Tag: McCain

The candidates, the press and overreactions


(image from MSNBC)

The conservative wing of the blogosphere has been buzzing about the decision on the part of the Obama campaign to cut off a Florida television station from access to the candidates and their wives. It is a foolish move on the campaign’s part, of course, but the conservative response certainly goes beyond the rational.

A typical comment comes from Greg Pollowitz at National Review Online, who called the campaign’s decision

A preview of things to come in Obamerica — play ball or you’re out.

This echoes a letter I received over the weekend (it’ll run in Thursday’s paper):

An now Joe Biden receives some questions he is uncomfortable with, and the Obama campaign pulls all further interview from the station — WFTV in Florida? Is this an example of things to come and what we should expect from an Obama presidency — that we shall not dare question anything our president or vice president do? Is this a democracy or a dictatorship?

Again, the Obama folks were wrong to cancel Jill Biden’s appearance, but for conservatives and Republicans who have been chattering about liberal bias — and who applauded decisions by the McCain campaign to shield Sarah Palin from the press and who canceled an interview on Larry King’s show because of touch questioning of a McCain advisor by CNN’s Campbell Brown:

This afternoon, anchorman Wolf Blitzer announced on air that McCain’s planned interview with Larry King tonight had been canceled by the campaign. Blitzer said McCain aides complained that Brown had gone “over the line” in her grilling of Bounds.

McCain campaign spokeswoman Maria Comella later explained the cancellation with this sharply worded statement:

“After a relentless refusal by certain on-air reporters to come to terms with John McCain’s selection of Alaska’s sitting governor as our party’s nominee for vice president, we decided John McCain’s time would be better served elsewhere.”

The thing I find so striking about this is that the rhetoric being used by the McCain campaign — the faux outrage, etc. — is no different than that offered by my liberal colleagues. That the GOP has ginned it up this time is no surprise, nor is it a shock that they were silent when McCain shut CNN down. the same can be said about Obama and the left.

In any case, there is another angle on this that goes beyond the Biden interview and raises questions about WFTV anchor Barbara West. Watch the video of the WFTV-Biden exchange, an interview framed around McCain talking points.


Now, watch her interview with McCain from about a week earlier, which was done by the same WFTV anchor and followed the same basic script.

I wouldn’t characterise it so much as a softball interview as I would pitching him batting practice — or free television ad time on a news show.

The lesson in all of this, I think, is that we need to see these little campaign outrages for what they are — nonsense that will be forgotten once the campaign is over.

I just don’t see either of these candidates as being the reincarnation of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush when it comes to the press. Both have a history of being open and available and both are likely to revert to past history once the election passes.

Or, at least, I hope that’s the case.

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How not to raise the age issue

There is something unseemly about this post on FiredogLake from TBoggs about Sen. Joe Biden’s mother-in-law:

It should be noted that, at 78, the late Mrs. Jacobs is only six years older than former prisoner of war John McCain. Now it is entirely unlikely that Mrs. Jacobs spent five and a half years being tortured in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp which might have had some bearing on her untimely death, but we do know that she had the good fortune to live in a country where women outlive men by slightly over five years.

Not that any of the math or actuarial tables mean anything.

Exactly. It doesn’t matter, or only matters nominally. The death of Bonny Jean Jacobs should not be a campaign issue. (And, don’t forget, Joe Biden is only six years younger than McCain.)

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Market meltdown is best argument against privatizing Social Security

It has always been pretty clear to me that the notion that we could fix our retirement system by handing it over to Wall Street was, well, nuts.

Taking a relatively stable and secure retirement account and opening it to the vicissitudes of the market, which may have seemed like a good time when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was spiking up through the roof, always had a dark side — one we are witnessing now as the markets crumble and major investment firms bite the dust.

And while most Americans — to their credit — oppose the plan, keeping it from gaining any real traction in the political realm over the years, despite support of it — in one form or another — from politicians of both parties. But it hasn’t died, remaining a goal of conservatives — including Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain.

Here is the language from the national Republican platform:

We are committed to putting Social Security on a sound fiscal basis. Our society faces a profound demographic shift over the next twenty-five years, from today’s ratio of 3.3 workers for every retiree to only 2.1 workers by 2034. Under the current system, younger workers will not be able to depend on Social Security as part of their retirement plan. We believe the solution should give workers control over, and a fair return on, their contributions. No changes in the system should adversely affect any current or near-retiree. Comprehensive reform should include the opportunity to freely choose to create your own personal investment accounts which are distinct from and supplemental to the overall Social Security system.

McCain had long been a privatization proponent — though his approach has changed from strict privatization to a mix of the current system and private savings accounts tied to cuts in benefits. Here is an excerpt from a March story in The Wall Street Journal (I was alerted to this by OurFuture.org):

A centerpiece of a McCain presidential bid in 2000 was a plan to divert a portion of Social Security payroll taxes to fund private accounts, much as President Bush proposed unsuccessfully. Under the plan, workers could manage the money in stocks and bonds themselves to build a nest egg and, at retirement, also receive reduced Social Security payments from the government. Proponents say the combination of the nest egg and government payouts could give a retiree more than the current system, but opponents say the change would undermine the Social Security system.

Sen. McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign Web site takes a different view, proposing “supplementing” the existing full Social Security system with personally managed accounts. Such accounts wouldn’t substitute for guaranteed payments, and they wouldn’t be financed by diverting a portion of Social Security payroll taxes.

Mr. McCain’s chief economic aide, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office, says economic circumstances forced changes concerning Social Security policy. Vast budget surpluses projected in 2000 evaporated with a recession, the Bush tax cuts and the cost of responding to Sept. 11.

As a result, the McCain campaign says the candidate intends to keep Social Security solvent by reducing the growth in benefits over the coming decades to match projected growth in payroll tax revenues. Among the options are extending the retirement age to 68 and reducing cost-of-living adjustments, but the campaign hasn’t made any final decisions.

“You can’t keep promises made to retirees,” says Mr. Holtz-Eakin, referring to the level of benefits the government is supposed to pay future retirees. “But you can pay future retirees more than current retirees.”

Asked about the apparent change in position in the interview, Sen. McCain said he hadn’t made one. “I’m totally in favor of personal savings accounts,” he says. When reminded that his Web site says something different, he says he will change the Web site. (As of Sunday night, he hadn’t.) “As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

And that’s the key line — “along the lines that President Bush proposed.” Here is what the president proposed in 2005, when he pushed hard for his version of reform:

As we fix Social Security, we must make it a better deal for our younger workers by allowing them to put part of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts.

  • Personal accounts would be entirely voluntary.
  • The money would go into a conservative mix of bond and stock funds that would have the opportunity to earn a higher rate of return than anything the current system could provide.
  • A young person who earns an average of $35,000 a year over his or her career would have nearly a quarter million dollars saved in his or her own account upon retirement.
  • That savings would provide a nest egg to supplement that worker’s traditional Social Security check, or to pass on to his or her children.
  • Best of all, it would replace the empty promises of the current system with real assets of ownership.
Hmm. “Bond and stock funds.” “Assets of ownership.” Isn’t that what has been swirling down the drain over the last month?

I don’t raise this out of the blue. The Wall Street Journal wrote about this last week and the Obama campaign has been hitting McCain on the Social Security issue of late. OurFuture.org, though, has offered the toughest critique, along with a report explaining the impact that a privatization scheme would have on retirees.

The main findings are that for future generations, Social Security privatization would:

  • Cut lifetime benefits by $240,264
  • Make 8.6 million senior citizens vulnerable to poverty.

And these numbers do not even reflect the recent volatility of the markets.

American workers shouldn’t have to face this kind of uncertainty. The cautionary tale is before us — listen to this NPR Morning Edition report on soon-to-be retirees who thought they would live off their savings and investments, but whom the experts now council to “keep on working.”

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Sarcasm alert: Prospect of McCain involvementspeeds bailout deal

Breaking news from Washington:

Prospect of McCain involvement
speeds bailout deal

Democrats and Republicans agree in principle to deal
as McCain is expected in Washington

Analysis

WASHINGTON — Riding in on a white horse he hopes will take him to the White House, Sen. John McCain arrived in Washington with one mission: Hammer out a deal to save the American economy.

The Arizona Republican — and temporarily former presidential candidate — was apparently the chief mover of a bipartisan deal that will allow a Bush administration bailout plan to move forward in the House and Senate and rescue the nation’s financial system.

Congressional leaders from both parties emerged from a three-hour meeting with the outlines of a plan they said should be completed later today so that negotiations with Treasury can take place.

Participants in the meeting, speaking not for attribution, said that McCain’s leadership on the issue — his willingness to suspend his presidential campaign and return to Washington after having not voted in the Senate for six months — helped in hammering out the deal. The fact that he had not arrived in Washington by the time Congressional leaders announced their plan only showed how powerful McCain’s leadership proved to be.

“We’re terrified of him,” said one senator, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid being the target of McCain’s fiery temper. “We knew that if we hadn’t brokered a deal, he would have broken our heads.”

McCain’s cancellation of Friday’s debate — a cancellation that neither the Presidential Debate Commission or Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, acknowledge — show how loose a cannon he is, the senator said. He called McCain’s move “weird and odd.”

Another Senate colleague likened McCain to the short-tempered Tommy DeVito, Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas.

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