Driving me crazy.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Brief article

Unlike most observers, I thought Obama and Clinton were at their best when they were supposed to have flubbed a question about driver's licenses for illegal aliens--Hillary in Philadelphia, and Barack in Las Vegas. What they were doing in each case was trying to face the complexity of a very difficult problem, and to me they deserved great credit for doing so. Unfortunately, in Las Vegas Hillary took the politically expedient course of saying a flat no.

I think she also took the politically ex pedient course on the Social Security tax. When Obama said he would raise the current cap that prevents people from being taxed on income over $97,500, Clinton said she refused to "fix the problem of Social Security on the backs of middleclass families and seniors." When Obama replied that "only 6 percent of Americans make more than $97,500 a year," Clinton replied, "There are people who would find that [tax] burdensome ... [like] firefighters ... school supervisors."

I'm sure that not more than a handful of American firefighters make more than $97,500. Even in New York City, where public employee salaries are high, a...