The MTV/Myspace Debate: Best Forum this Season?

Who would have guessed that the network most famous for covering the exploits of horny twenty-somethings would bring us arguably the best Presidential Forum to date?

I mean, it doesn't take much to compete with the CNN/YouTube debates - or, for that matter, any of the debates that aired on mainstream networks because of their extreme bias to the "major" candidates - but wow. It wasn't until the end of Huckabee's segment that I realized one, Huckabee is kind of making sense here, and two, I am probably watching the best Presidential Primary coverage I have seen - and it's on MTV.

Now, most of what Mike Huckabee said in his segment he has said in previous debates, but he came off very well and I think he was able to sum up the positive notes of his campaign very nicely. He obviously has a good sense of humor - his previous appearances on the Colbert Report are a testament to that. He also has some good ideas, like repairing our infrastructure and eliminating of the IRS, although there are some kinks to the latter proposal. Are businesses going to pay the same taxes on goods and services as the average consumer? If not, what keeps businessmen, executives and such who already write off or attribute a good deal of their personal expenses to their companies from avoiding more taxes than common people? And if businesses are supposed to pay the same amount in taxes on goods and services, then won't they merely pass along the expense to their own consumers and employees, just as they do now?

The most distinguishing mark of this forum was the ridiculous - and by that, I mean equal - amount of airtime Ron Paul was alloted. I don't think that he has been allowed to speak even half as long as this in any other major telecast. Apparently, he wasn't even invited to the forum at first. So either the push from his supporters, many of whom are young, or the lack of a second Republican candidate willing to appear, or a combination of both propelled MTV/Myspace to finally invite him.

Ron Paul did not field his first question very well. He was asked how he would deal with the Darfur situation. As he is prone to do, he referred to the constitution - which does not allot for the US government to get involved in these sorts of conflicts, no matter how humanitarian. He did, however, say that the UN - if the UN ran the way it ideally should - should get involved, or a humanitarian effort outside of the government, likely funded privately, but not the government using US tax dollars. He does have a point but this particular point does not rub well with idealists who oft are young.

Ron Paul also hangs onto the constitution a little too strongly - he sometimes comes off like a Christian who reads the bible literally. Ron Paul - ever hear of an Amendment? Those were encouraged by the founding fathers, you know. As times change, so must the constitution.

But I am with him most of the way. I admire the fact that he has read the constitution, understands the foundations of its law, and allows it to govern his stance on issues - it's sad, but he is unique in this manner. I especially like how he brought up the section on how to deal with pirates in relation to how we should deal with terrorists. Since the terrorist witch hunt began, we have had people feeding us bullshit that the fight against terrorism was unprecedented and that we must go from country to country smoking them out and, oh, disposing a few dictators here and there and murdering a large portion of the populace - and here comes Ron Paul with an analogous scenario in the constitution!?! I need to look this up - in fact, I am committing right now to read the entire constitution and write a commentary on it. Stay tuned.

I must say, a while back, I would have thrown all of my support and campaigned for Ron Paul. He is the sort of Republican I used to be back before I realized how greedy and conniving people are - quite frankly, they are assholes, for the most part. This lead me to the realization that markets are not efficient, de-regulation will not make the market work better, it will only allow people to manipulate it even more - to sum up, the people cannot be trusted to be ethical enough to allow a free market system to work. This is why I am no longer a Republican. But in an ideal world where people weren't complete garbage I would be a Ron Paul Republican.

The Democratic half of the forum was, as could have been predicted, pretty boring. There were only two things worth mentioning: one is that I felt that there was a bias in favor of Obama. His questions were easy - they were flattering more than anything. On the other hand, all of Clinton's, besides perhaps the first, were scathing - she was able to deflect, for the most part, but then again, she is a politician.

Lastly, Clinton's first question concerned student loan debt and the runaway cost of college tuition. She talked about getting rid of the private lenders and making college lending an entirely government-sponsored program so that all students - not just those whom FAFSA claims need it - can enjoy loans at a low, 3% rate. She also talked about loan payment programs, such as those that some law school graduates already enjoy - if you take a low-paying job in the service of the community, the program will pay your loan payments as long as you are in the job, or you pay a low percentage of you salary. The latter could be bad if you are just making minimum payments on your loans - this will mean that you will owe a hell of a lot more later because of the continuously accruing interest. But the former is, like I said, similar to programs that some law school grads currently enjoy and would, I believe, be a great incentive for people bogged down in debt, such as myself. The best idea, though, is for universities to reign in their expenses and stop charging ridiculous amounts of money.

I also loved how she called the new college grads who have a lot of debt and who take on a job they hate as "indentured servants" - that's the exact terminology I use! Actually, that's pretty sad.