THE Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a sideshow, a distrac tion, a sham and a shame. So sayeth many of the brightest stars in punditry. Barack Obama himself frets that we are “caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics,” which “trivializes the profound issues.”
What are those profound issues? What are those? Well, according to Obama and Hillary Clinton alike, gas prices top the list.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos opened an interview by asking Clinton how she can defend her proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer when everyone knows it won’t lower gas prices. “Nearly every editorial board and economist in the country has come out against it,” he noted. “Even a supporter of yours, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, calls it pointless and disappointing.”
Her response: Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.
Clinton says she doesn’t mind if economists agree that her proposal would do nothing to alleviate high gas prices. Indeed, when Stephanopoulos pressed her to name one credible economist who thinks this idea has merit, she responded: “Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”
The Clinton plan has the added benefit of punishing those evil oil companies by making them pay the tax, even though those pointy-headed economists say it will actually reward them.
Let’s also point out that, as a matter of political reality, Clinton might as well be calling for a ban on unicorn meat in dog food, because there’s no way her proposal can actually happen.
Now, in fairness, we should point out that Obama opposes the Clinton proposal for many of the reasons stated above. That speaks well of him.
But there’s a larger point here. Clinton’s new populist demagoguery is entirely symbolic. The “substance” is stage dressing.
She’s trying to tell blue-collar workers that she’s on their side. The language may be economic, but the message is about values. It’s I-feel-your-pain treacle gussied up as tax policy.
Who cares if even liberal economists like Krugman concede the stupidity of her idea; she’s taking the side of the Bubbas against all the fancy pants.
The same goes for the debate between Obama and Clinton over health care that consumed many early Democratic primaries. Vast amounts of time were wasted on parsing the fine print of their respective policy proposals, with earnest journalists wading hip-deep into the actuarial tables – as if either plan would survive its first encounter with Congress intact. Who cares? We’re talkin’ “substance” here!
Presidential elections aren’t referendums on policy papers. Rather, policy papers are themselves mere hints of where a candidate’s priorities lie.
This isn’t to say that candidates shouldn’t offer details, but let’s do away with the charade that the dots on the “i” and the crosses on the “t” are the stuff of Serious Politics, while discussions about a candidate’s “non-economic” values are somehow irrelevant. It’s all the same conversation.
Whatever the true import of Obama’s relationship with Wright; whatever the proper weight voters should give to his view that poor whites “cling” to guns, religion and bigotry because they’ve suffered under bad economic policies; whatever Clinton’s “sniper fire” story says about her – it strikes me as absurd to argue that these data are meaningless but their stance on a gas-tax holiday is of enduring importance.
We pick presidents for their judgment and values. Anything that gives us a clue as to what those might be isn’t only fair game, it is the game.