There is an idea circulating out there that the killer combo of Joe the Plumber and “spread the wealth” may save the election for McCain.  Now you might say that this is just whistling past the graveyard, but that doesn’t do it credit.  This is really more like four-part harmony singing in a freshly-dug grave as the dirt is being piled on. 

This is something that I didn’t elaborate on last night, but the idea that the message of Spread The Wealth would be a political loser at the present time is bizarre, which makes McCain’s insistence on identifying Obama as the “spread the wealth” candidate even more bizarre.  I mean, does McCain want to get crushed in a landslide?  Let’s think about this.  There is an economic downturn coming on the heels of an era of wage stagnation and growing economic inequality, the financial sector has imploded thanks to the combined blunders of government and holders of concentrated wealth and Obama’s use of a phrase that on its own could easily be mistaken for an expression of neo-Harringtonian distributism is supposed to be politically radioactive?  Consolidation of power, concentration of wealth and centralism all stand condemned for having created the present fiasco, and there is supposed to be a political downside to talking about distributing wealth? 

Contra Pethokoukis, Long’s slogan was Share Our Wealth, which definitely had a more direct appeal to economic solidarity and redistribution than “spread the wealth” suggests.  In theory, a true believer in an unfettered market would hold that his economic model more equitably and efficiently creates and then spreads the wealth, but there is no disagreement that wealth can and should be “spread around.”  McCain halfway hinted at this last night, but he had already tried to make the use of the phrase into something terrible.  Integral to a social vision of a broad middle class of property-holders is the idea that wealth is widely and more or less evenly distributed, and there is an assumption in this vision that this is best for political and social stability, as it prevents the sort of dangerous stratification that prevails in societies in which a wealthy oligarchy dominates a poor underclass.  If conservatives cede distributist language to left-liberals, they are not only abandoning an important part of their intellectual and political tradition, but they are also surrendering their ability to speak on behalf of middle-class Americans and they appear to be giving up on the idea that a relatively more free market system can better distribute wealth than a welfarist system organized by the central government.

Then again, the frequent attack on Obama’s redistributive policies* seems bizarre in the wake of the bailout that McCain also supported, which is very plainly a redistribution of our wealth to financial institutions.  The argument in its favor is supposed to be that we will all suffer if it is not done, but there is no question that it is ultimately redistributive.  No one who supported the bailout can credibly fling the label socialist as an insult or use “spread the wealth” as a bludgeon.  It is a clear act of the government using its power to take taxpayers’ dollars (or funds borrowed on public credit) and allocate it elsewhere.  Even though the bailout provokes at least a large plurality to strong opposition, both candidates supported it, so it is not clear that the bailout or talk of redistributive policies hurts one more than the other.

*Let’s also remember that this entire discussion is premised on the assumption that Obama would reduce taxes on most middle-class households, and the issue at stake is whether he should raise taxes on those with higher incomes.