Freedom Line Blog

Yes, you read that right. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who, let’s be honest, is the most irritating politician in America) has an ingenious campaign strategy for Barack Obama that’s totally going to spellbind the room at his next cocktail and caviar soiree. From a phone interview Bloomberg gave to the Huffington Post:

“What Obama should do is say he’s going to veto any change to the end of the expiration of the Bush era tax cuts for everybody, and I feel very strongly about the everybody because you don’t want to split the country — that’s not what America is all about,” said Bloomberg.

“Obama would win this election going away if he’d stand up and say, ‘I’m gonna do this,’ and then turn to Republicans and say, ‘You know, you didn’t want any more revenues … I just outfoxed you. Now work with me on cutting expenses, and we’ll actually balance the budget in 10 years, and we’ll do it responsibly.'”

Bloomberg here reminds me a bit of Walter Mondale, who thought it was utter genius to declare in his 1984 acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention that he would raise taxes (Newt Gingrich, who was part of a Republican rapid response team during that convention, has noted that his group decided to pack up and go home after Mondale’s declaration, figuring they couldn’t damage him any worse than he had himself). Mondale’s theory was that both he and Reagan would end up hiking taxes, but that voters would give him points for being honest about it (for a thorough understanding of the truth of Reagan’s tax record, by the way, this Matt Lewis piece is indispensable). Later, after losing 49 states in the Electoral College, he probably thought better of that.

Here’s the foundational error in both cases: the tax argument is about substance, not style. Mondale thought he’d be rewarded for being honest about the fact that he was going to take more money away from the American people. But we don’t generally reward honesty when it’s a truthful admission of nefarious intent. Similarly, Bloomberg seems to think that “unity” is more important than tax rates, and that the American people will reward Obama if he makes clear that he’s going to put the screws to all of them with equal force. But, to paraphrase Obama from 2008, no one much cares what shade of lipstick you apply to a pig. The equal distribution of suffering is not a compelling campaign rationale (although it might be the most honest slogan Obama could devise).

There’s another irony at work here, of course: if Bloomberg thinks that tax rates should be harmonized in order to avoid “splitting the country,” the most logical step he could take would be to promote a flat tax. But that probably wouldn’t fly at the open-bar receptions of the Upper East Side.