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Candidates: You are here

New York is epicenter of most pressing domestic issues

October 15, 2008

The etiquette in presidential debates seems to be this: Each candidate opens with a brief word of thanks to the host institution and its community, and then proceeds to ignore them for the next 90 minutes, to focus on national and global concerns. There are plenty of good reasons why tonight's debate ought to be different.

We're not just saying that because it happens to be taking place on Long Island. True, we're pleased that it's at Hofstra University, an increasingly influential institution, and we share Hofstra's pleasure in the passionate focus on national issues that the debate has brought to both students and faculty.

But here are some of the real reasons why the candidates should take more notice than usual of their surroundings:

To begin with, they'll be standing right at the doorstep of the world's greatest city, the economic engine of the Empire State. Just as the eyes of the world turned toward New York when it became Ground Zero on 9/11, the city is now Ground Zero of the fiscal crisis. The powerful financial industries that went astray happen to live here. The taxes on their success have helped fill the coffers of the state and city for years. Now, the consequences of their failures are draining them.

So we need to hear both John McCain and Barack Obama speak clearly about their plans to dig the nation out of this mess, and more: What can the federal government do for states and cities, as this crisis diminishes both sales-tax and income-tax revenues? And, by the way, how will they pay for that help?

They'll also be standing at the heart of the postwar move to the suburbs. So they should talk a bit about how Washington might help mature suburbs such as Nassau and growing ones such as Suffolk. Both will suffer from the woes of Wall Street, where so many Long Islanders work. Both need to ride the coattails of the green economy that will grow from the nation's search for alternative fuels and greater energy efficiency.

The candidates are also visiting a region where affluence and poverty live side by side, in the city and on the Island. They owe us some insights into how they'd address poverty and hunger here and elsewhere in America.

They'll be standing less than an hour's drive from Farmingville, now a national symbol of our broken immigration system. They haven't talked much about that issue. This would be a perfect venue for that conversation.

Finally, on a campus with a growing expertise in the study of the American presidency, they should outline a vision for the office they both seek. To restore some of the balance that the framers of our Constitution sought, would they give back some of the power that the presidency has arrogated to itself? If not, why not?

We hope that a sense of place can guide both men to fruitful discussion of the issues that resonate especially here, but also around the nation, in this world-historical election.