The Curious Case of Doug Holtz-Eakin
One of the unwritten rules of political combat is that you don’t use certain people to say certain kinds of things. Sharp, partisan attacks of dubious merit are normal left to communications professionals. A candidate needs somebody to say this stuff just to get the quotes in circulation, and everybody understands that spokespeople are just out their representing your client. By contrast, a candidate also wants to have some credible experts in his orbit who can certify to the soundness of his policy plans. A person in that role will normally engage in some political activities, but he or she is also expected to treat his credibility as a precious resource to be expended on serious dispute, not frittered away in goofy partisan stunts.
When Doug Holtz-Eakin started out this campaign, he was definitely in the second category. Most people thought that he’d done a serious, professional job as head of the Congressional Budget Office and when he went to work for John McCain it was certainly everyone’s understanding that this would be his role. And he started out doing things like a long, substantive exchange with Grist about McCain’s climate plans.
But now he’s doing stuff like this that’s clearly the job of a flack, not a policy adviser:
“Now we know that the slogans ‘change you can believe in’ and ‘change we need’ are code words for Barack Obama’s ultimate goal: ‘redistributive change,’” said McCain advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin. “No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench – as insurance in case a unified Democratic government under his control fails to meet his basic goal: taking money away from people who work for it and giving it to people who Barack Obama believes deserve it. Europeans call it socialism, Americans call it welfare, and Barack Obama calls it change.”
It’s a strange development.
43 Responses to “The Curious Case of Doug Holtz-Eakin”
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October 27th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
He’s probably just upset because all the economists on the playground are mocking him for getting clowned by Austan Goolsbee. Honestly, I don’t blame him.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Hey, I’m sure McCain decided that if he was going to flush his own reputation (deserved or not) down the toilet in a win-at-all-costs strategy, he expected his minions to do the same.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
He’s always been odd. The blackberry comment was way out there…
October 27th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
The conversion to Bush-style neocon politics is complete: policy advisors are political flaks in this model.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
When you foolishly accept public campaign financing, you can’t have the division of labor you’d prefer…it’s “all hands on deck!” It’s a little grotesque to think of DHE as McCain’s “body man,” though.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Holtz-Eakin’s remarks wouldn’t be so hacktacular if there were a big difference, on the socialism-to-laissez-faire scale, between the political economies that Obama and McCain envision. But there isn’t: McCain isn’t proposing a flat income tax, and his health-care proposal contains one of those socialistic refundable tax cuts. McCain wants to run against redistributionism, but doesn’t want to propose the wildly unpopular sort of fiscal policy that would make the critique of redistributionism actually seem in earnest.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Perhaps the McCain campaign is just redistributing roles and Mark Salter will be delivering the econ policy talks now.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
A few comments ago, I suggested a ratio of 10 or 20 to 1 for hacks and hoods to genuine political thinkers within the Republican ranks. Well, better make that 25 or 50 to 1.
Gotta change the estimate as new data becomes available.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
man, that is weird. it’s hard to see how any real economists are going to take him seriously after that kind of talk.
my guess is that the mccain campaign made him do it as part of an initiation ceremony, in order to make sure he wasn’t a liberal plant. you know, kind of like the mafia making you kill somebody so that you are fully implicated in the criminal enterprise and can’t back out.
congratulations, doug. you’ve made your bones. your a fully paid-up member of the deranged wing-nut brigade.
too bad there’s no going back.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
The thing is, just who does McCain have around as a flack to say such things? It seems that most of the flacks have either jumped the ship or been voted off the island for contradicting the McCain campaign, also cant forget the flacks who have switched to the Palin camp who doesn’t want to do the McCain camp any favors.
Who is left as a flack? nancy hausenpfeffer
October 27th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
So Holtz-Eakin is spending some of his reputational capital.
Several questions:
1) did the campaign tell him to do it?
2) How much will this actually hurt Holtz-Eakin’s reputation for doing economic analysis? With whom? Holtz-Eakin is not messing with any economic analysis here, just doing the campaign’s non-economic talking points.
Stefan
October 27th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
kid bitzer Says:
“man, that is weird. it’s hard to see how any real economists are going to take him seriously after that kind of talk.”
Adding on to Stefan’s comments – how much has Greg Mankiw suffered for being Bush’s flack?
October 27th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
I’m pretty sure that legal speak, like the stuff he was referring to, just goes way over his head, like it does McCain’s.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Thanks for noting this. Over the weekend I was thinking about some people who were moving to Obama because they respected his economic advisers. Then I thought of Holtz-Eakin. He may be respected by those who were familiar with him prior to this election, but to me he is just another attack dog. If he is used to come on and lie about stuff, why believe he knows anything about anything else?
October 27th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Some have at first for Wits, then Poets past,
Turn’d Criticks next, and prov’d plain Fools at last;
Some neither can for Wits nor Criticks pass,
As heavy Mules are neither Horse or Ass.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
It’s a strange development.
What else do they got?
October 27th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Is he trying to grow a beard, or did he just forget to shave for a few days?
October 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Why is DHE hatin’ on small business?
“There is seeming widespread support for
special help to small businesses and this
support has manifested itself in preferential
tax treatment of these enterprises.
However, consideration of the standard
equity and efficiency criteria for such a
subsidy does little to support the current
tax-based subsidies and does not support
the expansion of further aid.”
http://www.ntanet.org/
National Tax Journal, V. 48, No. 3, p. 393.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Yes, this is the guy responsible for what Barack Obama said in 2001. You guys are spot-on, as usual.
Yglesiastic!
October 27th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Er, no, he’s responsible for lying today about what Obama said in 2001. Unless you think that when Obama was talking about making changes through legislation and not through the courts, he really meant “legislating from the bench.” In which case “legislating from the bench” is an even stupider phrase than I thought since it apparently includes actual legislation passed by actual legislators and not decisions made by judges.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
McCain needs competent flackery, which he can’t get from the likes of Michael Goldfarb. Thus he has to ask the very few competent people he’s taken on to wear multiple hats. Too bad he can’t have one of them stand in for Palin at campaign appearances; that would solve a multitude of problems right there.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I’ve heard it from some inside sources that Holtz-Eakin has let the power of advising the candidate go to his head and made it nearly impossible for some very experienced, level-headed voices to have a constructive role. Wow, newsflash, McCain advisers screw the pooch.
How long before he is working at AEI?
October 27th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Not particularly biting remarks.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:43 am
Now that Holtz-Eakin has stepped out of his bubble of credibility, is it ok to say he looks like Jar Jar Binks, only with a 24 hour stubble?
October 28th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Adding on to Stefan’s comments – how much has Greg Mankiw suffered for being Bush’s flack?
There’s a big difference between being at CEA and developing and supporting administration policies, and calling Barack Obama a socialist.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:45 am
“Europeans call it socialism…”
Uh, no they don’t. They call it taxation.
October 28th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Holtz-Eakin, eh. I thought the only hyphenated Americans were married women who wished to hold on to their maiden names.
I also thought that CBO heads were always non-partisan. Shows what aWol’s governing can do.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I knew Holtz-Eakin when he was the CBO Director and I, too, found his transformation into a hack shockingly disappointing. But you are late in noticing this. Holtz-Eakin shed his technocratic reputation back in early June when he defended the constitutionality of wiretaps, something entirely outside his area of expertise. And after some more transgressions, I blogged about his reduction to a campaign hack in July. The widely publicized Blackberry stunt sealed the case, even if he intended it as a joke. Nothing from him can surprise me any more. And yes, I think his future is with AEI or Heritage.
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