We Just Spent a Day Talking About Lipstick

There are now 54 days to go until voters go to the polls and we spent an entire day of the presidential campaign talking about lipstick.

If I inserted the word into the famous Allen Iverson rant about basketball practice, it would go something like this: “we’re talking about lipstick. I mean listen, we’re sitting here talking about lipstick, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we’re talking about lipstick…we’re talking about lipstick man.“

“Lipstick on a pig” have become the four most famous words of the 2008 election. Did Barack Obama slam Sarah Palin? Did John McCain’s campaign make a controversy out of a nothing comment?

I don’t know and I really don’t care.

We ran the quote on Daybreak Wednesday because it was getting some notice in the morning papers. I had no idea it would become the issue of the day.

So I’m not blameless in Wednesday’s news media diversion. Apparently this became a big story because the political bloggers went to work and before you know it, Lipstick-gate becomes issue one for September 10.

(By the way, a Harris Interactive poll found less than one in four Americans read political blogs regularly. It’s a good thing TV anchor blogs score much higher.)

I’m sure there were other issues discussed by the candidates during Wednesday, but Lipstick-gate just couldn’t be buried. (Yes, I have taken on the tired cliché of adding the word gate to any controversy in the post-Watergate era).

So I decided to go looking for a real issue and taxes is always a great place to start. Our tax system makes figuring out a football quarterback’s passing rating look like adding 2+2.

To used another Obama line, “it’s above my pay grade.“ So I went to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center website and found a whopper of an issue:

“Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next ten years, according to a newly updated analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Compared to current law, TPC estimates the Obama plan would cut taxes by $2.9 trillion from 2009-2018. McCain would reduce taxes by nearly $4.2 trillion. These projections assume the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire in 2010 and that the Alternative Minimum Tax is fully effective.“

You can read the full text of their analysis by clicking here

I hope we get to this issue some time in the next 54 days (or 1,284 hours).

However, if the latest on the lipstick story is what you want, check out coverage from The CBS Early Show on Thursday: