A running mate matters more this year -- March 5, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Democratic voters have spoken, and they’ve said “no” to presidential candidates who are 1) youngish, 2) female, 3) black or 4) rich.

Gone are candidates Cory Booker, 50; Pete Buttiegieg, 38; Amy Klobuchar, 59; Kamala Harris, 55, and many others. Tulsi Gabbard, 38, is forgotten but not quite gone. 

Money didn’t buy presidential hopefuls love or victory. Mike Bloomberg spent an astonishing $560 million on TV, radio and digital ads as of Tuesday, according to CNN, and dropped out Wednesday after winning only America Samoa on Super Tuesday.

Tom Steyer spent $210 million on ads before he dropped out after coming in third in South Carolina, winning no delegates.  

So, we have a Democratic contest between two white male senior citizens: Biden, who will be 78 on Election Day, and Bernie Sanders, a heart attack survivor who will be 79. 

Both are said to be fit for the rigors of the job, as is President Donald Trump, who will be 74 on Election Day. Trump’s unscheduled visit to Walter Reed hospital last year remains a mystery.

Elizabeth Warren, 70, is assessing her future, as of this writing, after coming in no higher than third in any state. She is a smart, effective senator who has much to offer in the Senate.

Biden, the new frontrunner, won at least nine of the 14 Super Tuesday states, including Virginia. Sanders won Colorado, Utah, Vermont and is projected to win delegate-rich California, which is still counting votes. 

A presidential election between oldies is not necessarily a bad thing. In a country where the average life-expectancy age is 76 for men, though, running mates may become a bigger deal this year. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is 61.

First and foremost, the running mate should be qualified to be president. The Constitution requires only a natural born citizen at least age 35 and a resident of the United States for the last 14 years.

To energize women disappointed by the lack of a viable woman in the race, the nominee should pick a running mate who is not an old, white male. Sorry, Sherrod Brown, whose name often appears on short lists of potential running mates. The U.S. senator from Ohio is 67.

Another temptation to stifle is picking a running mate with more sizzle than substance. We’ve seen what happens when a presidential contender of a certain age wants to juice his campaign with a younger outsider running mate.

In 2008, Republican John McCain, 72, picked Alaska Gov. and self-described “Mama grizzly bear” Sarah Palin, 44. The disastrous choice made people wonder about McCain’s judgment.

A running mate can also be reassuring. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama, 46, wanted someone with “gray in his hair” who he thought would not aspire to the presidency. Biden, 65, was a safe choice with decades of Senate experience, which Obama lacked.

Should he win the nomination, Sanders already has said his running mate must back Medicare for All, his controversial single-payer health-care plan. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 30, is too young to be VP. Thank goodness.

Biden, should he win, will need to show he’s stable but not ossified. He has teased several women’s names as potential running mates – among them Stacey Abrams, failed gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, and Michelle Obama. Obama has repeatedly said she’s not interested in running for office.

Abrams said she’d be “honored” to run for vice president and “absolutely” wants to be president herself. She is African American, 46, a Yale law school graduate, former Georgia state representative and Georgia House minority leader.

But, she has baggage as a tax lawyer who didn’t pay her own taxes in 2015 and 2016. She said during the 2018 campaign she needed the money to pay her family’s medical bills.

Republicans attacked her on the issue and likely would again, even though last year she reportedly paid off the $54,000 in federal taxes she owed as well as $170,000 in student loan and credit card debt.

While presidential nominees usually shy away from picking former rivals as running mates, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar are all attractive former competitors who’ve been vetted and would balance a Biden or Sanders ticket.

Nobody votes for a president based on the running mate, but the choice is a candidate’s first big decision. Whoever wins the Democratic presidential nomination this year will need to make the choice seriously, carefully and boldly.

(C)2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

The populist is a millionaire -- now what? -- April 18, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At the ripe age of 77, Bernie Sanders finds himself in an enviable predicament.

He lost the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 but became a bestselling author.

His book, “Our Revolution,” was published just after the 2016 election, and “Where We Go from Here” came out last November.

Mostly because of book advances and royalties, Sanders and his wife reported income above $1 million in 2016 and 2017 when they released 10 years of tax returns April 15.

In 2018, the couple had substantially less, but still hefty, adjusted gross income of $561,293, about $393,000 from book income. The Sanderses reported $19,000 in charitable giving last year.

And yet, all is not clover for the independent senator and leading Democratic presidential contender – at least until Joe Biden enters the race.

A headline in The New York Times said of Sanders: “He’s part of the 1%.”

Trevor Noah joked on “The Daily Show” that Sanders’s being a millionaire is like finding out Trump is secretly a Mexican.

Good one. But wait.

Yes, Sanders has railed for years against income inequality, a corrupt political system and “millionaires and billionaires” not paying their fair share. But he did pay his taxes. 

The Sanderses paid $372,368 in taxes in 2016, $343,882 in 2017, and $145,840 last year.

“These tax returns show that our family has been fortunate,” he said in a statement. “I am very grateful for that, as I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck and I know the stress of economic insecurity.”

He said he won’t apologize for his best seller -- nor should he. In a Fox News town hall interview Monday night, Sanders also called on President Donald Trump to release his taxes, which Trump will never do willingly.

Congressional Democrats hope to force Trump to release his taxes, but the longer Trump delays, the more people wonder what he’s hiding.

Unlike Sanders who seems embarrassed by his own wealth, Trump’s returns might embarrass him by showing he’s not as rich or as charitable as he says, or that he’s found legal loopholes to avoid paying taxes.   

Everyone knows a turn in the White House can unlock a treasure chest. Forbes magazine estimated Hillary Clinton’s worth at $45 million in 2016, almost all amassed after she and President Bill Clinton left the White House. 

Michelle Obama wrote the bestselling nonfiction book of 2018. “Becoming” sold 2 million copies in its first 15 days and still occupies the Times bestseller list 21 weeks later.

Sanders, though, is proof that running – and losing the nomination -- can also boost one’s bottom line. In 2015, the Sanderses had adjusted gross income of about $205,000 – mostly from his $174,000 Senate salary and Social Security benefits for both.

His 2016 campaign captured imaginations with populist, “us versus them” rhetoric. 

Some 13 million Americans voted for Sanders in the primaries and caucuses, and he won 22 states. People wanted to read what he had to say -- and not just in the United States. “Our Revolution” has been translated into five languages, the Sanders campaign says.

Sanders needs to accept his good luck and stop sounding peevish. The self-styled democratic socialist denied on Fox his success is proof capitalism works. So much for winning disaffected Donald Trump voters.

And to The New York Times, Sanders said, “If you write a bestselling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”

It’s doubtful, of course, he’d have had best sellers or that Jane Sanders would have received an advance of more than $106,000 in 2017 to write a book about the couple’s public service, had he not run for president.

Even if he’s uncomfortable, Sanders did the right thing in releasing his returns, as have six other Democratic presidential hopefuls. Kamala Harris is a millionaire, and Elizabeth Warren is close. The other contenders need to release their tax returns, too, 

so voters know who they are voting for.

Populism isn’t defined by how much – or how little – money someone has in the bank. It’s defined by the commitment to creating jobs, improving education and other policies that ensure opportunity for all.    

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Social media pushes menu of anger with side of frustration -- June 28, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

You can count on one thing in our polarized, social media age: An action often leads to massive over-reaction.

This week’s case in point is the Red Hen incident.

The action was the decision by a restaurant owner in Lexington, Va., to take a stand against the “inhumane and unethical” Trump administration by refusing to serve White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The over-reaction on both sides rolled in like lava in Hawaii -- fiery, swift and destructive.

Tens of thousands tweets in support of and against the Red Hen, including an angry one from President Donald Trump. Calls for more shaming and for more civility. Protests and counter-protests, and an arrest of a man who threw chicken dung at the restaurant. All this in just three days.

To recap, Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the 26-seat restaurant, told Sanders, after consulting with her employees, the restaurant has standards to uphold, “such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation” and asked her to leave, Wilkinson told The Washington Post.

The next morning, Sanders tweeted, “I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”

Trump fired off a nasty tweet to his 53 million followers: “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!”

Actually, no. For the record, the Red Hen sailed through its last health department inspection with no violations, NBC News reported, but Florida health inspectors cited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with more than a dozen violations last year.  

Trumpians posted Wilkinson’s home address and phone number online, accused her of various crimes and invited Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check her employees.

The Republican Party of Virginia urged supporters to sign up for a boycott “so we can show the Red Hen and its liberal supporters that patriotic Trump supporters are the silent majority in Virginia!”

One of the more than 1,200 signers commented, “Haven’t we had enough of being pushed around by the left?”

On Tuesday, as protests engulfed the Red Hen, a man reportedly was arrested after he threw chicken manure at the building while shouting, “Make America Great Again.” The restaurant is reportedly closed until July 5.

Other Trump officials have also been shamed in public, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., rashly urged Trump foes to keep up the pressure.

“If you see somebody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them,” she said Saturday at a rally in Los Angeles.

Trump tweeted in response that Waters is “an extraordinarily low IQ person,” and Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer quickly criticized Waters.  

“If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “That’s not right. That’s not American.”

In Lexington, Wilkinson said she had asked her employees, several of whom are gay, what they wanted her to do, and they chose to turn Sanders away.

I understand their frustration and anger at Trump’s policies, but was kicking out Sanders worth it?

The surprise appearance of Trump’s spokeswoman nearly 200 miles from Washington could have been a moment for remembering Michelle Obama’s words: “When they go low, we go high.”

Alice Waters’ famous restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., faced a staff mutiny in 1974 when hated Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman came in with a large party. Ultimately, chef Jeremiah Tower insisted the pariah be served.

“What chefs should know is, it’s not about you. It’s about the customer. You don’t get to judge who can partake of that hospitality. If customers are being obnoxious you can ask them to leave. But not because of who they are or what their politics is. Everyone has the same right to live in this country. If they’re just sitting there and enjoying their dinner, hallelujah,” Tower told NPR last year.

Unintentionally, the Red Hen gave Trump fans a gift – a social media cause to rally around and a weapon against Democrats in fall campaigns. That’s a mistake Trump foes should not make again.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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What will we carry into 2017? -- Dec. 29, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the classic short story “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien writes about the weight of the things foot soldiers carried in Vietnam.  

These necessities and near necessities were as practical as mosquito repellent, as powerful as anti-personnel mines and as personal as memories.

Rereading the title story in the terrific book published more than 25 years ago, I started thinking about the New Year, what I want to carry into it and what I hope we can leave behind.

In the latter category is the 2016 presidential election. Yes, it was a shock, but we need to let it go. Unfortunately, talking heads aren’t alone in prolonging the agony.

President Barack Obama said this week he could have won the general election had he been able to run again. That’s the kind of wishful thinking Democrats should leave behind with 2016 – and not because the statement is untrue.

It’s unknowable, of course, which makes great fodder for late-night dorm sessions but not productive thought for the rest of us. 

Obama is still the “most admired” man in America, Gallup reports, and nobody worked harder on Hillary Clinton’s behalf than he and first lady Michelle Obama did, in large part because Obama’s legacy was on the line.

But the president’s confident assertion that his message of tolerance, openness, diversity and energy would have mobilized voters and defeated Donald Trump was a self-serving punch in the gut to Clinton and her supporters.

Naturally, though, it was Trump, not Clinton, who reacted.

“NO WAY!” would Obama have won, Trump tweeted. He returned to Obama’s remark in later tweets the way a tongue explores a sore tooth.

Obama, in the podcast interview with his old friend David Axelrod, also said Clinton was too cautious during the campaign because she thought she was winning, but she “performed wonderfully under really tough circumstances.” He blamed the news media for a double standard in reporting negative news about Clinton.

Basically, he did everything but say she pitched great for a girl.

It’s time to stop beating up on Clinton, stop second-guessing her campaign decisions and why she never matched her husband on the stump.

I’d also like to see politicians stop blaming the news media when things don’t go their way, but that’s not happening.

What-ifs keep us focused on the past when we need to be clear-eyed about the policies and ethics of the incoming administration. And there’s plenty for Democrats to do to prepare for the next congressional election. In 2018, Democrats have to defend 10 Senate seats in states Trump carried.

Trump won the White House, if not the popular vote, with promises to roll back the clock at least to pre-Obama days, maybe earlier. No wonder he wants the Rockettes at his inauguration. They performed at George W. Bush’s in 2005 and 2009.

One thing I’d like to see left behind with 2016 is Trump’s tweets. Complicated policies can’t be resolved in 140 characters.

But, says Sean Spicer, incoming White House press secretary and communications director, tweeting is “a really exciting part of the job.”

Trump has a combined total of 39 million followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and that, “allows him to add an element of a conversation that’s never occurred,” Spicer, a Rhode Island native, told a radio station in his home state.

Will Obama tweet? We’ll see. He plans to write another book, speak out when he sees Trump heading in the wrong direction and help develop the next generation of Democratic leaders.

One notion we can leave behind is that the Obamas will strew rose petals in Trump’s path to the White House. No big surprise there since Obama during the campaign called Trump “unfit to serve” and “woefully unprepared” for the job.

It was unrealistic to expect Obama, who sees Trump eager to dismantle everything Obama has done, to be as gracious as George W. and Laura Bush on their way out.

It’s been a tough year, and there aren’t many things I want to carry into 2017. Here’s one: “When they go low, we go high.”

More slogan than reality in 2016, “when they go low, we go high” is a worthy goal for the New Year.

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Not overnight: Melania Trump had years to prepare as first lady -- Dec. 22, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the olden days before he let loose on Twitter, Donald J. Trump called Howard Stern’s radio show and let loose.

In June 1999, Trump confided on air that his daughter Ivanka, then 17, had made him swear he wouldn’t date anyone younger than she was.

“As she grows older, the field is getting very limited,” the twice-married billionaire joked.

A few months later, Trump, 53, was dating a beautiful Slovenian model named 

Melania Knauss, 26, less than half his age but old enough to meet his daughter’s rule, and he reportedly was “exploring” a White House bid.  

Bad boy Stern had Trump and Knauss by phone on his program and asked her what she was wearing.

“Not much,” she replied. The conversation went downhill from there. Trump bragged about their sex life.

Asked soon afterwards about her boyfriend’s comments on their relationship, Knauss told feature writer Joyce Wadler of The New York Times: “It’s the man thing, that’s how the man talks.” Sound familiar?

The prescient Wadler wrote:

“Is Mr. Trump a lucky billionaire or what? He’s got a woman who does not simply stand by her man but over him. (Five feet 10 ½ inches, but over six feet in her spiky Manolo Blahniks)...she has done Vogue covers in Europe. She also speaks four languages.

“Who she is, beyond that, is difficult to say, for speaking with Ms. Knauss is like speaking with a huge, shimmering bubble. She’s light, she’s fun, she’s exceptionally wonderful to look at; two hours later you walk away and the conversation disappears into the air. Pop! If anything substantial was said, it is difficult to recall. She might, in other words, be the perfect political spouse.”

The frothy story ended with what newspapers called a kicker – a surprise revelation. In this case, it was a preposterous question: What would Melania’s role be as first lady if she and her boyfriend ever did end up in the White House?

Knauss didn’t laugh or blow it off.

“I would be very traditional. Like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy,” she said. “I would support him.”

Trump married his third wife in 2005, and their son Barron was born in 2006, the same year she became a United States citizen.

Most Americans trace Trump’s political debut to his escalator ride in June 2015 and fail to consider his long game, that he was turning over the possibility of the presidency, even as a lark, in 1999.

The Trump family will be White House-bound in less than a month. Well, he will be. Melania Trump and Barron are staying in New York until the end of the school year. Her full-time job is as mom, she says.

Daughter Ivanka Trump, now 36, and her husband Jared Kushner, parents of three, are house-hunting in Washington. She may have an office in the East Wing and may stand in as first lady on social occasions.

By any measure, the Trump presidency will be unlike others.

But Melania Trump and all first ladies must cope with one immutable truth: The presidency is hard on families.

“The next family that comes in here -- every person in that family, every child, every grandchild – their lives will be turned upside down in a way that no American really understands,” first lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey this week on CBS.

President President Barack Obama and Michelle were fierce warriors for Hillary Clinton, but they have shown extreme grace since the election, vowing to help the Trumps however they can. Donald Trump, rarely generous toward Obama, has praised the president and first lady for their kindness.

So, it was jarring to see Michelle Obama tell Winfrey: “Now we are feeling what not having hope feels like.”

That comment from an advance clip was newsworthy because she was speaking for millions of disappointed voters. When the full program aired later, however, it was clear that the current first lady has compassion for the next.

“You really don’t know what you don’t know until you’re here,” Obama said she told Melania Trump. “My door is open.”

As Democrats and Republicans criticize President Trump for his personnel and policies – that’s the American way -- it’s worth remembering that a first family gets dragged into the spotlight.

Michelle Obama said of first families: “It’s not for us to complain about it. So you don’t hear complaints. But it is a – a truth, an actuality, that there is a weight to it.”

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Hillary Clinton's quest ends as it began, with Bill -- Nov. 10, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Hillary Clinton will never be just an asterisk of history.

She’s no Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale, failed Democratic presidential nominees who fell to obscurity.  

And yet, one of the many ironies of the 2016 election is that Clinton’s marital status and gender may define her place in history – as former first lady and first woman presidential nominee of a major political party.

She won the popular vote, but because she did not win the White House, she will always be seen as the wife of a president. Because of the Electoral College, she will never have the chance to prove herself as president.

For all her subsequent accomplishments, marrying Bill Clinton was Hillary’s best career move, her ticket to the national stage.

As his wife, she became first lady of Arkansas and the first lady of the United States.

She, an ambitious Yale law graduate surely would have succeeded in life on her own, but we’ll never know if she would have become a U.S. senator, secretary of state and a presidential contender – twice – had she not first risen to prominence in the role of Mrs. In this way, the Hillary Clinton story is more 20^th century than 21^st.

The Clintons’ marriage, like most relationships, is unfathomable to those on the outside. When her husband was accused of womanizing during his bid for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton proved her loyalty by dutifully standing by her man -- even as she denied she was doing so.

She later showed her strength by enduring the public humiliation of his philandering in the White House.

So it seems a particularly cruel twist of fate that, after she built her own president-ready resume with Senate and State Department posts, her husband may be to blame for Donald Trump’s decision to enter the 2016 presidential race.

Strange as it now seems, both Clintons formerly were friends with Trump, who donated to the Clinton Foundation and played golf with Bill.

Bill Clinton called his pal Trump in May 2015 and encouraged him to play a larger role in Republican politics, The Washington Post reported.

What exactly was said in the private phone conversation isn’t known. A few weeks later, Trump glided down the escalator at Trump Tower and began knocking off GOP presidential contenders, one by one.

And so, Hillary Clinton who in 2008 lost to a Democratic outsider promising change, lost Tuesday to a Republican outsider promising change.  

As the 2016 campaign tightened at the end, Clinton relied more and more on President Obama and his popular wife, Michelle, to make the case for her. Days before the election, the president conversationally asked men about their resistance to a woman president.

“I just want to say to the guys out there . . . there’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president before . . . I want every man out there who’s voting to kind of look inside yourself and ask yourself, if you’re having problems with this stuff, how much of it is that we’re just not used to it?” Obama said at a Clinton rally in Columbus, Ohio.

“So that, like, when a guy is ambitious and out in the public arena and working hard, well, that’s OK. But when a woman suddenly does it, suddenly you’re all like, well, why is she doing that?” he said.

Obama was onto something. Trump won white males’ votes 63 percent to Clinton’s 31 percent, exit polls found.

But Trump also won the votes of white women 53 percent to Clinton’s 43 percent.

When Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, introduced her at her concession speech Wednesday, he said: “She has made history. In a nation that is good at so many things, but that has made it uniquely difficult for women to be elected to federal office, she became the first major party nominee as a woman to be president and last night won the popular vote of Americans for the president.”

Minutes later, Clinton, with her husband standing behind her, said:  

“I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”

Yes, but that woman will not be Hillary Clinton.  

(c) 2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Against odds, the stem-winder survives -- July 28, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

One thing hasn’t changed since Democrats first nominated a Clinton for president in 1992.

A national political convention is still “the ideal forum -- perhaps the only forum left – for what has proved to be a remarkably enduring form of American folk art: the political oration.” So wrote The New Yorker nearly a quarter century ago.

“In an age of sound-bites and manufactured images, it turns out, we still appreciate the real thing, the stem-winder. We’re a people that likes to orate, and to be orated at,” an unsigned “Talk of the Town” column in the magazine’s July 27, 1992 issue said.

Some of the best political speakers of the era had just spoken at Madison Square Garden, where presidential nominee Bill Clinton shared his very personal story of growing up fatherless with his hard-working mother and devoted grandparents.

“I still believe in a place called Hope,” Clinton said, extolling the simple values of his hometown.

Surprisingly, in the age of Instagram and 140-character tweets, nearly 26 million people tuned into the 2016 Democratic convention’s first night, when first lady Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders spoke, according to the Nielsen TV ratings.

That was about 3 million more viewers than watched the Republican convention’s first night, with Melania Trump. When the final numbers are in, this year’s conventions likely will have drawn more viewers than in 2012 or 2008.

Why do people still care about this ancient form of political communication?

My guess is that everybody loves a good story, and, this year especially voters are hungry for emotional connection.

Since Ronald Reagan painted rhetorical pictures of morning in America, most politicians have used political convention speeches to inspire. There’s an art to giving a speech that tugs at heartstrings and shows personal values without being cloying. There’s also an art to turning complex issues into understandable take-aways. 

People don’t want the pros and cons of the Trans-Pacific Partnership; they want When Bill Met Hillary.

Bill Clinton did not disappoint in his speech Tuesday night. Clinton made his wife’s career in politics and government sound like a love story in a movie. Fighting the knock that Hillary Clinton is a status-quo candidate, the former president said: “She’s the best darn change-maker I ever met in my life.”

One of the main stories out of the Republican convention in Cleveland was Melania Trump’s speech. Unfortunately, the news was about echoes of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech. Trump had lifted several phrases of seemingly personal stories about family and parental values.

While most leading Republicans stayed away from Donald Trump’s convention, the presidential candidate used his acceptance speech to paint a dark picture of the state of America – and to bash Clinton.

In Philadelphia, Democrats offered a brighter view of America, waving “Love trumps hate” signs and often talking about love -- when they weren’t blasting Trump.

“We are all neighbors and we must love neighbors as ourselves,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Clinton’s new running mate, said, before mocking Trump.

Vice President Joe Biden unified the raucous crowd by emphasizing the importance of the middle class, a group Biden said Trump neither understands nor empathizes with. Trump has “no clue” how to make America great, Biden said.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a rising Democratic star, said: “Patriotism is love of country, but you can’t love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen . . . We are not called to be a nation of tolerance. We are called to be a nation of love.”

Michelle Obama stirred emotions with personal reflections about her family: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent, black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

“I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday night. “There has never been a man or a woman – not me, not Bill – more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president,” he said.

Will all the oratory matter? We’ll know in November.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Taking a whack at the tax reform pinata -- Jan. 29, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Tax reform is like the old song about heaven. Everybody wants to go there, but nobody wants to die.

Nearly everybody -- President Barack Obama, politicians, most taxpayers -- says we need a simpler, fairer tax code, but nobody wants to give up anything to get there.

   

The uproar over Obama’s proposal to tax 529 plans is a case in point. You can imagine how the big brains in the White House figured that 529s were ripe for picking. Less than 3 percent of families use 529 and similar tax-free savings plans for college, and the plans disproportionately benefit the well off.

Households at all income levels may make after-tax contributions, earnings are tax-deferred and funds may be used tax free for qualified education expenses. About 70 percent of account balances are held by households with incomes over $200,000.

As part of his “middle class economics” plan, Obama suggested taxing 529s and using the revenues to expand an education tax credit for couples making up to $180,000 a year.

Cue the outrage. House Speaker John Boehner charged Obama’s proposal would hurt the very people the president claimed he wanted to help: the middle class. Congressional Democrats also took a whack at Obama’s 529 pinata.

The Obama family’s own hefty 529 accounts would have been unscathed as the proposal only would have taxed future contributions to plans. Back in 2007, the then-senator and Michelle Obama socked away $240,000 in 529 plans for their daughters’ education.

About half the households with 529 and similar college savings plans had incomes above $150,000, according to a Government Accountability Office study in 2012. But that means about half had income below that amount.

The GAO began its report with a disturbing fact: “While median family income decreased between 2005 and 2011, college tuition and fees increased at an average annual rate of 6 percent, more than double the rate of inflation.”

However promising taxing 529s looked on paper, it should not have come as a surprise to anyone in the White House that families that could afford to save used the plans and would hate to lose them.

In federal budget terms, taxing the capital gains of future contributions wasn’t a big ticket item. It would have resulted in revenues of $1 billion over 10 years -- but the proposal hit millions of families. There are about 12 million accounts nationwide.

Thus, Obama managed to accomplish something rare in Washington: His proposal united Democrats and Republicans – against him. The White House said the proposal had become “a distraction” and dropped it within a week.

A peevish editorial in The Wall Street Journal lamented that Obama had moved so quickly. “This is a cut-their-losses move, but we wish the idea had rotted in the sun for a few more months. It would have been instructive to the same middle-class taxpayers Mr. Obama claims to serve,” the paper opined. Pass the sour grapes – or raisins.  

Income inequality, long a Democratic issue, has become a new political cause for Republicans. As they weigh 2016 presidential bids, former governors Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush as well as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker talk of ending poverty.   

Another problem is the shrinking middle class. About as many Americans identified themselves as lower or lower-middle class as middle class in a Pew Research Center/USA Today survey last year.  The share of Americans who said they were middle class dropped from 53 percent in 2008 to 44 percent last year.

The median household income was about $52,000 in 2013, the latest year for which the Census has figures. That’s 4.6 percent lower than it was in 2008 and 8.7 percent below 1999’s median household income of $56,895.

For the time being, savings in state-run 529 accounts appear safe from tax reform efforts.

Families will continue to use the plans tax-free for tuition, books, fees and other qualified expenses at any college or university in the country. 

One necessity that doesn’t qualify is computers. A bipartisan bill in the House would allow computer purchases with 529 funds, and Boehner has urged Obama to support it.

But that helps illustrate the problem with tax reform. It’s always easier to give -- or expand -- a tax break than to take one away.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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