Voters now realize John McCain wasn't playing an early Halloween trick-or-treat prank when he picked the frothy, living caricature of a Saturday Night Live bimbo, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to be a heartbeat away from becoming president of the United States. She's only but one absurdity detouring the 2008 presidential campaign into the bizarre.
Republicans and their surrogates deserve most credit for this turn to the wacky. They've insinuated or accused Barack Obama of being Muslim (he's Christian), of not being a native-born American (his Hawaiian birth certificate has been authenticated) and of planning to repaint the White House the color black if elected president. Need we continue?
Now the silliest.
Orlando television reporter Barbara West asked Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden, "How is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"
West, whose husband was a Republican strategist, wasn't joking, appearances to the contrary. She would compare Obama to, say, Cuban Marxist Fidel Castro?
Presumably, the ideologically confused Ms. West doesn't consider President Bush a Marxist for spreading around $120 billion to taxpayers to stimulate the economy, or $700 billion to rescue failing Wall Street institutions or Republican John McCain's promises to spend billions to prevent foreclosures on Americans' homes.
Obama wants to confront an economic calamity threatening widespread homelessness, unemployment, bankruptcy and hunger unlike anything since the 1930s Great Depression. If anything, his "spread the wealth" vision is to shut down Bush-Cheney policies that befit a plutocracy, i.e., government control by the wealthy for the wealthy and creating economic disparity via tax favoritism. Republican tax breaks for the wealthy have correspondingly left average American wages stagnant or falling behind.
By contrast, Democrats historically improve the U.S. economy for all.
In a 2004 study, "The Presidential Puzzle: Political Cycles and the Stock Market," covering 72 years between 1927 and 1999 and published in the Journal of Finance, stocks returned an annual average of 11 percent more under Democratic presidents than Republicans.
In a new study, University of Colorado and Florida State University researchers found that market volatility and economic unrest has been far less under Democrats since the Dow Jones Industrial Average was founded in 1896.
Princeton University researcher Larry M. Bartels also reported this month that unemployment during Republican administrations has averaged 6.7 percent, under Democrats 5.5 percent. He notes that under President Clinton's watch, 22 million jobs were created, as was a federal surplus.
What TV interviewer Barbara West actually fears in Obama is not Marxism but the nightmare of national prosperity under a Democratic president.
