‘Spreading the Wealth’ as Both Accusation and Prescription

By MICHAEL COOPER
NYT

TOLEDO, Ohio — In any other year, it would seem routine. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, is spending the final weeks before the election painting his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, as a quasi socialist who wants “to redistribute wealth” and whose tax cuts are a “government giveaway.”

But it can be a complicated argument in this topsy-turvy year of financial collapse, when the government, from the Republican president on down, has seemed to be in the giveaway business and the wealth-spreading business an awful lot of late.

There have been taxpayer-financed bailouts of individual businesses and broader interventions like the $700 billion bailout of the financial system — which both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama supported — not to mention the Bush administration’s move to buy a $250 billion stake in the nation’s banks. In the wake of the financial crisis, everyone seems to like some state-directed form of wealth redistribution, including Mr. McCain, who wants to use taxpayer money to buy distressed mortgages and sell them back to homeowners at more affordable rates.

“I’m going to spend a lot of money to bring relief to you,” Mr. McCain pledged to cheers at a rally here Sunday, just a few minutes after criticizing Mr. Obama for wanting to “spread the wealth around.”

At times the message sounds a bit mixed.

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