Thumbing through my hosts

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Thumbing through my host’s copy of the latest New Republic, I find the following line in Andrew Sullivan’s TRB column: “Not long ago, Democrats claimed they wouldn’t agree to any tax cut.”

When was that exactly? Al Gore ran on a program of tax cuts. Most Senate Democrats did too. Bush’s was much larger. And he’ll get one much closer to his liking, at least in terms of size. Gore’s were targeted; Bush’s weren’t. And Bush largely won that argument. (Unless of course you count targeting the bulk of the cuts at the top marginal rate bracket — but that’s another story.) But they were both tax cuts.

Sullivan’s point in the column is that a certain degree of BS can serve a benign purpose. (“Yes, some of the time he is full of it on his economic policies. But a certain amount of B.S. is necessary for any vaguely successful retrenchment of government power in an insatiable entitlement state.”) So don’t think so badly of Bush when he fibs. He’s got his heart in the right place.

Does Andrew want us to cut him the same slack?

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