Obama and McCain, the same?
Not quite. But here are their surprising policy overlaps.
It has been a refrain during the exhausting battle for the Democratic presidential nomination that once Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama emerged as the party's choice, we could finally dispense with the personality battles and get down to nitty-gritty policy differences. Indeed, now that Obama seems to have the position locked up, he and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain will have plenty to argue about. But some might be surprised at the breadth of issues on which they largely agree.
On McCain's side, this is understandable. With a Republican president experiencing some of the worst approval ratings ever, it's no shock that the party opted for an unusually centrist candidate. Yet Obama, too, represents a break from Democratic orthodoxy and is reaching out to the middle. This could indicate that on certain policies, something like a national consensus is developing. It at least signals a lessening of the partisan divide that has blocked progress on important changes.
Here are the biggest plots of common ground:
* National security. Surprisingly, given McCain's reputation as a hawk and Obama's as a peacenik, they don't differ much in their ideas about how best to protect the country. Both want to increase the size of the military and provide more training and equipment. Both oppose the use of torture as an interrogation technique, and both would like to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
* Immigration. Lately, McCain has been trying to shore up conservative support by backing away from bills he cosponsored in 2005 and 2006, which would create a guest worker program and provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants; now he says he'd focus on securing the border first. Yet that doesn't stop him from touting his immigration reforms when visiting states like California, with high populations of Latino voters and many companies that employ immigrants. Obama backs identical goals.
* Environment. The differences between the two on the environment tend to be a matter of degree. They support the same policies, but in general Obama wants tougher (and costlier) regulation. Both want to create a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases -- Obama's would reduce them to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, while McCain's would cut them by 60%. Both want more energy-efficiency programs and renewable energy, though Obama would spend more to get them. McCain is a big proponent of nuclear power, an issue Obama has largely avoided thus far.
