From the invasion of Iraq to the selection of Sarah Palin, carelessness has characterized recent episodes of faux conservatism. Tuesday’s probable repudiation of the Republican Party will punish characteristics displayed in the campaign’s closing days.
Some polls show that Palin has become an even heavier weight in John McCain’s saddle than his association with George W. Bush. Did McCain, who seems to think that Palin’s never having attended a “Georgetown cocktail party” is sufficient qualification for the vice presidency, lift an eyebrow when she said that vice presidents “are in charge of the United States Senate”?
She may have been tailoring her narrative to her audience of third-graders, who do not know that vice presidents have no constitutional function in the Senate other than to cast tie-breaking votes. But does she know that when Lyndon Johnson, transformed by the 1960 election from Senate majority leader into vice president, ventured to the Capitol to attend the Democratic senators’ weekly policy luncheon, the new majority leader, Montana’s Mike Mansfield, supported by his caucus, barred him because his presence would be a derogation of the Senate’s autonomy?
Perhaps Palin’s confusion about the office for which she is auditioning comes from listening to its current occupant. Dick Cheney, the foremost practitioner of this administration’s constitutional carelessness in aggrandizing executive power, regularly attends the Senate Republicans’ Tuesday luncheons. He has said jocularly that he is “a product” of the Senate, which pays his salary, and that he has no “official duties” in the executive branch. His situational constitutionalism has, however, led him to assert, when claiming exemption from a particular executive order, that he is a member of the legislative branch and, when seeking to shield certain of his deliberations from legislative inquiry, to say that he is a member of the executive branch.
Palin may be an inveterate simplifier; McCain has a history of reducing controversies to cartoons. A Republican financial expert recalls attending a dinner with McCain for the purpose of discussing with him domestic and international financial complexities that clearly did not fascinate the senator. As the dinner ended, McCain’s question for his briefer was: “So, who is the villain?”
McCain revived a familiar villain — “huge amounts” of political money — when Barack Obama announced that he had received contributions of $150 million in September. “The dam is broken,” said McCain, whose constitutional carelessness involves wanting to multiply impediments to people who want to participate in politics by contributing to candidates — people such as the 632,000 first-time givers to Obama in September.
Why is it virtuous to erect a dam of laws to impede the flow of contributions by which citizens exercise their First Amendment right to political expression? “We’re now going to see,” McCain warned, “huge amounts of money coming into political campaigns, and we know history tells us that always leads to scandal.” The supposedly inevitable scandal, which supposedly justifies preemptive government restrictions on Americans’ freedom to fund the dissemination of political ideas they favor, presumably is that Obama will be pressured to give favors to his September givers. The contributions by the new givers that month averaged $86.
One excellent result of this election cycle is that public financing of presidential campaigns now seems sillier than ever. The public has always disliked it: Voluntary and cost-free participation, using the check-off on the income tax form, peaked at 28.7 percent in 1980 and has sagged to 9.2 percent. The Post, which is melancholy about the system’s parlous condition, says there were three reasons for creating public financing: to free candidates from the demands of fundraising, to level the playing field and “to limit the amount of money pouring into presidential campaigns.” The first reason is decreasingly persuasive because fundraising is increasingly easy because of new technologies such as the Internet. The second reason is, the Supreme Court says, constitutionally impermissible. Government may not mandate equality of resources among political competitors who earn different levels of voluntary support. As for the third reason — “huge amounts” (McCain) of money “pouring into” (The Post) presidential politics — well:
The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips.
By George F. Will
Out Foxing Karl Rove 
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October 31, 2008 at 12:27 pm
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Campaign promises often wilt after the election. Tax-cut promises are a frequent casualty.
By backtracking on tax-cut pledges even before the election, Barack Obama threatens to break Bill Clinton’s speed record. It wasn’t until a week before his first inauguration that Clinton openly reneged on his promise to cut taxes for the middle class.
There’s another similarity. Candidate Clinton and Candidate Obama both promised to raise taxes, too, but only on “the wealthy.” And both proceeded to widen the definition of “wealthy” to encompass more and more taxpayers.
During his campaign, Clinton said, “The only people who will pay more income taxes are the wealthiest 2 percent, those living in households making over $200,000 a year.” After the election, he proceeded to raise taxes across-the-board.
Less than a month into his presidency, the Washington Post headlined, “Clinton Asks Middle Class to Pay Higher Taxes; President Issues `Call to Arms’ To Restore Economic Vitality.” After Clinton’s Jan. 14, 1993, news conference, the Post wrote that Clinton “complained that it was only the press, not voters, who considered that issue [tax cuts] important.”
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At first, Clinton maintained that only those earning over $100,000 would pay more under his revised tax plan. But The Heritage Foundation noted it would hit far more broadly, raising taxes for individuals making $25,000 and couples making $32,000. The Los Angeles Times headline echoed that finding: “Clinton Threshold on Tax Bite Dips to $30,000 Incomes.”
Fast forward to now. Even before the election, Obama is downsizing his tax promises. First he advertised that nobody would pay higher taxes unless they earned over $250,000 a year. Now his TV ads say the threshold is $200,000. And in campaign remarks in Pennsylvania, running mate Joe Biden lowered it again, to $150,000.
It all parallels the gradual tax plan changes Bill Clinton started making shortly before his election. Then, after his election, the gradual changes turned into dramatic transformation.
As the New York Times noted in February 1993, “… beginning about a month before Election Day, Mr. Clinton took care to say he was not making a read-my-lips pledge on middle-class taxes. He was making the more narrow pledge that he would not raise taxes to pay for his new spending programs. But the overall thrust of what he promised ran in the opposite direction.”
On Feb. 15, 1993, just weeks after he was inaugurated, Clinton completed the course change in a national TV address, telling the nation, “I’ve worked harder than I’ve ever worked in my life to meet that goal. But I can’t.”
His excuse was two-fold. First, he “hadn’t realized” just how bad the deficit was. Second, he believed the people wanted the new spending he had proposed during his campaign.
Clinton sought to defuse the political damage by promising to hit “the wealthy” harder. His Feb. 6, 1993, radio address told the nation he would “get rid of windfalls for the wealthy before I ask any of the rest of the American people to make a contribution,” and that, “We’re going to ask the most from those who have got the most and gave the least during the past dozen years.”
Clinton blamed Washington politicians – prior presidents in particular – for supposedly concealing just how bad the federal deficit was, thereby justifying his reneging on his campaign promises.
In 2008, our deficit is far worse and Obama’s spending pledges are far greater than Clinton’s. Only someone who has been locked in a cave is unaware that this year’s deficit spending is approaching a trillion dollars.
This is no proof that Obama will renege, Clinton-style. But his recent adjustments in describing whose taxes will go up certainly are not reassuring.
Obama also is using a looser definition of wealth than Clinton did. The $200,000 threshold that Clinton applied in 1992 equates to $311,000 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Obama’s most-recent $200,000 threshold is the same as a $128,255 income would have been in 1992.
The week before Bill Clinton was inaugurated, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., observed, “This week has been rather the clatter of campaign promises being tossed out the window.”
Those who fear that this year’s campaign promises will also be thrown out the window should keep their eyes wide open and be ready to dodge whatever might fall on their heads.