July 13, 2008

Dep’t of Surrogate Follies: Oops, McCain = Bush

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.


When one of your surrogates can’t think of a single difference between you and the President on economic issues, you’re in serious trouble.

Did Sanford have a momentary lapse? Sure. But if Blitzer had given Sanford 20 minutes, he wouldn’t have found a substantive difference between McCain and Bush other than McCain’s lower tolerance for pork, which, because earmark spending is a relatively small portion of the federal budget, is more a good government issue than an economic one. On taxes, trade, CEO salaries, and so on, McCain and Bush are nearly identical. Other McCain surrogates have admitted as much.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest