By Sheri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin, Co-Editors CenteredPolitics.com
John McCain wants to make George Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.
It is the centerpiece of his economic prescriptions. This fact alone should
be enough to wipe that newly appropriated word “change” out of his
lexicon. Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden should drop any notice of the hypocrisy
and flip-flops on earmarks, experience, and family values represented by the
Sarah Palin selection and focus squarely on the fact that John McCain does not
support a single proposal for the economy that is different from the economic
policy of George Bush.
Barack Obama has an economic plan that gets more money ($1,000) in the hands
of middle class families to stimulate the economy and create jobs in the short
term and makes needed investments in the economy of the future with support
for college education, worker retraining and investments in renewable energy.
John McCain wants to make George Bush’s tax cuts, and the rest of his economic
proposals, permanent.
Instead of moving from issue to issue and argument to argument, Barack Obama
needs to find at least a half dozen different ways to make this point. He should
try logic, rhetoric, humor, ridicule, analogy, and personalization. Whatever
different ways there are to say, “McCain wants to make GEORGE BUSH’S ECONOMIC
POLICY PERMANENT” he should use.
Voters want change, especially when it comes to the economy. This fueled Obama’s
rise in the polls and more recently McCain has seen a bump in the polls by claiming
the word “change” in his Republican nomination acceptance speech.
But on the central issue in this campaign, the economy, there is not a single
policy of the current president that McCain would change. In fact he wants to
make one of the most disastrous aspects of current policy P-E-R-M-A-N-E-N-T.
Question: How many Republican politicians does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Change? Don’t make me laugh! John McCain wants to make George Bush’s
economic policy permanent.
However false the claim, Republicans have learned that repetition can win arguments
– witness the constant repetition of the statement that Obama will raise taxes.
The truth is Obama has a plan to give 95 percent of American families a $1,000
tax cut. Obama needs to repeat this fact at least 1000 times to be sure everyone
knows it. And he needs to place just as many repetitions behind the simple statement
that although McCain has said he wants to change Washington, there is not a
single George Bush economic policy that McCain would change. In fact, just like
President Bush, McCain wants to make the central Bush economic policy, the tax
cut for millionaires that has exacerbated income inequality, increased the budget
deficit, and slowed economic growth, permanent. Permanent, permanent, permanent,
permanent, permanent.
We think you get the idea.
The authors are co-editors of CenteredPolitics.com.
Allan Rivlin is a Partner with Peter D. Hart Research a Public Opinion Research
firm in Washington, DC, that with Public Opinion Strategies conducts the NBC
News/Wall Street Journal Poll.
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