. Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate, supported dividing Iraq on a “sectarian basis,” which turned out to be very short-sighted, because the U.S. military reported to Congress in June that Iraqi sectarian violence dropped 80 percent since 2006 highs.

Despite painting Iraq as a hopeless plight, Obama told the audience that “we are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country.” The truth is that Kennedy and Roosevelt are disconnected from today’s Democratic Party. It has become the party of hippies since the Vietnam conflict and the Iranian hostage crisis during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, which didn’t end until the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. With this more complete Democrat record, Americans would rightfully be suspicious of Obama and the Democrats’ ability to defend the United States and her interests.

The DNC was full of emotional anecdotes of a failing, greedy economy under George W. Bush and how John McCain doesn’t understand America’s difficulties, but Sen. Obama doesn’t have a clue as to the proper policies for improving the economy. Sen. Obama stated, “unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.” If Obama wants to keep jobs in the United States, he should create a better business climate that would allow American businesses to better compete in the world.

Instead, Obama is threatening businesses with more taxes, the exact opposite approach to deal with businesses removing jobs from the United States, where a business doing so would signal that the business climate is weak, and increasing taxes would exacerbate the poor business environment.

The United States “has one of the highest corporate tax rates relative to its trading partners,” according to a May 2005 research report by the House of Representatives Joint Economic Committee. John McCain’s campaign Web site lists his proposal to reduce the federal corporate income tax rate, which doesn’t even include state corporate income tax rates, from 35 percent to 25 percent. This would be a responsible economic stance for reinvigorating the economy by giving companies more resources and incentives to operate in the United States, rather than the Obama mantra of taking away from “those with the most” and leaving businesses nothing to contribute to the economy as a whole.

Rather than using the DNC as a genuine platform to provide specific policy proposals, Obama used it as an opportunity to state goals without explaining how to reach them. Perhaps the Republican National Convention will do what Obama always claims to do and move beyond politics as usual by descending to the level playing field that the rest of America runs on.

Stephen Ontko is a senior economics major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].