{"id":16138,"date":"2008-07-09T11:15:54","date_gmt":"2008-07-09T15:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16138.html"},"modified":"2008-07-09T11:15:54","modified_gmt":"2008-07-09T15:15:54","slug":"about-those-300-mccain-loving-economists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/about-those-300-mccain-loving-economists\/","title":{"rendered":"About those 300 McCain-loving economists…"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the McCain campaign triumphantly released a joint statement from 300 economists who “enthusiastically support<\/a>” the senator’s economic plan. Almost immediately, the statement looked a little sketchy, given they only endorsed his plan after taking out<\/a> two of the more transparently stupid centerpiece ideas of the plan — the gas tax holiday and his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term.<\/p>\n

Today, the press stunt looks even worse. Alexander Burns and Avi Zenilman found<\/a> that many of the 300 economists “don’t actually support the whole of McCain’s economic agenda” and at least one of McCain’s 300 economists “doesn’t even support McCain for president.”<\/p>\n

In interviews with more than a dozen of the signatories, Politico found that, far from embracing McCain’s economic plan, many were unfamiliar with — or downright opposed to — key details. While most of those contacted by Politico had warm feelings about McCain, many did not want to associate themselves too closely with his campaign and its policy prescriptions.<\/p>\n

Howard Beales, an economist at George Washington University, explained that he signed the letter as “an expression of support for [McCain], not necessarily each and every detail of his plan, which I may not have had time to study closely.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Constantine Alexandrakis, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, not only supports Obama, but also rejects the notion that Bush’s tax cuts should be made permanent (a key facet of McCain’s plan). “I would describe myself as an Obama supporter,” he explained. “Maybe I shouldn’t have rushed into signing the letter.”<\/p>\n

Apparently, adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman began collecting signatures from economists months ago as a way of demonstrating general support for McCain’s broad economic priorities, not the specific (and ridiculous) 15-page report the McCain campaign released at the same time as the list of the 300 economists.<\/p>\n

But that hasn’t stopped McCain from boasting on national television that his plan has received the blessing<\/a> of “a whole lot of economists, including Nobel laureates.”
\n
\nAs long as we’re on the subject, I’d also note a really terrific item<\/a> hilzoy had yesterday on McCain and economics.<\/p>\n

He has a few ideas lodged in his head, without anything like the background he’d need in order to question or assess them, and without any discernible interest in learning more. He doesn’t keep basic, basic facts straight, or know really elementary aspects of his own policies.<\/p>\n

I never thought I’d end up covering John McCain like this. I expected, after eight years of Bush, to be able to argue about genuine philosophical and policy differences, rather than going on about the most basic matters of competence. But McCain’s performance so far is just frightening. We’ve had eight years of a clueless President who governs on the basis of his gut plus a few stray ideas that wafted in on the breeze and somehow stuck. We do not need four more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite right. When Bush decided to run for president during Clinton’s second term, he’d effectively held public office for about two years. He’d failed in business, after struggling in school, and didn’t have a clue about economics (or much else). No one expected much in the way of coherence, and Bush met the low expectations.<\/p>\n

With McCain, I’ve long assumed that the entire nature of the debate would change — Dems would be up against someone who was merely wrong, not embarrassing.<\/p>\n

But that’s probably been the single most surprising aspect of the campaign so far, at least to me. On almost every subject of significance, especially<\/i> on the economy, McCain has proven himself to be, for lack of a better phrase, utterly foolish. He doesn’t understand Social Security. He doesn\u2019t understand interest rates. He doesn’t understand how supply and demand affect energy policy. He doesn’t understand that tax cuts don’t generate government revenue. He can’t even begin to explain how he’d keep his transparently ridiculous promises about eliminating a $400 billion deficit in four years.<\/p>\n

Under the circumstances, I’m not sure if I should feel sorry for McCain, or be offended that he sincerely believes he should be president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the McCain campaign triumphantly released a joint statement from 300 economists who “enthusiastically support” the senator’s economic plan. Almost immediately, the statement looked a little sketchy, given they only endorsed his plan after taking out two of the more transparently stupid centerpiece ideas of the plan — the gas tax holiday and his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}