First Presidential Debate, 2008

There is always this sense, both before and after a Presidential debate – or most debates – that when the debate is over, there must be a winner and a loser. Of course, in a Presidential debate, the debate between the candidates is simply followed by the gazillion debates about who won the debate.


My take on the first McCain-Obama debate is that I felt zero need to see it in a win-lose kind of way. Which is really refreshing. And which I thought was a surprising switch from what we saw in at least the two previous debates. Not too many can accuse McCain of overly managing the stagecrafting of a debate. What you see is what you get. Obama has often been accused of being too lofty and professorial – in other words, too remote and eager to pretend he’s not too remote by covering it up with nuance – but that’s not what I saw in this first debate in Oxford, Mississippi.

Obama was a little slick, but not very much. McCain was a little testy, but not very much. Overall, I think they stayed more or less on topic. It was a relief not to examine and consider whether one or both of them carefully arranged a handshake pat on the back in order to appear physically larger, or how a podium was gripped, and so on. Which means I could trust that both were far more interested in the day-to-day work of governing than candidates I’ve seen in previous races. It was, well, a Presidential debate the way it should be, no huge fireworks, nothing to get distracted by, and nothing, mercifully, very phony about it. It was nice to be able to relax. And that’s what gives me confidence.

Paying the Devil Twice

About 4 years ago I was sitting at a table at a wonderful Portuguese wedding reception. Being an average white guy - Protestant, WASPy, etc. - I had never seen anything like it. A huge, huge reception went on for 12 hours! Open bar, several rounds of the best food I ever saw in one place. The setting was nothing extravagant - a local Portuguese Club. But the money was there. Not huge money, or even very big money. But solid money, upper middle class money. I got the sense from talking to many people that almost no one there was living beyond their means. Quite the opposite, most were very comfortable because they lived on about half their means or less by comparison to other people like me.


We were seated with a guy who owned a real estate appraisal service. This is a guy who is strictly nuts and bolts, no big theories or economics background. He said he was totally mystified as to why or how housing prices could go so high so fast. He was making good money off the market, but he said he would never invest in it because it was obvious to him that a dangerously high percentage of the people who were buying these houses would never be able to afford the monthly mortgage payments, especially ARM's, balloon payments, etc. He said the buyers who were paying ridiculous prices now would make their payments for about 1-3 years and then get foreclosed on. The future was zero mystery to him.


And I'm sure if I had asked most of the wedding guests there that day how they felt, they would have said the same thing. They were glad to know their house might be, in some fantasy land, worth 5 times what they paid for it, but you have to live somewhere and this is where I've lived for x number of years and it's where I'm going to live till I die. House is paid for, so nothing to worry about. To most of them, the housing market spike was silly, dangerous, irrelevant.


Meanwhile, I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable because my wife and I had been refinancing a couple of times to get equity out of the house. Why not, we figured. We could better use the money ourselves. Dummies.


Long story short, our borrowing ultimately backfired, we got divorced mainly over finances, she took the house, refinanced, and has now added over $100,000 of debt to her own balance sheet as her retirement goes down the toilet. We are both in our late 50’s, so not much time to start over, or chart a new course easily.


I feel that we, as home-owners, were guilty of doing what we knew in our hearts was wrong. None of our parents – mine a product of the Depression – would never ever for a single minute consider refinancing a house to basically borrow against its supposedly increasing value. And neither would my ex and I have thought of it, but there was a sign in the window at the bank one day that caught our attention. It had pictures of boats, vacations, swimming pools, and all sorts of wonderful things that we knew, growing up, only wealthy people could truly afford. But that sign in the window basically said, “Come on over to the other side. Enjoy the good life. Be like us. It’s easy.”


So we did exactly that. We tried to be like the people who were offering to loan us the money. We betrayed ourselves, we betrayed our best instincts, because we allowed ourselves to be suckered by a sign in a bank window. We tried to be something we were never meant to be – and lost all that was truly meaningful to us. Right now, there’s no real savings left, no solid investment, no serious equity, and no way to get back what we lost. Work is uncertain and pay is less. I sure don’t want to pay the Devil twice – lost finances and lost marriage - but I’m afraid that’s the real price for trying to be like him.