« how many social networks? | Main | celebrity politics »

October 10, 2008

top ten things you can't say if you're running for president

10. The Iranians will probably obtain nuclear weapons, but deterrence (Mutually Assured Destruction) will probably prevent them from using them.

9. It would be great to close down certain large federal programs, such as Agriculture and Commerce, but even to hint at such an idea would cost me the election.

8. In the Senate, I voted for many provisions that I disagreed with--and for some that were totally indefensible--because they were packaged into bills that I thought were worth passing. This will continue to happen in my administration.

7. The differences in the economic proposals of my campaign and my opponent's represent, at the most, just a few percent of GDP.

6. If you put no money down on a house and then lost it because you couldn't make the payments, you didn't lose any investment. You're just like a renter who had to miss rental payments or move because the landlord raised the rent. But I'm not going to equate renters with owners because home-ownership is sacred.

5. Osama bin Laden will probably die of natural causes. If we find him, it will not be attributable to anything I do as president.

4. Since the mean income for a small-business owner is almost $250,000 per year, lots of them are white-collar professionals and yuppies, and taxing them is a good way to reduce the deficit.

3. The following things just don't work: criminal penalties for marijuana possession; abstinence education; handgun bans.

2. Israel is a foreign country with a powerful military and interests that sometimes diverge from ours; and its two leading political parties are deeply flawed.

1. I have no idea what's going to happen in the financial markets over the next year.

October 10, 2008 1:32 PM | category: none

Comments

re: #4, talk of mean rather than median income in these sorts of contexts is potentially misleading. The sentence would be more accurate if you struck the word 'since'.

October 11, 2008 10:42 PM | Comments (2) | posted by Richard

Interesting but debatable on several grounds.

#1 and #10 are probably true.

#5 - McCain could say this. It basically is a defense of the Bush policy to contain but not kill OBL.

#2 prolly OK, but dangerous.

#9 would be *good* thing to say in the face of economic crisis. especially if coupled with national security plan for food

#4 Obama is basically saying this

#8 both mccain and obama basically have to argue this everytime funding for the troops comes up

#7 not sure that this true. but mccain now has to distinguish his plan from what obama laid out yesterday

#6 the premises aren't technically true. the legal credit responsibility of the owner are different in kind from a renter. but it's still an interesting comparison

#3 these are empirical premises: are the facts really so clear cut?

October 14, 2008 5:21 PM | Comments (2) | posted by Michael Weiksner

Site Meter