As the McCain campaign flails around like a fighter trying to land a lucky punch on Barack Obama, the dreaded word socialist began to be used to describe Obama's tax policies. It came from Obama's comment about "spreading the wealth around". McCain's people figured that was the opening they needed to cast Obama as someone who would take money from those who earned it and give it to those who hadn't. It's also the perfect catchword for conservative talk radio, even better than liberal.
That's because socialism scares people in this country. It represents, wrongly, the killing of incentive to produce. After all, why work hard if you won't see the fruits of your labor? This is especially true if people are made to think their hard work will benefit some lazy, shiftless person who doesn't have the same level of ambition (they never say opportunity). Anyway, McCain and those who wanted to see him elected thought they had lightning in a bottle.
That is, until someone pointed out to McCain that he'd voted for the biggest socialist program in American history. That's right, the $700 billion dollar bailout of the financial industry. After all, that's what some of his GOP friends in the House called. That's why a good number of them wouldn't vote for it. It was socialism, pure and simple. Americans have until this point been made to believe that socialism involves the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor individuals. Now, hopefully, they know better. The bailout represented taking wealth from taxpayers and giving it to banks.
And so, the word socialism was quietly dropped from the McCain campaign lexicon. You'll still hear criticism about the Obama tax plan, but you won't hear the word socialist. That's now reserved for people in diners to yell at Obama. Just plain folks get the talking points, but not the memo changing them.
It's ironic that, as the "s" word comes and goes, the New York Times does a piece on the one group for which socialism isn't a four letter word. The Socialist Party USA still exists, it's national office located in lower Manhattan. They ought to be having a chuckle about all this.
You tell me. Is the bailout an example of American socialism, and if so, why isn't anyone calling it that?
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1 comment:
The BailOut looks more like a robbery to me. I'm 68. I've never met a "lazy, shiftless" person "looking for a handout". That's the "Republicana" talking point for a)the poor, b)helping people by gov't policy UNLESS it's rich people being helped by gov't policy. Maybe we all need a primer on what is socialism? Where is it working successfully? What's a mixed economy like Sweden's mean? I need to know, in a modern way, not a textbook way. Note: textbooks reflect the time and biases of where they are written, who pays for them.
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