After running out of gas and falling behind in every major poll, the “Straight Talk Express” has hit a wall. The town hall meetings of John McCain and Sarah Palin have focused on pointless diversions such as William Ayers, black Arabs and domestic terrorists. With days before the presidential election, the McCain/Palin ticket has asked an idiotic and distracting question: “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Obama has written two autobiographies, participated in more than 20 presidential debates and campaigned for nearly two years. Maybe if McCain and Palin absorbed this girth of information they would understand why the real Obama is leading in every national poll.

The sidestepping of issues to allow more time for character attacks has tainted this election. At the vice presidential debate, moderator Gwen Ifill asked Palin to respond to Joe Biden’s arguments against McCain’s health care plan. She instead accused Obama of voting to raise taxes 84 times. Aside from being untrue, her attack had nothing to do with health care.

About 10 minutes later she addressed health care, explaining that McCain’s plan will provide a $5,000 tax credit for families to buy their own health care coverage. She claimed the tax credit is budget neutral.

But a tax credit cannot be budget neutral. Receiving a free $5,000 check would be nice no doubt, but Palin would be surprised to find this tax credit would actually increase the national deficit. She said the plan would be budget neutral because she knows, yet fails, to mention the plan will also make history by creating a tax on health care benefits provided by employers.

Even with this new tax, the math doesn’t add up. The U.S. Budget Watch fiscal voter guide estimates McCain’s health care plan would come out to a shortfall of between $54 billion to $65 billion. Thus, the plan isn’t quite as budget neutral as Palin suggests. It’s more like budget negative.

In the same statement she also proved she either doesn’t understand Obama’s health care plan or she is simply a liar, neither of which bode well for Americans. In the VP debate, she claimed his plan mandates a universal health program overseen by the government and said, “health care will be taken over by the feds.” Hillary Clinton would be shocked to find out the Obama plan has a universal mandate – considering she attacked his plan throughout the Democratic primary for only mandating health insurance for every child in the U.S. through a extension of Medicaid or SCHIP to those who can’t afford it. Obama’s plan would merely increase publicly funded health care.

Palin claimed the Obama plan creates a universal government-run program – implying his plan abolishes private insurances. But she was wrong again, all the Obama plan does is force companies to cover preexisting conditions. According to his Web site, the Obama plan will be paid for “by rolling back Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.” Neither plan is perfect, but it is important to understand what each actually says. The Obama plan doesn’t force health coverage on adults, nor does it nationalize the health care industry. The McCain plan isn’t budget neutral. It doesn’t provide enough money to actually guarantee all Americans affordable, quality health care. It gives every American, even the ultra rich, a $2,500 tax credit and it doesn’t force companies to cover preexisting conditions.

It would be nice to see and hear the good old-fashioned “Straight Talk Express” the McCain campaign has been talking about, but that train seems to have left the station.