Newsweek Fails to Find Salvation

One Robert J. Samuelson explains why he feels that Obama is lacking as a presidential candidate, in an interesting way. He seemingly claims that Obama's ability to impress in person means that his inability to provide policies that are similarly audacious makes him somehow worse than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain. Some good points are made in the process, and the article is worth reading.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/113672/page/1

Of particular issue is what he sees as a lack of detail behind Obama's rhetoric, and despite the occasional valid point, I’d pose his own argument against himself. He lists vagaries without providing backing rational – “If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.” What areas of his agenda qualify under these descriptors? I’d very possibly agree if I knew what items he was talking about.

The Obama hype certainly does provide detractors with a target for their criticism. There isn’t enough pressure from the media for Obama to address his plan details more publicly. If you don’t go to Obama’s website and read his Blueprint for Change, most of the details of the plans this author lists would be completely unavailable.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Blueprint_Obama.htm

I did find one particular item in the article odd, however, and somewhat explanatory of the weakness of the overall argument:
"Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees—shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling."

He first claims that Obama’s plan is not change, but pandering; suggesting that there is no possible way for the promise to be met. But then he goes on to detail some of Obama’s plans to actually make the pledge possible, and yet fails to take the opportunity to point out any flaws in them; his argument here does not appear to be that details are lacking, as he claims, but that he disagrees with the details given. He seems to think that cutting benefits and raising the retirement age are the only methods that could work to save SS, and thus any different ideas (the things he claims are missing) are then not true details.

Where is the math to show that raising the SS cap isn’t going to provide enough money to fulfill the listed changes? If he thinks Obama should say that cutting benefits is the only hope, then why not provide a rational for that stance, instead of just making a claim of what the candidate should have said?

Lastly, most of the article is about Obama’s lack of both details and of “independent ideas”, without considering the alternatives. If McCain and Hillary are not held to a higher standard because they lack in the effective rhetoric that seems to have caused this reporter’s initial excitement with Obama, then why are their similarly lacking plans somehow better? Given his stated concerns with these other two candidates, is the author's contention really that when confronted with two similar options, picking the one with a known list of shortcomings is better, simply because we know what they are?