McCain's Confusion on Taxes, Health Care

Robert Gordon and James Kvaal write in The New Republic that the McCain campaign offers contradictory policy positions on taxes and health care.

John McCain's fantastical pledge on Monday to balance the budget by 2013 through massive tax cuts and unidentified budget reductions deserved the bad reviews it received. But the most unfortunate element of his incoherent promise is that it's representative of his policy agenda these days. While the McCain campaign is trying to paint Barack Obama as a flip-flopper, the Arizona Republican is making diametrically opposed policy promises to different audiences at the same time. The contradictions are often in the details, but their obscurity is evidence of the campaign's cynicism.

What is happening here? One explanation could be a disorganized campaign. Maybe McCain's aides never bothered to hammer down answers to these questions, forcing them to make up responses haphazardly, resulting in missteps...The larger problem is the contradictory ambitions of the McCain campaign. The candidate wants to stand for "leadership, courage, and choices." Yet he also want to be both a supply-sider and a deficit-hawk. He wants to transform our health care system and Social Security without adding any money to either and without anybody getting hurt. He wants to be a tightwad on spending who doesn't cut any spending anybody cares about. These are impossible policies to explain, because the policies themselves are impossible. No wonder he ends up talking out of both sides of his mouth.

McCain has also played both sides of the issue on immigration, emphasizing his support for "comprehensive reform" to Hispanic audiences while stressing border security (including a fence) to the Conservative base.