A Perverted Idea of Fairness

by Joe Conason | October 21, 2008

Wherever John McCain appears on the stump in these waning days of the presidential campaign, he is always accompanied by his imaginary friend “Joe the Plumber,” but it is the specter of Karl Marx that lurks just offstage. Reverting back to the Republicanism of eons ago, when he was just a child, he inveighs against the “socialist” design of Barack Obama’s tax platform. This delusional ranting, like so much of Mr. McCain’s behavior this year, tell us nothing about Mr. Obama (or socialism!) but much about him.

Let’s begin with the dishonesty of the McCain rant. What Mr. Obama proposes is to restore the tax rates on the wealthy to the same level as during the Clinton administration – that is, to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire without renewing them for individuals and families reporting more than $250,000 in annual income. There is nothing radical in this idea, let alone socialistic, (especially compared with the bank nationalizations and other violations of capitalist orthodoxy that Mr. McCain has supported recently as emergency measures).