Liberal tax policy surely hadn't enjoyed a better 16 hours in a couple of decades.
That would be from 8 p.m. Tuesday, when President Barack Obama began his State of the Union address, until noon Wednesday, just after Gov. Asa Hutchinson emulated Obama at the state Capitol.
And it was just after I informally polled the senior boys at Catholic High School in Little Rock on the general left and right leanings of tax policy.
Let's start there, at Catholic High, that fine educational institution.
The necktied seniors assembled in the auditorium around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday for 50 minutes of political talk. The session was with David Couch, a keenly intelligent and tenacious local lawyer and rabble-rouser, and me. We were there to balance a similar session conducted several days before with a couple of local conservatives.
Of course, I'm not so liberal, but moderate. Couch is sure-enough liberal.
I sensed that we all had a good time except maybe for a couple of young men toward the back. They seemed peeved that they might ever have to pay taxes to help send lesser and lazier intellects to community college for free.
I began by saying I wanted to take the temperature of the 200-member audience. So I summarized what Obama had said the night before--that the economic recovery had well-served those with the highest incomes; that the middle class had not shared so much in the new bounty; that he wanted to use tax policy to try to address that; that he wanted to raise capital gains taxes on the very tip-top incomes to afford new tax breaks for working middle-class people, and that he specifically wanted a straight tax credit of $500 for households with up to $210,000 of income in which both the husband and wife work.
Then I gave the young men two options, "A" and "B," and asked for a show of hands to indicate a more favorable leaning.
"A" was that what Obama proposed seemed fair because the very richest people realizing handsome capital gains could afford a few more points in tax percentages to pay for a tax break for regular working folks.
"B" was that Obama was advancing class warfare and wealth redistribution and punishing the rich, and that the richest people, if forced to pay higher taxes on their capital gains, simply would decline to invest as much in creating or growing businesses, thus denying opportunity to the very middle class we supposedly would be trying to help.
I thought "B" would sweep the auditorium. But it didn't. I surveyed the hands and made a general assessment that the room was darned near evenly split.
And this was a superficially conservative demographic--white Southern private-school males from households probably with high-middle-class incomes and up, at least by Arkansas standards.
Meanwhile, over at the state Capitol ...
The state Senate's Revenue and Taxation Committee was giving a do-pass recommendation by unanimous voice vote to Hutchinson's bill to cut taxes for middle-class Arkansans with incomes ranging from $21,000 to $75,000.
But first, in order to help replenish the budget to preserve services, this governor and this Republican-led committee voted to amend the bill to repeal a cut enacted two years on the very highest levels of capital gains.
Are you seeing what happened there?
In Washington, the president whom Arkansas hates was proposing to raise taxes on high levels of capital gains to offset the cost to the federal treasury of a tax break for the middle class.
In Little Rock, the new Republican governor whom Arkansas loves was actually passing what the hated president was merely proposing.
Yes, precisely.
Hutchinson's repealing a capital gains tax cut is the same as raising the capital gains tax. And the governor has said his middle-class cut would free up as much as $500 or so for persons making $75,000.
So remind me: What was the size of that tax credit Obama proposed for two-job married couples? Why, it was $500.
Should we go with Asa Obama or Barack Hutchinson?
And half the senior boys at Catholic are fine with all that.
Why, I do believe we have found at least the edge of our elusive common ground. It's on tax policy that taps the blowing-going richest a bit to help the struggling middle class a bit.
Take out the divisive labels and consider simply the fairness. Then apply a bit of the innocence of bright youth. Presto. America is less dysfunctional than we thought.
Of course the real polarization is not over tax policy, but culture--God, guns and gays.
So if we could focus on the specific realm of politics and policy and leave those other matters where they belong--in church and in the gun cabinet and in court--then we'd start getting somewhere.
May our president and our governor and our fine young people lead us.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 01/25/2015