Democrats Gain the Upper Hand in Tax Fight

It’s only been a year since Congressional Republicans, bent on cutting spending, manufactured a financial crisis by threatening not to raise the debt ceiling. Now, apparently thinking the public has forgotten that debacle, they’re furious that Democrats have figured out a way to turn the tables.

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Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a member of the Democratic leadership, said Monday that her party was prepared to let all the Bush-era tax cuts expire on Jan. 1 if Republicans refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy. The same holds true, she said, for the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that begin at the same time, which Republicans demanded in the debt crisis but now oppose after realizing that the cuts affect more than social welfare programs.

Republican leaders quickly voiced horror at these tactics. “Has it come to this?” said Speaker John Boehner, accusing Democrats of holding the economy hostage for the sake of high-end tax increases. Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, called it “an entirely avoidable high-stakes game of chicken with the single-minded goal of taking more money from those who earn it.”

Taking hostages has unfortunately become the default method of exercising power in Washington, after Republicans decided that conventional compromise with Democrats was unpalatable. But the Democrats’ proposal would have nowhere near the same outcome as the Republicans’ debt ceiling threat last year.

Had Republicans forced the government into an unprecedented default last August, the worldwide impact on credit markets and economic growth would have been “catastrophic,” in the words of Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman. By contrast, the combined impact of the tax-cut expiration and the spending cuts — the so-called fiscal cliff — would only push the economy into a shallow recession next year, he told a Senate panel Tuesday morning.

That would be a painful outcome for millions of people, but it is not comparable to a default, and would not happen instantly, instead building slowly over time.

It could also be prevented from happening altogether, as early as January, and Senator Murray has the right plan to do so. By letting all the tax cuts expire on schedule, Republicans can then join Democrats in restoring the cuts only for income up to $250,000. No vote need be taken on raising taxes for the rich, and thus Republicans won’t have to remove their no-tax-increase straitjacket.

She is right in refusing Republican demands to end the half of the sequester that cuts $500 billion from defense over a decade, the only leverage Democrats have in preventing much bigger and more painful domestic cuts. If Republicans want to limit the recessionary impact of the sequester they initiated and supported, they will have to reduce it in a balanced way, now that Democrats have learned a painful lesson from Republican power games.

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MyCar: An Electric Runabout With Bipartisan Support

GreenTech AutomotiveThe MyCar, which is to be produced initially in Mississippi.

If a start-up car company’s chances for success were correlated to the enthusiasm of its chief executive, then an electric-vehicle venture led by Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, would be a sure thing. It takes more than charisma to attract buyers, though, and while the enterprise in question enjoys support from prominent politicians in the Republican and Democratic parties, it also engenders skepticism from some analysts.

Mr. McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive will unveil the two-seat, low-speed, Smart-size MyCar on Friday at a new plant in Mississippi. The event, he said in a telephone interview, would feature a barbecue and an appearance by the former president Bill Clinton, Mr. McAuliffe’s longtime friend.

GreenTech AutomotiveTerry McAuliffe.

Mr. McAuliffe is a possible candidate for the Virginia governorship in 2013 — he lost a three-way Democratic primary for the post in 2009 — but he says he has a good reason for choosing to manufacture the MyCar in Mississippi.

“Haley Barbour put the most aggressive package on the table for us,” he said, referencing the state’s former governor, a Republican. “No one else’s offer was even close to Governor Barbour’s. We can disagree on political issues, but this is two people from different parties coming together. He’s been very aggressive in bringing in the carmakers, so now he’s saying, ‘Let’s try an electric.’ It’s a win-win for everybody.”

Toyota and Nissan also operate plants in the state.

In a separate telephone interview, Mr. Barbour said he and Mr. McAuliffe had reached across the aisle before, since both were involved in the opening of the bipartisan Caucus Room restaurant in Washington in 2000. He said GreenTech received an “off-the-shelf package of incentives” to locate its plants in Mississippi. “It’s not about politics,” he said. “It’s about economic development and higher-paying, higher-skilled job creation in my state. We have not, by a long shot, given up on manufacturing in Mississippi.”

Mr. McAuliffe said the venture would employ 900 workers in Mississippi by the end of the year, as well as create many jobs indirectly. With an initial focus on fleet sales and the European market, he says he believes the company can produce 10,000 cars in 2013. GreenTech described its first Mississippi plant, a leased 400,000-square-foot former elevator factory in Horn Lake, as a pilot facility. A second plant, in Tunica, is expected to open in 2013.

Mr. McAuliffe quoted a price of $18,000 for a MyCar with an included lithium-ion battery pack, and $10,000 for the basic car, presuming a battery lease from the company. A version of the car with lead-acid batteries and 51 miles of range will sell in the mid-$15,000 range, according to Marianne McInerney, a GreenTech sales and marketing spokeswoman.

But prices and performance may vary. Chris Anthony, chief executive of Flux Power, said in a telephone interview that his California-based company had worked with GreenTech “for well over a year” on lithium batteries for the car and had developed 7-, 15- and 23-kilowatt-hour packs, the largest of which would give the car more than 100 miles of range. He also said several hundred packs had been delivered to GreenTech.

The MyCar is hardly a slam dunk for Western buyers. It is a neighborhood electric vehicle, or N.E.V., which means it is not allowed on interstates and is legally limited to 25 miles per hour in most states. In a majority of markets, statutes limit the cars to roads with posted top speeds of 35 m.p.h. or lower. Although it was designed by the noted Italian stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro, the MyCar was originally the product of a Hong Kong-based venture bought by Mr. McAuliffe and his partners for $20 million in 2010.

Mr. McAuliffe said in May that an early MyCar produced in Mississippi was delivered to Denmark, where the company has a relationship with an electric car distributor, Greenabout A/S. Last year, GreenTech said Greenabout would “purchase a sizeble percentage of production through 2014.”

GreenTech is also building a factory in China to produce cars for that market. According to Mr. McAuliffe, he negotiated a contract requiring that core components for those vehicles be built at the plants in Mississippi. “The powertrain and guts of the car will be made in the United States,” he said. “If we allow one more technology to escape overseas, shame on us.”

There’s some skepticism over the market for speed-limited cars. “It’s a niche vehicle, and historically niche vehicles haven’t done particularly well,” Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at Edmunds.com, said in a telephone interview. She also noted that pricing for the soon-to-be-delivered Chevrolet Spark minicar would start at about $13,000, “and you can take it on the highway.”

But Jay Friedland, legislative director of the advocacy group Plug In America, was more supportive. “It makes sense in some ways,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The export market for these, as medium-speed vehicles, is pretty good. There is also a big market for neighborhood vehicles in Florida.” He described annual sales of 5,000 to 10,000 N.E.V.’s as “probably doable.” Anything beyond that, however, “is dreaming,” he said.

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A Carbon Tax, Sensible for All

This was good news not only for the environment but for nearly everyone who pays taxes in British Columbia, because the carbon tax is used to reduce taxes for individuals and businesses. Thanks to this tax swap, British Columbia has lowered its corporate income tax rate to 10 percent from 12 percent, a rate that is among the lowest in the Group of 8 wealthy nations. Personal income taxes for people earning less than $119,000 per year are now the lowest in Canada, and there are targeted rebates for low-income and rural households.

The only bad news is that this is the last increase scheduled in British Columbia. In our view, the reason is simple: the province is waiting for the rest of North America to catch up so that its tax system will not become unbalanced or put energy-intensive industries at a competitive disadvantage.

The United States should jump at the chance to adopt a similar revenue-neutral tax swap. It’s an opportunity to reduce existing taxes, clean up the environment and increase personal freedom and energy security.

Let’s start with the economics. Substituting a carbon tax for some of our current taxes — on payroll, on investment, on businesses and on workers — is a no-brainer. Why tax good things when you can tax bad things, like emissions? The idea has support from economists across the political spectrum, from Arthur B. Laffer and N. Gregory Mankiw on the right to Peter Orszag and Joseph E. Stiglitz on the left. That’s because economists know that a carbon tax swap can reduce the economic drag created by our current tax system and increase long-run growth by nudging the economy away from consumption and borrowing and toward saving and investment.

Of course, carbon taxes also lower carbon emissions. Economic theory suggests that putting a price on pollution reduces emissions more affordably and more effectively than any other measure. This conclusion is supported by empirical evidence from previous market-based policies, like those in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act that targeted sulfur dioxide emissions. British Columbia’s carbon tax is only four years old, but preliminary data show that greenhouse gas emissions are down 4.5 percent even as population and gross domestic product have been growing. Sales of motor gasoline have fallen by 2 percent since 2007, compared with a 5 percent increase for Canada as a whole.

What would a British Columbia-style carbon tax look like in the United States? According to our calculations, a British Columbia-style $30 carbon tax would generate about $145 billion a year in the United States. That could be used to reduce individual and corporate income taxes by 10 percent, and afterward there would still be $35 billion left over. If recent budget deals are any guide, Congress might choose to set aside half of that remainder to reduce estate taxes (to please Republicans) and the other half to offset the impacts of higher fuel and electricity prices resulting from the carbon tax on low-income households through refundable tax credits or a targeted reduction in payroll taxes (to please Democrats).

Revenue from a carbon tax would most likely decline over time as Americans reduce their carbon emissions, but for many years to come it could pay for big reductions in existing taxes. It would also promote energy conservation and steer investment into clean technology and other productive economic activities.

Lastly, the carbon tax would actually give Americans more control over how much they pay in taxes. Households and businesses could reduce their carbon tax payments simply by reducing their use of fossil fuels. Americans would trim their carbon footprints — and their tax burdens — by investing in energy efficiency at home and at work, switching to less-polluting vehicles and pursuing countless other innovations. All of this would be driven not by government mandates but by Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

A carbon tax makes sense whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, a climate change skeptic or a believer, a conservative or a conservationist (or both). We can move past the partisan fireworks over global warming by turning British Columbia’s carbon tax into a made-in-America solution.

Yoram Bauman, an environmental economist, is a fellow at Sightline Institute in Seattle. Shi-Ling Hsu, a law professor at Florida State University, is the author of “The Case for a Carbon Tax.”

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Obama Spends the Most in June, but Romney Raises More

Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee spent $70.8 million in June, including about $38 million on television advertising, as the president’s campaign sought to batter Mr. Romney over his ties to Bain Capital, the private equity firm.

Mr. Romney and the Republican National Committee spent $38.8 million, including about $11 million on television advertising — more than double what Mr. Romney’s campaign spent in May but far less than Mr. Obama.

But because money raised for the election cannot be spent until after the two parties hold their nominating conventions at the end of the summer, Mr. Obama appears to have far more money available to spend in the critical weeks ahead, when each candidate seeks to define the other.

Mr. Obama had an estimated $72 million in primary cash available at the end of June, thanks to a vast army of small donors who can give again and again without hitting the $2,500 contribution limit for primary season. Half of Mr. Obama’s money in June came in checks of less than $200. Mr. Romney has an estimated $20 million in primary money. Many of his early donors gave the maximum contribution while he was still spending heavily to fend off his Republican rivals in the first half of the year.

But Mr. Romney sharply improved his take from small donors in June, with checks of under $200 accounting for about a third of his fund-raising, suggesting that Mr. Obama’s advantage might not persist.

The primary cash for the candidates does not include money not yet transferred to their campaigns from the fund-raising accounts each candidate shares with his party.

The deficit in available money leaves Mr. Romney dependent on the Republican-leaning outside groups that have spent heavily in recent months to keep Mr. Obama on the defensive. American Crossroads, the leading Republican “super PAC,” this week announced a new $9 million campaign against Mr. Obama that criticizes the president for what the group says are unfair attacks on Mr. Romney. Restore Our Future, a super PAC backing Mr. Romney, spent about $15 million between April and June, including $7.6 million in June, a month when it raised $20 million.

Donations to Restore Our Future included $10 million from the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife, $1 million from the real estate developer Harlan Crow, and $2 million from the Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, according to commission reports.

Tax-exempt “issue groups” that do not report their donors have spent millions more against Mr. Obama.

Mr. Romney has used that breathing room to crisscross the country attending fund-raisers to fill his war chest, exploiting his joint committee with the R.N.C. to bring in checks far in excess of what he could accept for his campaign. The committee, Romney Victory, brought in $140 million in the three months through June.

With the primary behind him, Mr. Romney has also begun building out his campaign staff and infrastructure, investments Mr. Obama and the Democrats made months ago. The Romney campaign’s payroll more than doubled between April and June, while his spending on direct mail has more than tripled. He spent close to a half-million dollars on office equipment in May and June. Mr. Romney’s campaign also spent $559,689 in June on “campaign promotional items,” according to election commission reports.

Mr. Obama substantially increased his expenditures on polling, spending $2.6 million in June, a fivefold increase over May. He continued to spend heavily on online advertising, with bills of about $4.4 million in June, and data mining, continuing a yearlong effort by Mr. Obama’s campaign to refine its attack on Mr. Romney and reconstitute the vast army of grass-roots supporters that helped power his 2008 victory. Mr. Obama’s spending on events — including stages, sound and lighting — also jumped in June, as he began hitting the campaign trail more intensively.

Both candidates are relying heavily on “bundlers,” supporters who gather checks from friends and business associates and help host fund-raisers. A list of bundlers posted by Mr. Obama’s campaign on Friday named individuals and couples. The top rank of bundlers, who have raised at least $500,000 each, included roughly 200 individuals accounting for at least $100 million of Mr. Obama’s haul.

Such disclosures are not required, and Mr. Romney has refused to name his fund-raisers. An analysis published this month by USA Today found that Mr. Romney has close to 1,200 bundlers, hundreds of them executives in the financial industry.

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Campaign Videos Turn to Mocking Candidates

If you’re a talented video producer with a tendency toward scathing, sarcastic attacks, this appears to be your year.

The 2012 presidential campaign has become a battlefield of mocking, rhetorical missiles, many of them delivered in the form of cheap, quickly produced videos posted to the Internet and publicized by the campaigns on Twitter and Facebook.

But do they go too far, risking a backlash even as they go viral?

President Obama’s campaign and his Democratic allies are testing that thesis with a series of videos and TV ads that have made fun of Mitt Romney’s off-key singing, his awkward lapses into corporate-speak and even his wife’s beloved dancing Olympic horse.

That last one has already blown up in their faces.

In two videos produced by the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Romney’s words were juxtaposed with images of Ann Romney’s horse, Rafalca, performing the Olympic sport of dressage, or horse ballet, with a top-hatted man in the saddle.

“Do we really want a president who dances around the issues?” asks the video — which has been viewed 61,440 times.

Mr. Obama’s supporters clearly thought the video was funny. Mrs. Romney apparently thought otherwise. And it turns out that mocking the very serious hobby of a candidate’s wife — especially one who is extremely popular — is not a particularly good strategy.

The Democratic National Committee quickly apologized, saying that the “use of the Romneys’ dressage horse was not meant to offend Mrs. Romney in any way, and we regret it if it did.”

Perhaps the committee should have listened to Mr. Obama’s own advice, delivered earlier this year after a Democratic strategist criticized Mrs. Romney as never having worked a day in her life. In a television interview soon after, Mr. Obama suggested staying away from spouses.

“I haven’t met Mrs. Romney, but she seems like a very nice woman who is supportive of her family and supportive of her husband. I don’t know if she necessarily volunteered for this job so, you know, we don’t need to be directing comments at them,” he said.

But if Democrats are backing away from the horse images, they are by no means abandoning the posting of biting videos to drive home their message.

In a video released by Mr. Obama this week, a handful of people can be seen reading a transcript of Mr. Romney’s answer to questions about when he left Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded two decades ago. The voters trip over his awkward phrasing, making the video seem more like a segment on “The Daily Show” than a campaign ad.

“He says ‘entity’ a lot,” one person says, looking a bit confused.

Mr. Obama’s campaign also produced a television ad shown in nine battleground states that shows Mr. Romney singing “America the Beautiful” — badly. The idea was to contrast the song with images of the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, where Mr. Romney reportedly kept money in offshore accounts.

Senior advisers to Mr. Obama said they believed the ad did not go too far. They said they were confident that voters would see it as a lighthearted way to make a point about Mr. Romney’s finances.

The Romney campaign disagreed, and quickly issued a statement accusing Mr. Obama of making fun of a great American song. “It is sad and shameful that President Obama would mock ‘America The Beautiful,’” the statement said.

The use of sarcastic videos is not limited to Mr. Obama’s campaign. Mr. Romney and his Republican allies have produced their fair share of attacks intended to become sensations on the Internet.

One recent video by the Republican National Committee shows Jay Carney, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, saying that the president has “a lot on his plate.” The video then goes on to show that Mr. Obama has golfed 10 times and held 106 fund-raisers in the last six months, while his jobs council has not met once.

The video then shows a fancy-looking dinner plate with $100 bills and golf balls on it.

In another golf-themed video (lest people forget that Mr. Obama plays a lot of golf), the Republican National Committee shows a golfer repeatedly missing the final put, while showing headlines about Mr. Obama’s economic policies.

This is not the first election to feature snarky videos. In 1988, video of Michael Dukakis wearing a helmet as he rode in a tank came to epitomize his awkwardness. And in 2004, an ad of John Kerry windsurfing was used by Republicans as a metaphor for his flip-flopping.

But it does seem as if a cadre of Democratic and Republican video producers have been busy for months creating a mountain of these attack videos, just waiting for the moment to unload them on the voters.

That moment seems to be now.

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Barrier to Romney Tax Disclosure Is the Candidate Himself

10:11 p.m. | Updated A revised version of this post is available here.

Mitt Romney has said it every way he can: He is not releasing any more of his tax returns.

Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, is facing millions of dollars in searing ads from President Obama and a rising chorus of puzzled Republicans, all urging him to reveal more of his financial history.

But with each answer he gives, Mr. Romney seems more determined than ever that voters will not see any of his tax history before 2010.

“In the political environment that exists today, the opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy,” Mr. Romney told National Review on Tuesday, explaining his opposition to a broader release of his personal tax data.

“I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort and lie about,” he said.

That follows an equally emphatic statement last Friday, when Mr. Romney brushed aside calls for him to make public more than the 2010 returns he has released and the 2011 documents he has said are coming soon.

“Those are the two years people are going to have, and that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances,” Mr. Romney said in an interview on CNN.

The definitive nature of Mr. Romney’s statements appears to have all but shut down any public contemplation from his close advisers that he might reconsider. Kevin Madden, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, declined to talk about internal discussions on the issue, but made clear who was in charge.

“I would point you to the governor’s statements,” Mr. Madden said. “That guides the campaign’s position.”

Another senior adviser to the campaign said Wednesday that he had “heard of no division in the inner circle on this.”

“He is determined not to release more, and they support him,” the adviser said of Mr. Romney and his aides. “Plus, there is no evidence that voters care about this. They think they know enough about Mitt Romney’s finances.”

But that answer has not satisfied a growing number of Republicans who have said that Mr. Romney’s refusal to release more of his tax returns threatens to do him lasting political damage as he nears the final stage of the presidential campaign.

On Tuesday, the editors of National Review wrote that the Republican campaign was “playing into the president’s hands” by refusing to release the tax returns. They predicted that Mr. Romney would eventually have to cave in to the demands.

“The only question is whether he releases more returns now, or later — after playing more defense on the issue and sustaining more hits,” they wrote. “There will surely be a press feeding frenzy over new returns, but better to weather it in the middle of July.”

In the last several days, similar calls have come from Republican pundits and governors, and from some of Mr. Romney’s former rivals for the party’s nomination.

“Politically, I think that would help him,” Representative Ron Paul of Texas told Politico. “In the scheme of things politically, you know, it looks like releasing tax returns is what the people want.”

George Will, the conservative commentator, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Mr. Romney should release more tax returns quickly.

“If something’s going to come out, get it out in a hurry,” Mr. Will said. “I do not know why, given that Mitt Romney knew the day that McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again that he didn’t get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest.”

Mr. Romney’s hard-and-fast refusals have also energized the Democratic attacks. Mr. Obama’s Chicago-based campaign is continuing to hammer him with new television ads, web videos and commentary from surrogates.

The Democratic National Committee on Wednesday released a video making fun of Mr. Romney by juxtaposing his statements on his tax returns with images of a man in a top hat doing a horse ballet.

“Do we really want a president who dances around the issues?” the video asks.

The horse featured in the video is Rafalca, and is owned by Ann Romney, who took some offense to the video in an appearance on ABC on Wednesday. By late Wednesday, the D.N.C. apologized and said it would no longer use the horse in videos or ads.

“Our use of the Romneys’ dressage horse was not meant to offend Mrs. Romney in any way, and we regret it if it did,” said Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the D.N.C. “We were simply making a point about Governor Romney’s failure to give straight answers on a variety of issues in this race. We have no plans to invoke the horse any further to avoid misinterpretation.”

Mr. Woodhouse said the existing video, and a second similar one also released earlier Wednesday, will remain available online.

A television ad by Mr. Obama’s campaign went up in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, just as Mr. Romney held an event in the state. Titled “Makes you Wonder,” the ad raises the possibilities that Mr. Romney has additional overseas tax havens that would be revealed by releasing his tax returns.

“Makes you wonder if some years he paid any taxes at all,” the ad says. “We don’t know because Romney has released just one full year of his tax returns.”

Mr. Romney’s campaign has sought to change the subject, accusing the Democrats of going on the attack because of what they say are the failed economic policies of Mr. Obama’s administration.

Mr. Madden said that Mr. Romney had disclosed personal financial information “beyond what the law requires” and said that should be enough.

“What’s important to voters is the state of the economy and who’s going to fix it,” he said. “What they really want is a focus on the issues. That’s where the governor is focused.”

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Terry McAuliffe and the Other Green Party

By Ben Werschkul and Mac William BishopTimesCast Politics: Terry MacAuliffe: Mark Leibovich on ‘The Macker.’

Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is starting a company that makes little electric cars. On a sweltering Friday in early July, GreenTech Automotive unveiled its signature vehicle — the MyCar — at a plant opening in the North Mississippi town of Horn Lake. McAuliffe was puttering backstage before the event with his pals Bill Clinton and Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi and archetypal Republican lobbyist.

McAuliffe the Democrat (left) and Barbour the Republican, share a laugh.

The holding area was crowded and somewhat frenzied. People designated as V.I.P.’s kept streaming through, many in from China, where GreenTech is building an 18-million-square-foot facility. They arrived, dozens of them, via a Harrah’s shuttle bus with a big “Fun in Store for Those Who Ride” painted on the side. As Clinton prepared to go onstage, I asked him if he would ever consider buying a car from McAuliffe, who he once marveled could “talk an owl out of a tree.” “Absolutely, I would buy a new car from Terry,” he told me. “But a used car? I am not so sure about a used car.” He laughed and wheeled around and repeated the line to Barbour (“Listen to what I just told him . . . ”), while slapping his fleshy back.

McAuliffe, 55, is eager to be known, foremost, as a businessman and an entrepreneur, and not so much as a political moneyman. That will take some doing. He is “the greatest fund-raiser in the history of the universe,” Al Gore once said, in keeping with the hyperbole often heaped on McAuliffe, known widely as the Macker, by the politicians who love/need him. McAuliffe, who is in fact quite hard to dislike and is himself a peerless exaggerator, has collected legions of friends over the years. “There are 18,000 names in my Rolodex,” he boasted to me earlier that morning over coffee. When I pressed him, he revised the number upward, to 18, 632. The acknowledgments section of his memoir, “What a Party!” runs six single-spaced pages and includes the names of every member of the Democratic National Committee during his time as the party chairman. In a five-minute span of conversation, McAuliffe distilled for me the extent of his psychological complexity: 1) He pinches himself all the time because he’s so lucky. 2) He likes to think out of the box. 3) He swings for the fences every day. 4) At the end of the day, it is what it is.

If McAuliffe’s trademark is fund-raising, his principal identity is as a Professional Best Friend to Bill Clinton. The subtitle of “What a Party!” might as well be “Let Me Tell You Another Story About Me and Bill Clinton.” (One involved South Korean Intelligence agents thinking McAuliffe and Clinton were more than just friends.) If he is not dropping the name of the 42nd president, the Macker is telling you that he just got off the phone with Bill Clinton, or that, what do you know, President Clinton is actually on the phone right now, and can you please excuse him for just a second (“Hello, Mr. President”). And if Mr. President is not on the phone, there is a good chance he is, as today, close by.

Clinton’s voice is softer and throatier than you remember. He has lost considerable weight, evident to anyone who has seen him in photographs (once known as the “Big Dog,” he’s now more “Vegan Dog”). But it is jarring nonetheless to see the svelte version of the former president up close, especially since his head is as big as it ever was — a fact accentuated by the ruddy brightness of his face and pronounced cheekbones. Encountering Clinton these days is like meeting a skinny older guy who is wearing a Bill Clinton mask.

McAuliffe’s MyCar debut is the culmination of years of planning for a firm that is trying to reinvent the automobile. Unsaid was that he also hoped it would reinvent Terry McAuliffe as he approaches his own probable run for governor of Virginia in 2013 — something he tried in 2009, losing in the primary to a relative political unknown named Creigh Deeds. GreenTech could be the vehicle, so to speak, for McAuliffe to escape his lane as a political rainmaker, carnival barker and Clinton appendage and reposition himself as “a Virginia businessman fighting for Democratic causes and creating jobs,” as his Web site says. It hardly mattered that a lot of these jobs would be in Mississippi, not Virginia, because of a package of tax and infrastructure incentives McAuliffe was able to secure from Barbour, who himself made the successful transition from operative-businessman to public office when he was elected governor of Mississippi in 2003.

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