Obama's Séance

President-elect Barack Obama called former first lady Nancy Reagan on Friday to apologize for suggesting in his first post-election press conference that she has held séances.

As every major and minor news organization in America pointed out within hours, that was Hillary Clinton, not Nancy Reagan. Mrs. Reagan consulted an astrologer. Mrs. Clinton consulted Eleanor Roosevelt.

By coincidence, America Wants To Know happened to witness one of those conversations last January. We keep an assortment of fortune tellers, psychics and mediums on the payroll, although we did have to fire the astrologer last spring after she beat us for the third straight year in the Academy Awards pool.

In any event, the dust-up over the president-elect's comment about Mrs. Reagan obscured the more interesting story out of the press conference, which is that Senator Obama sounded like he had been visited by the Gipper's ghost.

Did you notice that he referred to his tax plan in the past tense?

"My tax plan represented a net tax cut. It provided for substantial middle-class tax cuts," the president-elect said. "It also provided for cuts in capital gains for small businesses."

Represented. Provided. Not "represents" or "will provide."

Is it out the window, the tax-the-rich, spread-the-wealth plan he's been talking about for two years?

"I think that the plan that we've put forward is the right one, but, obviously, over the next several weeks and months, we're going to be continuing to take a look at the data and see what's taking place in the economy as a whole," he said.

Well, if it's not out the window, it is on the table. Possibly on a carving board.

Here are two statistics from the Friday press conference:

Number of times the president-elect used the word "grow" or "growth" - 6

Number of times the president-elect used the word "fair" or "fairness" - 0

Senator Obama also said he thinks it's going to be "very important" to assist state and local governments, "to make sure that they don't compound some of the problems that are already out there by having to initiate major layoffs or initiate tax increases."

Did the president-elect just say he thinks tax increases compound economic problems?

In all the giggling and gasping over the Nancy Reagan comment, everyone might have missed the real news.

America Wants To Know has been trying to contact the spirit of President Reagan to ask him if he's behind this, but so far our in-house medium has been unsuccessful.

Apparently we'll have to hire one with a higher security clearance, or a drive-on pass at Warner Bros.



Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the January 2008 post, "A message for Hillary Clinton."

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