Putting aside whether it’s an effective political strategy, one of the side debates of the Democratic presidential race has been about transparency and disclosure. Barack Obama has released his tax returns and a list of every earmark he’s ever requested; Hillary Clinton has declined, thus far, to do either.
The issue hasn’t exactly reached Ferraro or Wright levels of attention, but there’s been plenty of media scrutiny of the fact that Clinton has kept her tax returns under wraps, and hasn’t exactly explained why. But what’s gone entirely unmentioned is the fact that John McCain, who used to present himself as a reformer committed to openness in government, hasn’t released his returns, either.
Jamison Foser explained the issue in a great column this week.
Tucker’s assertion that “every candidate” other than Clinton has released his tax returns isn’t quite right. John McCain hasn’t released his tax returns, either.
Not that you would know that from watching MSNBC. According to Nexis, there hasn’t been a single mention on MSNBC this year of the fact that McCain hasn’t released his tax returns. No indication that McCain might even pay taxes, much less that he hasn’t released his returns.
Even when Republican strategists appear as guests on MSNBC, they get asked about the fact that Clinton hasn’t released her returns — but not about the fact that McCain hasn’t, either.
Foser shares a fantastic anecdote from a recent episode of “Meet the Press,” in which Tim Russert asked Mary Matalin, a conservative Republican, about Clinton’s reluctance to release her returns. On its face, it’s odd that Russert would just invite Matalin to attack Clinton, but more importantly, “Given that Republican strategist Mary Matalin had just said that Clinton’s failure to release her tax returns conflicts with the public’s desire for ‘transparency,’ Russert could have followed up by asking her why that isn’t also true of de facto Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Russert could have done that — it would have been the most obvious thing in the world to do — but he didn’t.”
Not surprisingly, NBC and MSNBC are hardly unique in this regard.
MSNBC has by no means been unique in keeping secret the fact that John McCain hasn’t released his tax returns. Media Matters has repeatedly documented media raising Clinton’s lack of disclosure without mentioning McCain’s — see here, here, here, and here for examples. During a March 5 Washingtonpost.com online discussion, Washington Post congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman wrote, “I think McCain has” released his tax returns. Weisman was wrong. Not only hasn’t McCain released his taxes, he hasn’t even promised to do so in the future, as Clinton has. But it’s hard to blame Weisman for not knowing this, given that the rest of the news media were all but ignoring the subject.
OK, you’re thinking, but there’s a context here. Clinton loaned herself $5 million, her husband has accepted money from international sources, and this makes her returns relevant, while McCain’s returns matter a lot less.
But Foser notes that this is flawed, too, and that McCain’s decision not to disclose is “directly relevant to one of McCain’s central campaign messages.”
In 2001, John McCain voted against President Bush’s tax cuts, noting that they were skewed toward the wealthy. In a Senate floor statement, McCain explained that he could not “in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle class Americans who most need tax relief.”
But now, John McCain supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent rather than allowing them to expire, as they are scheduled to do under current law. Now, John McCain runs around saying things like, “The Democrats have already … told us they will increase our taxes.”
Who do you think McCain means when he says “our”?
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both made clear that they would roll back the Bush tax cuts only for the super-wealthy; Obama has said only “the top 1 percent” would be affected, and Clinton has said she would roll back the tax cuts only for “people making more than $250,000 a year.”
So, for the overwhelming majority of Americans — those making less than about $250,000 per year — Clinton and Obama would not roll back the Bush tax cuts.
Indeed, McCain himself has previously acknowledged that the Bush tax cuts unfairly benefited the wealthy. So, when he says the Democrats would “increase our taxes,” maybe that’s who he is referring to. Indeed, Money magazine estimates John McCain’s net worth at $40 million.
If the media were to apply the same standards to John McCain that they applied to John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, they would report (endlessly) that John McCain, a very rich man, is embracing tax cuts that even John McCain has said unfairly benefit the very rich. And they would be demanding that he release his tax returns so voters could see how much money John McCain would personally save under McCain’s tax plan.
Kevin concluded, “Maybe somebody should start asking Honest John the same questions they’re asking Hillary.”
It would be a nice change of pace, wouldn’t it?