Cool Patience

Straight Talk Derailed

2008-02-16T13:05:00.002-05:00

Pity the poor reporter who tries to mildly rebuke a less-than-truthful candidate. Peter Baker reports in the Washington Post that John McCain is not exactly accurate when he claims to have called for Rumsfeld's ouster long before the Secretary of Defense paddled off to the Eastern Shore (or a tiny hideaway in the Pentagon, depending on who you talk to). Baker notes: "The trick is that he never did, at least not publicly," and then concludes "McCain's enhanced version of his opposition to Rumsfeld has come as he begins to wrap up the Republican nomination and pivot toward the general election."

A copy editor simplified this to the much blunter "McCain Overstates His Criticisms."

I, for one, cannot wait to use Baker's version in workplace conversation: "Boss, I did not overstate our quarterly financial profits; I simply gave you the enhanced version."

Hillary Channels Churchill

2008-02-14T09:38:00.004-05:00

I, for one, find Hillary’s determination to fight hard for every superdelegate’s vote regardless of the popular vote remarkable. I suspect she is taking a leaf from Winston Churchill, who famously said:

We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength… whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches [of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket], we shall fight on the landing grounds [of the D.C. shuttle], we shall fight in the fields [and backyards of Bethesda] and in the streets [of Capitol Hill], we shall fight in the hills [of McLean]; we shall never surrender…

Vive la Resistance!

A Brief Tribute to Metaphor

2007-10-03T12:42:00.000-04:00

What's more fun than:

(1) Analyzing Hillary Clinton's health plan?

(2) Deconstructing Clinton's potential Iraq policy

(3) Writing about "immigration deadlock"

(4) Looking at oil prices and the fate of Social Security

The answers, according to Howard Kurtz, are:

(1) and (2) Analyzing Hillary's laugh;

(3) Analyzing the impact of an April special election on the November 2006 Congressional elections;

(4) Analyzing the e-economy of the late 1990s

The Sweet Spot

2007-10-02T11:53:00.000-04:00

Just a week ago, the Washington Post criticized Barack Obama for his proposal for refundable family tax credits, asking "Why do families making as much as $200,000 a year need new tax help?" It then went on to list a litany of benefits such families have received.

Yesterday, however, in the midst of attacking Hillary Clinton's stance on Social Security, the Post noted with approval John Edwards' proposal to fund Social Security as "a different, promising idea -- leaving the existing cap [of $97,500] in place but putting a surcharge on income over $200,000."

To the casual observer, the Edwards plan seems to pile a progressive tax rate on top of a regressive tax rate while exempting a small slice of the population from its effects.

How small? According to this table of individual incomes in 2004, men making between $97,500 and $200,000 account for only 5% of wage workers.

Reading between the lines, one gets the impression that the Post's opprobrium for Obama's plan and tepid embrace of Edwards' idea is based on the assumption that the sweet spot for taxation policy lies in cutting taxes for that 5%.

I wonder what an editorial page editor's salary is these days?

Them

2007-09-21T11:47:00.000-04:00

I refer, of course, to the current crop of Democratic candidates, none of whom strikes me individually as worthy of any particular enthusiasm since, at this point, there seems such unanimity of opinion among the party faithful and establishment about all the things George W. Bush has screwed up that their first-term agenda seems pretty much all sewn up, minus the sort of niggling policy details that make editorial writers salivate and “upscale” voters, apparently, turn to the next page in the New York Times.

And is it true there are only eight candidates this time around? I keep on thinking there must be nine, just as in 2004, and I convince myself my count must be off every time I look at them assembled in a row for a debate (which, I'll admit, is as seldom as possible). Perhaps some organizer could be convinced to put up an extra podium at the next debate. For Elijah. Or, maybe, Al Gore.