Q & A with Eugene Robinson

Eugene Robinson wrote a column yesterday and then conducted an online chat in the afternoon. I submitted the following questions:

• You wrote that "I believe that race is a subtext of Republican attack words such as "dangerous" or "socialist..." As a right-winger, can you explain to me what the rulebook is for attacking Obama in such a way that is not racist?

• You wrote that "...McCain promises "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan without telling war-weary voters how much more time, money or blood he will spend." Has any president in history ever told the people the exact costs of a war? Did FDR do this in WWII? Truman in Korea? Johnson in Vietnam? Wouldn't this require clairvoyance on McCain's part?

• You wrote that "...basically what [McCain and Palin] propose is staying the course that brought us to this point of global [economic] crisis." Can you explain to me exactly how Bush produced the current global crisis? Was it the tax cuts? The added regulatory burden of Sarbanes-Oxley? Should more regulation have been in place? If so, which ones?

Unfortunately none of my questions were answered.