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Fred Thompson’s reviews are in. According to the AP, “Fred Thompson stayed on script. The newcomer to the Republican presidential field didn’t stand out in his first debate of the 2008 race, but he didn’t blow it either.” And while Thompson has benefited from the bigotry of low expectations and the softball horse race media punditry, his policy pronouncements were less than accurate. Consider the following fact check:
Trade: “Free and fair trade has been good for America; responsible for millions of jobs in this country. We cannot turn our back on that.” In reality, free trade has led to an exodus of jobs and more appear to be at risk.
According to Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and staunch free trade advocate, “a new industrial revolution — communication technology that allows services to be delivered electronically from afar — will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two. That’s more than double the total of workers employed in manufacturing today. The job insecurity those workers face today is “only the tip of a very big iceberg.”
Taxes: “Generally speaking, lower taxes and lower tax rates grow the economy.” Unfortunately for Thompson, there is simply no evidence for this.
The claim that high taxes impede economic growth “is just not supported by the evidence in the U.S. or across countries.” Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan and Jon Bakija compared the G.D.P. per capita with the level of taxes in the two dozen member nations. According to their calculations, “relatively low-tax nations like the United States and Japan did well…but so did high-tax nations in Scandinavia and elsewhere. More important, the authors contradict earlier findings that purported to show that high taxes reduced growth rates. There is no such relationship, they found; many economists now agree.”
Iraq: “Clearly, to me, we didn’t go in with enough troops [into Iraq] and we didn’t know what to expect when we got there.” Thompson may not have known, but the administration sure thought it did.
Vice President Dick Cheney: “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators... The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.” (Meet The Press, 3/16/03) “I think that the people of Iraq would welcome the U.S. force as liberators; they would not see us as oppressors, by any means. (CNN American Morning, 9/9/02)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “Think of the faces in Afghanistan when the people were liberated, when they moved out in the streets and they started singing and flying kites and women went to school and people were able to function and other countries were able to start interacting with them. That’s what would happen in Iraq.” (Media Roundtable, 9/13/02)
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.” (Wolfowitz, House Budget Committee, 2/27/03) “Until the regime is gone it’s going to be very hard to do anything. Even in cities that are liberated. I think when the people of Basra no longer feel the threat of that regime, you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief.” (Wolfowitz, News Conference, 3/25/03)
Secretary of State Colin Powell: We would hope that if it came to that, there would be such a sea change in the region, rather than it being seen as an assault, it would be seen as a liberation, and it would be seen as the beginning of a new era in that part of the world, as Mr. Lantos has spoken of. (Powell, HIRC, 9/19/02)
Press Secretary Ari Fleisher: My point is, the likelihood is much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors.” (Fleischer, Press Briefing, 10/11/02)
Right on target. Like the song goes:”Hey man nice shot”.