Eli Harman (’09): Secretary, NC State College Libertarians

Long term, it’s how our government chooses to handle the financial crisis which we’re in. That will have a huge impact on us. At the moment, it seems that they are doing everything wrong and are putting the blame on capitalism, greedy businessmen and the marketplace, completely taking no responsibility for any of the terrible laws and policies they passed that led up to this. Easy credit was part of the problem – people lending money that didn’t exist to people who aren’t credit-worthy. Part of that problem was that interest rates were set too low, per policy. What have they done since? They’ve made interest rates lower. The tech bubble in the 90’s, then the housing bubble and petroleum speculation… government just keeps making the problems worse by taking the fundamental cause, and getting more out of tune with reality. We’re heading the wrong direction with all of that. Then you have the bailout, which is nothing more than welfare for Wall Street. It seems like government is determined to do the absolute wrong thing, and if that doesn’t change, it could have a profound negative influence on the economy.

The second issue is foreign militarism. The United States cannot afford an aggressive foreign policy, and both main parties are essentially promising that. The Republicans promise to continue pouring money into the war on terror, and the Democrats say they’ll pull back from that but are looking at other military interventions in places like Darfur with humanitarianistic, solve-all-the-world’s-problems kind of policies. We can’t afford to run around trying to fix everything; it’s beyond the resources of any one country to do that.

 

Brett Little (’09): Students for Barack Obama

When gas prices went up, that hit home with a lot of people. It put people in two groups, one saying “drill here, drill now” and the other looking for alternative energy sources so that we can stop relying on foreign oil. A lot of students are worried about gas prices, so energy independence is priority number one. Priority number two is the economy. Students are seeing that the deregulation put in place by the Bush administration will have an effect on them. If the stock market goes down, it’s an indicator of an unhealthy economy, and even if they should buy into it, students believe that it’s not in their family’s best interest to invest during that time. It’s getting harder to afford health care, save for college and even get groceries because the price of food is rising so quickly.

This was a hot topic in 2004, but I have met a lot of students lately who are concerned about Iraq. They want to get out of there – they are fed up with this war, and want us to finish Al Qaeda off in Afghanistan, catch Bin Laden and get it over with. They are tired of hearing about our soldiers dying and hearing about what happens if we don’t stay in Iraq. They are concerned with what is happening, and they don’t want money that we could be spending at home going overseas to Iraq, because we’ve done all we can over there.

 

Ches McDowell (’11), chairman, NC State College Republicans

I’d say it’s probably the economy and taxes. If corporations are paying too much in taxes and can’t afford to hire us when we get out of school, then we’ll all be jobless. I think John McCain has the best plan to keep the economy afloat and allow companies to maintain the resources necessary to hire more people in the future.

 

Dr. Andrew J. Taylor, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at NC State University

I don’t think there is one particular issue, but students are very future-oriented. I don’t think it’s necessarily their own personal economic security – I think there are issues like energy and the environment, questions of a global perspective and world peace, the economy and jobs, as well as threats to our national security.

It’s a forward-looking perspective that encompasses so many different issues at the moment, and they just want to try to navigate a lot of these problems to make sure that in 20 years, when they are my age, that they are in a position with their families to be able to at least see us moving in the right direction, rather than saying it’s all about gas prices, Iraq or the economy. That, to me, is a common theme that students are looking for.

 

NC State Presidential Experts

North Carolina State University experts can provide clear insights into the pending general election and a host of key issues that will face the presidential contenders.