The great earmarks debate of '08

Blake Hounshell, of Passport, the blog of Foreign Policy magazine, puts recent arguments over earmarks into context. John McCain and Barack Obama skirmished in their debate last week over the relative importance of earmarks within the overall budget, with McCain arguing that they represented all that was wrong with Washington and Obama suggesting the issue was somewhat important but overblown.

Courtesy of economist Mark Thoma, of the University of Oregon, Hounshell presents this graph, which illustrates earmark spending as a proportion of the federal budget.

Passport is a nonpartisan blog, but Hounshell concludes: "This is a fake issue, folks."

Granted, if a "bridge to nowhere" or a study of endangered bears are wastes of money, they're wastes of money, regardless of the size of that slice.

Foreign Policy, by the way, the feisty (and graphically flashier) Hertz to Foreign Affairs's Avis, has just been bought by the Washington Post Company. Susan Glasser, recently ousted by Post management from her job as national editor, allegedly because her reign caused newsroom morale to plummet, will be the new executive editor, serving under longtime editor in chief Moises Naim.

Glasser's ouster led her husband, the star reporter Peter Baker, to decamp for the Times.