First thing, was anyone else get surprised by the uncharacteristically accurate title given to Carly Fiorina in this segment of This Week with George Stephanopoulos? Normally, aren't these surrogates usually called "advisors"? I guess I have to give the chyron operators credit for calling a spade a spade.
John McCain has admitted that he don't know much 'bout the economy, so perhaps it makes perfect sense to him to send out an executive who was ousted from her most prominent position for mismanagement and not producing the returns and corporate profits expected and not see the irony in her dismissing economists' warnings that a gas tax holiday is a bad idea.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you defend that gas tax holiday? I was talking to Senator Clinton last week. and asked her if she could name a credible economist who could support it, and she couldn't. Can you?
FIORINA: No, I can't, but, you see, I don't think it matters. I'm a...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: How can you say that, though?
FIORINA: Because I think economists sometimes argue about the theory. Economists, right now, are arguing theoretically about whether we're in a recession or not. An American family who is sitting around the kitchen table wondering how they're going to pay for groceries, fill their gas tank, whether they're going to stay in their home, whether or not they can send their kid to college this fall. For them, the economy is in difficulty, and all the theoretical discussion is, sort of, irrelevant.
Yeah, let's not talk to the guys with the edumucation. Trust your gut, that's the Republican way. The whole argument as to whether we're in a recession is comparing apples to tea cups. The reason it's still up for debate resides in which definition of "recession" economists want to use. By the way, Carly, you probably don't want to bring up how bad the economy is for the average American, since it got this way under Republican majority rule, and that doesn't bode well for your non-economic-minded candidate. However, as you proved so aptly at HP, as long as the haves get their fancy jets and other perks, it doesn't really matter how much worry around the kitchen table Joe Sixpack experiences, does it?
Full transcript below the fold
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you heard Senator Reid right there. He says the case against John McCain is he's wrong on all of the big issues, the war and the economy.
FIORINA: Well, I've heard a lot that John McCain is a third Bush term. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was John McCain, after all, who spoke loudly, for four long years, saying that Don Rumsfeld was the worst secretary of defense in history, that the prosecution of the war in Iraq was going badly, and that we needed a new strategy. And we are now executing a new strategy because of John McCain. John McCain has differed with George Bush on global warming, on climate change, on how we should deal with high fuel prices right now, saying that we should stop the fill of the strategic petroleum reserve, for example.
STEPHANOPOULOS: President Bush isn't very enthusiastic about the gas tax holiday, either.
FIORINA: No, he's not. So there are clear places where George Bush and John McCain differ. And I think John McCain will run on his own record, his own character, his own integrity.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you defend that gas tax holiday? I was talking to Senator Clinton last week. and asked her if she could name a credible economist who could support it, and she couldn't. Can you?
FIORINA: No, I can't, but, you see, I don't think it matters. I'm a...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: How can you say that, though?
FIORINA: Because I think economists sometimes argue about the theory. Economists, right now, are arguing theoretically about whether we're in a recession or not. An American family who is sitting around the kitchen table wondering how they're going to pay for groceries, fill their gas tank, whether they're going to stay in their home, whether or not they can send their kid to college this fall. For them, the economy is in difficulty, and all the theoretical discussion is, sort of, irrelevant.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What's not theory is that this is going to cost $9 billion, and money's going to come out of the highway trust fund. That could cost up to 300,000 jobs.
FIORINA: Well, if it continued, yes, but let's talk about how much earmarks that John McCain has said we need to stopped, earmarks...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: He's using that for the tax cuts?
FIORINA: Well, that $42 billion in the last two years. Discretionary spending has risen 70 percent in the last seven years, another clear difference, by the way, between President Bush and John McCain, who believes that, to get out of a difficult economic time, we have to practice fiscal restraint. We have to grow our economy. And we also have to find ways to reduce the increase in discretionary spending.
