May 5, 2008 5:03

Political Flashback: The Gasoline Tax

If the back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over her proposal for a gas-tax holiday has a vaguely familiar ring to it, there's a reason. In 1992, her husband made Paul Tsongas' proposed gas tax increase a major issue in their Democratic primary fight:

"It is frustrating for me to be told the only morally appropriate way to wean America off cheap foreign oil is a nickel-a-gallon gasoline tax," Mr. Clinton said. "Your incomes went down and your taxes went up in the 80's and Senator Tsongas wants to feed you more of the same in the 90's. And it's wrong."

Of course, once Bill Clinton was elected, he took a very different view of that tax:

President-elect Bill Clinton, who repeatedly criticized Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot in the Presidential campaign for supporting an increase in Federal gasoline taxes, is hearing from a lot of his advisers that it is not such a bad idea after all, and he seems to be warming to the idea.

"There were a lot of good arguments made for the gas tax," Mr. Clinton said at a news conference after the two-day meeting on the economy that he convened in Little Rock, Ark., in early December.

And, ultimately, a gasoline tax hike became a major element in Bill Clinton's signature economic achievement:

The vote on the gas tax increase in 1993 was so partisan that no Republicans voted for it; Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The legislation was intended to reduce the deficit by $500 billion, and the gas tax was a particularly contentious part of that legislation.

May 5, 2008 5:00

Request for Urgent Business Relationship

Obama supporters are giggling over this:

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

What they're parodying here.

May 5, 2008 4:56

Jeremiah Wright, Brain Surgeon

Key West, FL>

So, I thought that a panel on the persistence of religious beliefs wouldn't have a ton of relevance to contemporary politics. Spoke to soon!

The presenter was Andy Newberg, a professor radiology and religious studies and the author of "Why We Believe What We Believe," a book that gained some notoriety a few years ago for its provocative theories about the connections between the physical brain and our spiritual and political beliefs. One suggested effect, for instance, of prayer, repetition, and meditation is that "the cells that fire together wire together," which is to say, repeating or (hearing repeated) phrases or rites or rituals physically changes pathways in the mind.

As an example for how certain phrases excited different areas of the brain, he read a quote from Jeremiah Wright (the "God damn America" passage) and asked us how it made us feel, then correlated those emotions with specific areas of the brain. (Did it upset you? It stimulated the amygdala. Did you try to figure out why someone would say such a thing? It stimulated the hippocampus.)

Then, in discussion, someone asked Newberg what Obama should say that would calm people's amygdalas. I don't think the questioner was completely joking, and neither was Newberg when he said that it's difficult to "undo" a neural path. In fact, Newberg said, he wonders what Wright's brain looks like, and, for that matter, "If [Wright's] been doing that [preaching those kinds of sermons] for twenty years, what has [exposure to] that done to Obama's brain?" Though, he added, "It's not fair to hold someone responsible for their unconscious."

Of course, Obama says that he wasn't present for Wright's more incendiary homilies. And as for unconsciously absorbing radical ideas, few seem to take seriously the accusation that McCain "absorbed" Communism from his time as POW in Vietnam... and there was no doubt that McCain was there.

The science, as they say, is very young. (And I do think Newberg was mostly joking.)

May 5, 2008 12:10

Religion and the Parties

Key West, FL

Mike Gerson and Bill Galston just gave the first presentations here at the Pew Forum's biannual conference on religion and public life. Gerson talked about the growing split between the new generation of Evangelicals and the one before, and Galston talked about Hillary and Catholic voters.

Some juicy data points and theories after the jump.

May 5, 2008 8:52

Today in Iraq

When Michael Yon--who has spent as much or more time on the ground in Iraq as anyone--speaks, I listen, even when I disagree. And while it is undoubtedly true, as Yon argues, that elements of the Sadrist militia have devolved into criminality, it is also true that Sadrism is, arguably, the most popular trend among the Shi'ite majority in Iraq--and that involving ourselves in an intra-Shi'ite struggle is not a very wise course of action. It's difficult to stand by when Sadrist Special Groups are lobbing rockets into the Green Zone, but our current involvement in Sadr City also has the effect of drawing us deeper into an internecine Shi'ite struggle that really ain't our fight. We should finish the battle against Al Qaeda in Iraq up in Mosul while continuing to draw down our troops. Let the Shi'ites settle their own hash.

May 5, 2008 8:50

Unfortunate Comment of the Day

From "This Week," George S. asking Hillary Clinton about her gas tax holiday idea:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But can you name an economist who thinks this makes sense?

CLINTON: Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.

May 5, 2008 6:09

Obama in Indiana

Here's what it was like on the final weekend before the primary.