Insensitivity to Working Americans

This is rather rich of John McCain -- calling Barack Obama insensitive to poor people because of the Democrat's opposition to McCain's proposal to suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax, which goes directly to keeping up vital parts of the nation's infrastructure (and in doing so ensures thousands upon thousands upon thousands of American jobs), this summer. No mention, of course, that this would be bad policy, particularly at a time when the country is already having difficulty providing work for those who want it and when disasters -- Hurricane Katrina, the bridge collapse in Minnesota -- underscore the need to maintain our infrastructure; policy that would barely account for the massive increase in the price of gasoline under the watch of the current Republican administration.

While we're on the subject of elitism and insensitivity to hardworking Americans by presidential candidates, perhaps it would be worth it to look directly at McCain himself. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tapped into his wife's immense wealth -- estimated at $100 million -- to enable him to traipse around the country in an opulent corporate jet, at the same time as refusing to disclose information on his spouse's income (as did every other presidential candidate in the race). Not only has McCain relied on his heiress wife to finance his campaign's travel expenses, the Arizona Republican has also raided the public till in a way not clearly allowed by Senate ethics regulations to help pay for his trip to a campaign fundraiser in London, of all places. What's more, McCain reaped the benefits of the public financing system, which he had opted into, only to unilaterally pull out of the program in a way, again, not clearly allowed by federal campaign finance law -- a body of law he helped shape. Remind me again which candidate is elitist? Which one looks down on the hardworking American man and woman paying their fair share in taxes?

And, by the way, there's little indication that this is a line of attack that Obama is susceptible to. According to Gallup polling released just this past week, the American people simply do not believe that Obama looks down upon them -- a result found with two separate wordings of the question.

So in the case of an election between McCain -- a candidate who dips into his wife's immense fortune or governmental coffers to subsidize his campaign activities; a candidate who is fighting on behalf of tax cuts for the extremely wealthy that will eventually have to be paid for on the backs of hard working Americans; a candidate who is advocating on behalf of a policy that could potentially put tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work (not to mention help undermine American infrastructure -- and Obama, a conversation about which candidate and which party is insensitive to the needs, hopes and aspirations of working Americans is one that I'd love to see had.

Tags: John McCain, Elitism (all tags)