keith, in the last 40 days, Obama's message on tax cuts was pure Reagan. That did it. With so much economic anxiety, tax-cutting was his constant refrain. Both candidates offered tax cuts to roughly 100 million people. Obama's were directed to the middle class and the working poor. McCain directed tax cuts to investors. The electoral merits of Obama were obvious regardless of feelings of the different proposals.
Consider what Obama wrote about Reagan in his autobiography The Audacity of Hope, "giving the old man his due,"
"Reagan's message spoke to the failure of liberal government, in a period of economic stagnation, to give middle class voters any sense that it was fighting for them," he said. "He fundamentally changed the terms of the political debate. The middle class revolt became a permanent fixture in national politics and placed a ceiling on how much the federal government could expand."
Of all the presidents of the last 60 years, Obama wrote that Ronald Reagan loomed "largest of all." US presidents almost always cut taxes in recessions. Obama will almost certainly do so again. No matter how you parse this, Obama's tax message was right out of the Gipper's playbook. It's hard to understand why McCain and Company couldn't see it.
