Memo to the Candidates: Stop Talking About Earmarks. Please.

This election could wind up being about a lot of things. The economy. The war in Iraq. Whether Sarah Palin's mooseburgers are better than Barack Obama's chili. But there's at least one thing that it won't be about:

Earmarks. 

Our apologies to John McCain. If the Arizona senator had his druthers, earmarks are all America would talk about from now until Nov. 4--perhaps with the word "surge" mentioned every other week, just for variety. McCain has spent much of his Congressional career crusading against pork-barrel spending--i.e., the secretive appropriations that House and Senate members have increasingly slipped into spending bills without public hearings or debate. He prides himself on never having requested an earmark for the Grand Canyon State, which is pretty much true. On the stump, he decries the practice as "disgraceful" and promises as president to veto with Ronald Reagan's pen every pork-barrel bill that crosses his desk. He even bases his plan to balance the budget in part on slashing $100 billion in earmarks from the federal budget. Experts say that McCain's pledge is a "fantasy"--even if the budget contained $100 billion in earmarks (which it doesn't) that sum wouldn't be enough to put the U.S. in the black. Still, McCain has been effective in using his opposition to earmarks as a symbol of his larger mission to reform a wayward Washington.

So what's the problem? Two words: Sarah Palin. When McCain introduced Palin late last month in Dayton, Ohio, he touted her as a fellow crusader against wasteful spending. Palin called herself a reformer who worked to end the "abuses of earmark spending in Congress." Unfortunately, Palin requested more than $450 million in federal earmarks during her two years as governor of Alaska--more per person than any other state. (Not to mention being for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.) And Palin wasn't new to the practice. Previously, as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Palin employed Washington lobbyist Steven Silver to bring home $27 million in bacon--about $3,375 per person. The town had never received earmarks before Palin's tenure.

Many of Palin's pet projects, in fact, were exactly the sort of thing that McCain has spent years mocking. On the stump, McCain takes particular pleasure in knocking a study that sought to determine whether grizzly bears should remain on the endangered species list. "We're not going to spend $3 million of your tax dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana," he says, usually to sympathetic laughter. "I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal case." Palin, meanwhile, has requested more than $3 million--$3.2 million to be exact--for research into the "genetics of harbor seals." (Palin's other animalian targets include rockfish, halibut, sea crabs and sea lions.) What's more, three of Palin's Wasilla earmarks--a $500,000 public transportation request from 2001; a $1 million emergency communications center from 2002; and a $450,000 agricultural processing facility, also from 2002--appeared on McCain's annual "pork lists," or catalogs of "objectionable" spending. All in all, it's kind of tough for McCain to say that "earmarks equal corruption" without implicating his own running mate.

OK, you say. I get it. Palin was for earmarks before she was against them. So why can't they still be an issue--only this time they'll work in Obama's favor?

Glad you asked. The Obama campaign is clearly hoping that the cookie will crumble that way. "I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she's change, and that's great," Obama said Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind. "She's a skillful politician. But, you know, when you've been taking all these earmarks when it's convenient, and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that's not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can't just make stuff up." Unfortunately, though, Obama has his own pork-barrel past to contend with. During his three fiscal years in the U.S. Senate, the Land of Lincolner has requested more than $740 million in earmarks for Illinois--including $1 million for an expansion of the University of Chicago Medical Center, where his wife Michelle is a vice president, $8 million for a military contracting firm owned by a top donor and $3.4 million for clients of Joe Biden's lobbyist son.

Team McCain's response? We're happy to have this debate. In Fairfax, Va. earlier this week, Palin attacked Obama's record, saying that she and McCain are going to "end the corrupt practices of earmarks once and for all." But ultimately, this is a dumb debate to be having--and not just because both sides are being totally hypocritical. The fact is, Obama and McCain pretty much agree on the future of earmarks--i.e., that they don't have a future. Obama hasn't requested any earmarks for 2009; he's also promised to shine a light on the process as president. Palin herself admitted back in July that "both" presidential candidates would pursue earmark reform in office.

My hunch is that very few rational voters, Republican or Democrat, will resent Palin or Obama for working within a flawed system to do their jobs as governor and senator and help the residents of Alaska and Illinois--especially now that they're pledging once in power to fix the system from the top down. (If any voters do fault Palin and not Obama, or vice versa, just remind them: your guy or girl did the exact same thing.) At the end of the day, earmarks represent just $16 billion of the $2.9 trillion federal budget for 2008. Most of that money funds projects that people appreciate, such as schools and hospitals. In other words, there's better stuff to argue about.

UPDATE, Sept. 12: Via Jonathan Martin, I see that...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday running mate Sarah Palin has never asked for money for lawmakers' pet projects as Alaska governor when in fact she has sought nearly $200 million in earmarks this year. McCain made the comments as he appeared on the ABC television show "The View" as part of his effort to woo women to his candidacy... When pressed about Palin's record of requesting and accepting such money for Alaska, McCain ignored the record and said: "Not as governor she didn't." 

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That's 100 percent not true. Either McCain is unfamiliar with his running mate's record--or he's lying.