And that's just one of the problems with the wad of BS Bush's campaign is trying to bean Kerry with. Michael Kinsley does everyone a service by digging through the muck:

350 Tax Increases? by Michael Kinsley [Slate]

George the younger's first item asserts that "In 1995, Kerry Voted For [a] Resolution That Said Middle Class Tax Cuts Were Not Wise." This turns out to be a vote in the midst of that nearly forgotten frenzy, the Gingrich revolution. It was a vote against a particular tax cut of $700 billion, on a resolution declaring with almost tautological justice that subtracting $700 billion from revenue would make it harder to balance the budget. The resolution passed the Republican-controlled House and Senate, but a decade later the Republican president uses it to tar his Democratic opponent.

The documentation on the GOP Web site about Kerry's supposed 350 votes to increase taxes actually lists only 67 votes "for higher taxes." Most of these are votes against a tax cut, not in favor of a tax increase. The 67 include nine votes listed twice, three listed three times, and two listed four times... The only actual tax increase on Bush's list (counted twice, but hey...) is Kerry's support for Clinton's 1993 deficit-reduction plan. That's the one that raised rates in the top bracket and led to a decade of such fabulous prosperity that even [the tax increase's] most affluent victims ended up better off.

The best way to see the absurdity of saying that John Kerry voted for higher taxes 350 times is to apply Bush's madcap logic to Bush himself... in the four fiscal years 2002-2005, Bush has proposed 63 actual "revenue enhancers," as his father used to call them. This doesn't include, as Bush includes for Kerry, his opposition to any tax cuts (and there have been some, such as Democratic proposals to reduce the payroll tax). Nor does the list seem to include any "supply-side" revenue enhancement by magic or growth. These are actual proposals to take more money out of people's pockets and give it to the government.

At Bush's current rate of 16 "tax increases" a year, he'd have 320 under his belt if he could stay in the White House for 20 years... But isn't it unfair to call, for example, more efficient administration at the IRS a tax increase? And isn't it simply ridiculous to suggest that George W. Bush is more complacent about higher taxes than John Kerry? Yes, it's unfair. It's ridiculous. That's the point.

Bush and company have so few actual policy successes that every story they have to tell between now and the day they lose will necessarily be based mostly on bullshit. It's the press' (and the blogs') job to dig through it, sniff it, figure out what variety of crap it is, where it came from, and just how shameless it is, and announce the findings to the world.

Michael Kinsley is one of the few journalists actually doing his job. Thank you, sir.

Now, how about a Washington Post piece filling in the supporting details Kinsley left out? It was only a column-length piece, after all.