Charles Kaiser on parsing Obama's tax plan, and this week's media winners and sinners

Winner: Barack Obama, for crafting an intricate and intelligent tax plan which, according to David Leonhardt's comprehensive analysis in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, makes the Democratic nominee the "tax cutter" for "most people" in this campaign. A few highlights:

• For the bottom 80 percent of the population—those making $118,000 or less—McCain's proposal means a net savings of about $200 a year, versus a $900 savings from Obama's plan.

• A family currently paying the government $3,000 in taxes would get a $1,000 check back instead.

• McCain would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of all earners—those making an average of $9.1 million—by $190,000, while Obama would raise their taxes by $800,000 year.

Leonhardt, who sounds throughout his piece like a fairly orthodox devotee of Milton Friedman's conservative laissez-faire philosophy, at first declares himself a little "stunned" by that $800,000—"a huge increase on wealthy families"—but then points out that $500,000 of that would simply take away the effect of the Bush tax cuts, and the additional $300,00 increase "wouldn't nearly reverse their pretax income gains in recent years."

The economics columnist quotes approvingly from a book by two conservatives that describes an economic plan similar to Obama's as "in many respects, a deeply un-American solution to the problems facing our country," partly because it would include "a revived push for European-style social democracy." (In other words, we might finally catch up to the rest of the civilized world by giving ourselves a universal health care plan.) Leonhardt also asserts (without the slightest backup), "Liberals have at times dismissed the enormous benefits that come with prosperity." And he accuses Obama of echoing "two of the weaker arguments that liberals have made in recent decades." But then, in classic Timesian, on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand style, Leonhardt concludes, "What's new about the current moment, however, is that both of these arguments are actually starting to look relevant."

The bottom line: Even a neocon like Leonhardt can't help but have the impression that Obama's plans for the economy are vastly more sophisticated than McCain's. And this piece contains plenty of ammunition for the Democrat to use in his campaign commercials. But as Leonhardt correctly points out, "For all his skills as a storyteller," Obama still hasn't crafted a "compelling message about how to put the economy on the right path."

Sinners: The army of commentators who declared there was "no evidence" that the right-wing was planning to repeat the Swift Boating tactics that supposedly "independent groups" used against John Kerry four years ago—and therefore there was no basis for Obama's decision to forgo public campaign financing in the fall. Now comes the news that an "independent" group will spend $2.8 million in a single week in Ohio and Michigan to repeat the scurrilous charge that Obama's casual friendship with a former Weatherman proves the candidate's sympathy for people who once bombed the nation's capital. The spokesman for the new group is a former Swift Boater, and one of its board members is a former paid McCain operative in Iowa. And while the group must pretend that it's operating independently of the McCain campaign, a spokesman for the Republican candidate left no doubt about truth of that matter when he said this: "Barack Obama's long friendship with an unrepentant terrorist raises serious questions about his judgment."

Winner: Hendrick Hertzberg, for another superb Comment, which lists all the reasons Simon & Schuster should be especially proud of its newest author, Jerome Corsi, who penned Obama Nation, which FCP previously dissected here.

• Corsi promoted a theory that "the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11 was caused by explosives planted in the buildings."

• Corsi called Hillary Clinton "a lesbo," Muslims "ragheads," and John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Katie Couric, and John Lennon "communists." (Katie Couric!!)

• Corsi wrote that "boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope"—meaning John Paul II, whom he derided as "senile"—"as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press."

No wonder Corsi's editor, Mary Matalin, praised his newest slander-filled effort about Obama as a fine "piece of scholarship." For more on Corsi's many virtues, listen to FCP's interview with On the Media.

Hertzberg's Comment also quotes Cokie Roberts for what was surely the dumbest comment on any of yesterday's chat shows (a high bar indeed): "I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii, and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be in Myrtle Beach."