The Democratic National Committee released a single-serving joke site—RomneyTaxPlan.com—that displays an enticing button promising to allow you to "GET THE DETAILS" on the plan but that scurries away from your pointer when you try to click on it. Professional political people often fail miserably at doing jokes, as the DNC did with its dressage horse ad, but this one works, because sometimes the best jokes are simple jokes. Mitt Romney's campaign has said exactly how it would lower tax rates, but it hasn't said how it would make up for the lost revenue by eliminating specific deductions and loopholes. Paul Ryan famously told Fox News' Chris Wallace that he couldn't give him the details of the ticket's tax plan, because "It would take me too long to go through all of the math."

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Elspeth Reeve