Science Debate 2008

The US Presidential candidates ought to have a debate with a topic focus of Science and Technology

For me, the US Presidential primaries and elections are a spectator sport.

I live here, I am politically moderately aware and interested.
I pay taxes, lots and lots of taxes; for which I receive less than I like, and I do understand it is a trade-off, I would accept more services for higher taxes, if delivered with some efficiency and honesty. I don't get to vote (hey, that's not fair... ).

I am also a recipient of federal science funding (well, mostly as a conduit to well deserving graduate students etc and so forth)...

I am, therefore, intensely interested in the Presidential science policy views, as well as their policies in general.

As the ScienceDebate2008 site notes, this Science stuff is kinda important.
It would be useful to hear a coherent presentation from the candidates what they think about Science.
And Technology. And the associated issues: Medicine and Health; Environment and Climate Change; Space and Energy; Defence and Development.

The "America Competes" legislative initiatives had broad bipartisan support and Presidential backing, but the actual deliverables were just decimated by the budget passed after Congress bowed to threat of a Presidential veto.
Energy policy is a major issue, which is tightly coupled to both foreign policy, economics and defence policy. The underlying constraints on energy policy are science based, the possible solutions are broadly technological issues.
Medicine is a major economic driver, and choke, it is technology driven and underpinned by scientific research. Pending health issues, such as potential pandemics, and insurance in the genomic world are strongly science driven, as are most of the potential solutions.
Climate Change is probably the major medium term policy issue for all nations, and the science underlying it is poorly understood by the politicians, if not actively denied, and the solutions, and secondary issues, such as impact of food supplies and public health, have major science drivers.
Defence research is down sharply - this is masked in the budgets by increases in short term development, but the fundamental long term research for the Armed Forces is down a lot in the last few years, and surprisingly so. This is not an issue that has been debated publicly, and the wisdom of this decision has not been explored.

Overall, the US public is poorly informed about science and a large fraction of it does not comprehend basic scientific and quantitative concepts that are the foundations of the economy they live in. Society is increasingly pushed by scientific developments and technology changes fueled by science; but there is very little informed consideration of this, or preparation for how to sustain this economic factor. It is not entirely false to argue that the US economic boom from 1950-2000 was driven by post-World War factors, including a one time massive injection of knowledge and technology development into the US economy.
The tip of the spear, the top 0.1% students, those who would likely do well in almost any academic system, they mostly do ok in the US - strong academically, competitive but face broad career uncertainty and disincentives. Some things are better than among the international competition, some are worse. It is the rest I worry about.
There ought to be more broadly educated science college graduates, those who took the major out of interest and for education, with some general idea of exploring academic options, but no promises. There ought to be an order of magnitude more of these.

This is why we need to hear what the candidates think.
Do any of them comprehend the issues? Do any of them care about the issues?
Are any of them actively hostile to these issues, and if so, why?
We gots to know.
I fear the answers.

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