Inside Politics: The tax issue

THE TAX ISSUE

“The short-term impact of the third debate will be to help Barack Obama. But the long term implications may give John McCain a needed boost. Obama looked good, but McCain opened the tax-and-spend issue in a way that might prevail,” Dick Morris and Eileen McGann write in the New York Post.

“Obama took the worst that McCain could hand out and came out looking good. McCain was the more aggressive debater, but Obama looked like the better president. The constants of the debate remained. Obama is smoother, prettier, younger and more presidential. But McCain had a feisty appeal, a Trumanesque approach that may resonate in these times of anger and unrest,” the writers said.

“Obama seemed to rise above the charges and show his reasonableness and his ability to inspire confidence. McCain was like a trial lawyer, hammering out his points, but Obama came across with dignity.

“Finally, John McCain came out swinging. In his feisty, aggressive style, he scored key points on spending and taxes. Coherent in a way that he has not been in previous debates, McCain repeatedly turned Obama’s spending plans against the Democratic candidate. The continued invocation of Joe the Plumber brought a populist edge to the tax issue that it has lacked since Ronald Reagan.

“Strategically, every debate is a chance to ratify the issues that will dominate the weeks that follow. McCain and Obama both made taxes and spending the key issues of the future. With Obama opposing a spending freeze and billing it as a hatchet as opposed to a scalpel, McCain was able to push the Democrat into an uncomfortable position.

“McCain has now established the tax issue in a way he has not been able to do so far in the contest. Now he can widen the gap between the campaigns on this key issue. If the Republicans concentrate their campaign on the key issue of taxes and abandon the other lines of attack, they can use the lines developed in this debate to do better and better as Election Day nears.”

ANGER FACTOR

“The most telling poll result from [Wednesday] night’s debate was not the CBS survey of uncommitted voters that found Obama trouncing McCain, 53 percent to 22 percent,” Ezra Klein writes at the American Prospect.

“It was not a Fox News focus group conducted by conservative pollster Frank Luntz that decisively favored Obama. Rather, the most telling result was a subquestion asked in a poll conducted by CNN. ‘Who spent more time attacking during the debate?’ they asked. Seven percent said Barack Obama. Eighty percent said John McCain. It was no surprise, then, that Obama won their poll, too: 58 percent to 31 percent,” Mr. Klein said.

“John McCain has an anger problem. But not the one many political observers presumed he’d have. He has not lost his temper at a questioner, blown up at a reporter, or exploded during a debate. Rather than a swift detonation, he has settled into a slow burn. He seethes. His debate performances have been shot through with contempt and resentment.

“The first meeting saw McCain unable to meet Barack Obama’s eye, or begin a sentence without first attaching, ‘what Senator Obama doesn’t understand.’ The second saw him tumble into a Grandpa Simpson moment, smirking wildly at the camera and referring to Obama as ‘that one.’

“[Wednesday] night’s meeting, however, was McCain’s worst: The seated setting led to split-screen coverage, and McCain’s face was alive with fury. He grimaced and smirked and sighed. He rolled his eyes and bulged his neck and shook his head. What he said aloud was not nearly so damaging as what his expressions silently betrayed. And so he lost.”

FIGHTING BACK

“The liberal antipoverty group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is fighting back against allegations by the McCain campaign that its habit of filing false voter registrations carries a danger of injecting voter fraud into the election,” John Fund writes at Opinion Journal.

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