John McCain is beginning to sound like Sarah Palin did in her disastrous media interviews. Yesterday on Meet the Press, McCain gave several incoherent, rambling answers to question posed by moderator Tom Brokaw. A very prickly McCain was asked by Brokaw to explain how he can slam Obama on taxing the wealthy when he held a similar position (until reinventing himself for the current election). Brokaw played a clip from a interview McCain gave during the 2000 presidential race where he said:
"I really believe, that when you are--reach a certain level of comfort, there's nothing wrong with paying somewhat more."
When asked to explain his change in positions, McCain's answer was almost as nonsensical as Palin's when she said she had foreign policy credentials because you can see Russia from Alaska. Here's what McCain said about his previous support for taxing the wealthy vs. his position now:
"Listen, even the flat tax people somewhat pay more. Even--you put into different, different categories of wealthier people paying, paying higher taxes into different brackets. I mean, and the, and these are different times, my friend. These are times of the biggest financial crisis we've faced in America...So, so let me just tell you again, I also said, when I opposed the Bush tax cuts, said--that is left out of this equation, I said I've got to--we've got to get spending under control. Spending was completely out of control. We laid a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America. We owe the Chinese a half a trillion dollars. Spending was, was the, was the, I think, the really biggest aspect, to a large degree. It weakens the dollar, it raises the cost of goods to Americans. The housing crisis combined with a, with a country that's living way beyond its means is a, is a combination which has put us into this great financial crisis we're in."
Congratulations if you can make sense of that because it sounds like complete gibberish to me. It's hard to defend an indefensible position (i.e. flipflopping completely on an issue to pander to voters) so it's no wonder McCain stumbled. Move over Palin, you've got competition from McCain in the "what did he/she just say?" department.
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1 comment:
It's the TASE tactic. If you don't have a good answer for the question asked, Talk About Something Else.
To some extent, the fact that Palin is a bit light on the facts, history, and current events has been an advantage for this particular campaign. People think she's talking about something else because she doesn't know the relevant information to answer the question, and maybe that's true. On the other hand, in many cases, the relevant facts wouldn't benefit the McCain campaign. Brokaw's question about McCain's own previous statements on taxes is a good example.
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