Time Klein: McCain Wags the Dog on Taxes

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Director of the Congressional Budget Office and current chief McCain economic advisor, is an honest man--which means he's something of a liability on the Straight Talk Express. ...he admitted...that Barack Obama's economic plan would reduce taxes for most people. And now, in a forthcoming book by Fortune columnist Matt Miller, he makes it clear that the next President is going to have to raise taxes.

"If you do nothing on the spending side, you're going to have to raise taxes whether you're a Republican, a Democrat or a Martian," he tells Miller...and then he immediately makes it clear that the "spending side" part of the argument is nothing more than a political fig-leaf. "It's arithmetic." Federal revenue today is 18.8 percent of GDP and federal spending is 20 percent. Holtz-Eakin observes that "the pressure are there" to lift spending [on entitlement programs, mostly] and taxes to 23 or 24 percent of GDP by around 2020, and to as much as 27 percent if health costs remain out of control.

Miller does the arithmetic: that's an annual tax hike of $550 to $700 billion, well beyond the range of any spending cuts that McCain has or might propose. (Those vaunted earmarks cost about $20 billion per year.)

Miller concludes: So why does tax-cutting mania persist among Republicans....'It's the brand,' {Holtz-Eakin} said, 'and you don't dilute the brand.' "

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/the_mccain_tax_increasescontin.html

Economist: Please Do Not Listen To Larry Kudlow

TW: Just in case any of you should ever run across Larry Kudlow on CNBC, a particularly dangerous species- the investment/economics pundit with a strident political agenda whose focus instead of making you money is to WAG THE DOG

From the Economist:
"LARRY KUDLOW might know less about markets than any other prominent business television persona out there. It's always amusing to watch an ostensibly serious figure argue in front of millions of people that markets fell on one day because a certain candidate won a primary battle or rose on another day because a new poll showed a jump in Republican numbers...But this takes the cake...Mr Kudlow writes [speaking of Palin]:

'Even the financial pages are looking better. Oil is about to drop under $100 a barrel. Gold is plunging. And the greenback continues to rally in true King Dollar fashion. Is there a Sarah Palin effect here, too?'

Under any circumstances, the argument that a vice-presidential choice...had rejuvenated American markets would be ludicrous. But Mr Kudlow is writing this about an individual whose brief stint as nominee has occurred during a fortnight of disastrous economic news. American markets are down something like 6% since Mr McCain announced his choice at the end of August. The federal government has just bailed out two massive mortgage agencies, and two other financial firms—Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual—are on the brink of collapse, their shares having tumbled to practically nothing in a matter of days. And of course, drops in commodities are widely seen as a sign of economic pessimism. The prospect of subtrend growth for months or years is expected to reduce demand for such resources."

Wag the Dog Cont.: Kristol In Action

TW: This is dog being wagged. In this case the Iraq al-Qaeda link is propagated.

You have Palin, on 9/11 no less, repeating a variation of a Republican talking point created in 2002 and used relentlessly since:

"{to US troops headed to Iraq} defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

Who carried out 9/11, presumably al-Qaeda. Kornblut from WaPo made the "huge" leap of logic that Palin was linking those troops heading to Iraq to 9/11.

Kristol (a true menace to society a very influential pundit, Republican operative and neo-con extraordinaire who rarely meets a country he does not think the US should invade) jumps on Kornblut asserting she is either "stupid or malicious" because he "knows" Palin was referring to the al-Qaeda that has come to Iraq since the US invasion not that Palin was asserting that Iraq was involved in 9/11.

Get it...it is all so nebulous...but you took the time to read this post, what about those who are too busy, too tired, too bored with politics

All they will know is that Palin puts al-Qaeda and US troops fighting in Iraq in the same sentence and any nuance is being squashed by conservatives firing on the media for alleged stupidity and malice in reporting her words. It is all so simple yet so subtle.

The WaPo Story Blurb:
“Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush"By Anne E. Kornblut
 Washington Post Staff WriterFriday, September 12, 2008;

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. On any other day, Palin's statement would almost certainly have drawn a sharp rebuke from Democrats, but both parties had declared a halt to partisan activities to mark Thursday's anniversary.”

From Kristol:
Kornblut’s interpretation of what Palin said is either stupid or malicious. Palin is evidently saying that American soldiers are going to Iraq to defend innocent Iraqis from al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that is related to al Qaeda, which did plan and carry out the Sept. 11 attacks. It makes no sense for Kornblut to claim that Palin is arguing here that Saddam Hussein’s regime carried out 9/11—obviously Palin isn’t saying that our soldiers are now going over to Iraq to fight Saddam’s regime. Palin isn’t linking Saddam to 9/11. She’s linking al Qaeda in Iraq to al Qaeda.

The Cone of Silence, Wagging the Dog and the Return of Dave

From various news reports:
"According to the Associated Press, a McCain campaign aide "told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said."

TW: Thursday night Ms. Palin will provide her first interview to ABC and Charlie Gibson, my assumption is that she will do fine. The interview will be very controlled, presumeably she has been prepping feverishly, she is intelligent and articulate.

The interview from my perspective is essentially irrelevant.

I have made numerous references in this blog to the 1990's movie, Wag the Dog with Robert DeNiro in which the DeNiro character created a fictitious war in order to spin favorably his clients electoral positioning. Modern day campaigns use similiar, if not quite literal, tactics often. The Republicans have it down to a science. When I see the Dog being Wagged I will note it in the blog titles.

However, the more relevant movie analogy relative to the cone of silence imposed around Ms. Palin is not Wag the Dog but Dave. Another 1990's flick starring Kevin Kline (yet another distinguished IU alum btw) as the Presidential lookalike thrust into the role of actual President due to unforeseen and utterly ridiculous circumstances. In Dave the Kline character was sequestered from the public and press while various advisors injected him with enough policy and rhetoric to make him professionally functional.

A similiar exercise is apparently in process with Ms. Palin.

For the first time in history we have a VP nominee who has been sequestered from the press and any public questioning but for extremely limited and minutely controlled events. The very fact that the McCain campaign believes it necessary to sequester its candidate speaks to the inherent vacuousness of the selection. Imagine 60 days from the Presidential election, a VP nominee so inexperienced in national and international governance, so lacking in his or her own perspectives on those national and international issues that she must be injected by advisors with every possible policy plank and talking point. One reads stories of "cram sessions" with distinguished foreign policy and domestic policy advisors. This is the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, the alleged beacon for hope and leadership for billions throughout the world. And Ms. Sarah "Dave" Palin is in cram sessions.

Wag the Dog: The Madness Continues

From Benen at the Washington Monthly:

"STOP THE MADNESS.... As the media continues to find the discussion of lipsticks and pigs fascinating, ... even Time's Mark Halperin, hardly a reflexive Democrat... From CNN last night:

'Stop the madness. I think, with all due respect to the program's focus on, listen to David just said. I think this is the press just absolutely playing into the McCain campaign's crocodile tears...

They knew exactly what he was saying. It's an expression. And this is a victory for the McCain campaign in the sense that every day they can make this a pig fight in the mud. It's good for them because it's reducing Barack Obama's message even more. But I think this is a low point in the day and one of the low days of our collective coverage of this campaign. To spend even a minute on this expression, I think, is amazing and outrageous.'

"To his credit, CNN's Anderson Cooper did, in fact, change the subject, and began some discussion on the McCain campaign's literally daily lying about Sarah Palin and the Bridge to Nowhere. Amazingly, Halperin took a firm line on this, too."

'It's another thing that, again, I'm embarrassed about our profession for. She should be held more accountable for that. The Bridge to Nowhere thing is outrageous. And if you press them on it, they'll fall because they know they can't defend what they're saying. They're staying it on the stump as a core part of their message, it's in their advertising.

I'm not saying the press should be out to get John McCain and Sarah Palin. But if a core part of their message is something that every journalism organization in the country has looked at and says it's demonstrably false, again, we're not doing our jobs if we just treat this as one of many things that's happening...

The other three people who are on the national ticket have been scrutinized for months and in cases, years. We've got less than 60 days to do this. We'd better get about doing it. And if she doesn't cooperate in that more than she has, the public should be told that clearly.'

Credit where credit is due -- Mark Halperin's assessment couldn't have been better."

Wag the Dog: Lipstick Piggery

From Joe Klein at Time:

"Lipstick Piggery
The John McCain campaign is so, so upset that Barack Obama said that McCain's efforts to camouflage his own policies is "like putting lipstick on a pig." I am sure that there is no cynicism involved here. I am certain that Steve Schmidt and his band of merry men--and they are, almost exclusively, men--are deeply offended, in their feminist souls, by what they perceive as a glancing reference to Sarah Palin's lipstick on a pit bull line in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

I am certain this has nothing to do with diverting attention from matters of actual substance. That's why Matt Drudge and the New York Post have made it their lead items. I am equally certain that my colleagues in the media, especially the geniuses who populate cable news, will find this far more important than, say, McCain's and Obama's respective positions on the energy bill--which contains crucial tax credits for alternative energy programs--now being considered in the Congress. (Hint: McCain opposes the bill because it would close tax loopholes for oil companies, a tax "increase" of the sort that he has pledged to never, ever support.)"