Waittaminnit. Aside from the "are you still beating your wife?" character of the debate questions, let's look at the facts:

(1) "Why do the terrorists hate America?" Not sure which "terrorists" you mean (there are lots of different agendas out there), but if you actually listen to and read what Bin Laden and his ilk say, they're pissed off about the presence of American bases in Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain and other spots in their countries. Their actions on this point are despicable, but their motives have nothing to do with "hating our freedom" or any other bullshit like that. Over the past century, the Muslim world has endured the occupation and expulsion of the French and British empires. They want the US to get out, too. If Saudi Arabia started building air bases in North Carolina, wouldn't you be pissed off? Maybe it's time we get the hell out and leave those people alone.

(2) Regarding Charlie Gibson, your choice of words is apt. He did indeed "frame" a question. Unfortunately, it wasn't really a question rather than an arguable point posing as a question. Obama's deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the question was not surprising, since the relationship of CGT and revenue is something that neither the left or the right can pin down. For example here is a discussion of the point from (right wing) The New Republic:

"My recollection was that Gibson’s premise was wrong, but I couldn’t remember the details of why. Fortunately, I know a few economists. Here’s one of them–Jason Furman of the Brookings Institute–with the story:

Joint Committee on Taxation and Treasury both score raising capital gains taxes as raising revenues. There is some behavioral response but much of that is timing and doesn’t affect the medium-to-long term revenue loss.

Note that the experience after the 1997 cut and the 2003 cut is not a meaningful way to assess the impact of capital gains tax cuts on revenues because so many things were happening simultaneously. The JCT score of the capital gains cut in 1997 was a few billion dollars annually. The 2003 cut was something like $5 billion annually. But capital gains revenues can go up or down by tens of billions annually. So it is hard to look at the noisy data and infer ex post the revenue impact of these changes.

Or, to put it more simply, Gibson’s logic was flawed."

There are dozens of other examples of both the right and left trying to get their heads around this tenuous issue, but here's another way to look at it: Capital gains accrue when an asset is sold. Except in a few specialized instances, people have a choice about when to sell an asset. If they know the capital gains tax rate will be going down as of a certain date, they are likely to sell assets AFTER that date rather than before it, in order to minimize the tax due. So the increase in revenues experienced once the capital gains tax rate goes down is largely due to the fact that more people are selling assets. Short answer: Charlie Gibson was technically correct, but his statement reflects an artifact.

In other words, Charlie Gibson took a very noisy and complex system, cherry picked a couple of data points, and used it to make his argument in an event where HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAVE ANY ARGUMENT AT ALL!
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MichaelP
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