Seeing the World through Politically-Tinted Glasses

No rose-tinted glasses here. This is right wing economic advisor to John McCain who has had the scales fall from his eyes and sees the world in a new way. Here's a blog post at Think Progress by Satyam Khanna:

Throughout the presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) top economic adviser and former CBO director, Douglas Holtz Eakin, argued passionately for McCain’s proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts (and cut some more taxes for the wealthy on top of it). Holtz-Eakin, however, has now come out against making the tax cuts permanent, acknowledging that it would explode the deficit:

Though economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin spent the 2008 presidential campaign advising Sen. John McCain to defend the Bush-era tax cuts, he now thinks they should be allowed to expire on Dec. 31, 2010 due to “the prospect of an Argentina-style fiscal meltdown.” Said Holtz-Eakin: “If you ask: ‘Who pays the taxes?’, it’s the first step toward not having the answer be: ‘Our kids.’”

Holtz-Eakin’s “flip flop” is similar to that of his former boss. Recall, McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and argued for them in 2008.

Funny how those politically-tinted glasses work. When it is expedient to your ideology, you see the world one way. When the political winds change, suddenly you have a "change of heart" and see the world another way. I sure wouldn't want to share a fox hole with a guy like that. One minute he would be screaming we have to fight to the death but the next minute when I nod off he would be surrendering me to the enemy so he could write himself a sweetheart deal.

Who knew that economics was so pliable to ideological persuasion. Now I wonder, why don't we have a physics that switches its view of the nature of fundamental particles when Republicans cede office to Democrats, or why don't chemists tells us that standard reactions change character when the polls tells us that Democrats are out of favour and Republicans are in?