Furman Calls Out McCain on Lies

Via Mankiw, see video here for Obama economic policy director Jason Furman's takedown of McCain hack Doug Holtz-Eakin on CNBC. (Weren't we told that Holtz-Eakin had left the McCain job to work full time as Palin's tutor?)

In the course of the short back-and-forth, Jason twice shuts down Holtz-Eakin's lies.

When Holtz-Eakin says that Obama voted to raise taxes 94 times, Jason interjects that not only have fact-check organizations repeatedly called this claim bogus, but by the same standard McCain has voted to raise taxes 477 times!

Later, when Holtz-Eakin falsely claims that the Obama campaign has made a political issue of Palin's pregnant teenage daughter, Jason points out that Obama could not have been clearer in saying that kids are off limits and that if anyone in his campaign suggested otherwise they would be fired.

Holtz-Eakin looks like a sleazy used car salesman, and I was struck in particular by his snide inside-the-Beltway speaking manner, which I've noticed when I've seen him in person. He talks using terminology that only someone completely immersed in the minutiae of DC politics would follow. What fraction of Americans know what he's talking about when he goes on about the Gang of 10? Jason, on the other hand, comes across as an earnest policy wonk and speaks a language that non-experts can understand.