October 24, 2008
Mac Zilber
McCain’s Biggest Error
Today the New York Times released some interesting poll numbers that lend insight as to why the race is going the way it’s going. 59% of the country believes that McCain’s policies favor the rich, compared to 62% who believe Obama’s policies will favor the middle class or treat all the same. Now part of this is because, objectively, Obama’s policies do favor the middle class and poor more while McCain’s policies do favor the rich more, but we all know that most Americans aren’t exactly acutely tuned in to the minutiae of each campaign’s policies. The reason that this perception has developed is because of the words that have come out of McCain’s own mouth.
It started out with a couple of out-of-touch comments. When McCain said that people making 4 million dollars per year were middle class, that was partially because those are the people with whom he has spent all his time for the last 30 years. When he said he didn’t know how many houses he had, it seemed normal to him; he doesn’t live in every one of his dozen-or-so houses, he just owns them as real estate. The only problem was that he failed to realize that most Americans don’t own so many properties that they can’t count them. When McCain’s heiress wife came to the Republican convention dressed in an outfit that cost $300,000, McCain probably just thought “well, that’s what she usually wears. When said wife told a reporter “the only way to get around Arizona is by private jet,” McCain probably thought “I agree, I don’t know how I was ever able to get around in my thirteen cars.” However, these out of touch moments didn’t say anything about his policy. The real trouble started for him during the debates, which are the events where the average person learns about policy.
During three debates, McCain didn’t say the word “middle-class” a single time. This is especially worrisome in a country in which 80% of people believe they’re in the middle class. He kept saying “Obama will raise your taxes” when the “you” he was referring to was people making more than $250,000 per year. Throughout the third debate, specifically, he showed himself to be the candidate for the rich man. He mockingly talked about “spreading the wealth,” which was effective with his base but left ordinary folks scratching their heads. He mocked the Great Society, the era in which medicare, medicaid, and other popular programs were put into place, without explaining himself. Half of the people watching didn’t know what the Great Society was, and the other half didn’t know why he was complaining about it. Finally, his policies were epitomized by four words. His entire debate performance hinged on a man named Joe the plumber, who McCain claimed would be taxed more by Obama’s plans (Joe would actually get a tax cut on Obama’s plans). When Obama repeated again that he wouldn’t be raising taxes on anybody making less than $250,000, John McCain uttered the fateful four words: “Congratulations Joe, you’re rich.”
There was nothing in the campaign that signified out-of-touch more than McCain’s everyman average-Joe being a rich man, and at that moment, those who weren’t convinced, realized that McCain’s policies are excessively pro-wealthy, and continue the failed trickle-down policies of Reaganomics. The thing that makes this hurt McCain’s campaign so much is that he thinks it works. John McCain has become so myopic that he believes that the majority of the country is going to respond well to a supply-side economic message because they responded well to it 25 years ago. As one conservative columnist whose name I can’t recall said after the third debate: “John McCain didn’t lose these debates. His ideas lost the debates. You can’t win a debate if nobody agrees with you.”
These out-of-touch moments have taken another amusing turn now, as it was revealed this week that the highest-paid member of the McCain campaign is Sarah Palin’s makeup artist, who does the makeup for a VP nominee with a $25,000 per week clothing budget. To John McCain, this may seem normal. Afterall, his wife spends more on earrings than Palin does on her whole outfit. To the rest of us the policies sound…well…kind of elitist. How’s that for irony?
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Not to mention McCain’s proposed ten percent corporate tax cut.