Donald Trump's tax gaffe is actually just Republican orthodoxy

The moments we remember from presidential debates tend to be the ones that provide a vivid illustration of what we already believe about the candidate who is screwing up: Dan Quayle caught in the headlights at "You're no Jack Kennedy;" George H.W. Bush struggling to answer a question about how the national debt affected him personally; his son W. not being able to think of a single mistake he had made in four years; Al Gore acting condescending by sighing; and so on. We got another moment we'll remember for some time earlier this week, when Hillary Clinton suggested that Donald Trump is hiding his tax returns because he pays no federal taxes, and Trump interrupted to say, "That makes me smart."

Trump tried to spin it afterward, and in doing so made clear that while he wishes he hadn't implied that he actually pays no taxes, he still thinks paying no taxes would be an admirable qualification for the presidency. "I never said I didn't pay taxes," Trump told Bill O'Reilly later. "I said, 'Well, that would make me smart,' because tax is a big payment. But a lot of people say, 'That's the kind of thinking that I want running this nation.'"

If you think that perspective is unique to Trump, you'd be wrong. In fact, four years ago Mitt Romney said much the same thing. When he was criticized for the fact that he took advantage of every tax break and loophole his accountants could find to minimize his bill, Romney said, "I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes." Trump and Romney are different in many ways, but they share this philosophy: If you don't do everything you can to pay as little as you can, then you're nothing but a sucker. And we wouldn't want a sucker to be president, would we?

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In fact, there's almost nothing more important to Donald Trump than making sure everyone knows he's no sucker — everything he does is a zero-sum competition, and if you're not taking advantage of the other guy, you're the one being taken. But in letting everyone know that he's getting the better of the government, he not only handed Clinton something she can use in an ad, he made the liberals' argument about taxes for them.

Trump may well pay nothing, or at least next to nothing, in taxes — the real estate industry has carved out for itself a unique zone of immunity in our tax code where it's possible to amass millions or billions in wealth with only the gentlest of intrusions from Uncle Sam — but chances are we'll never know for sure. What we do know is that like other Republicans, Trump has a philosophy on taxes that begins with reasonably popular principles, but is manifest in particular policies that most Americans find grossly unfair. And when you see how they actually apply to any particular rich person, voters tend to be positively repulsed.

At the broadest level, the conservative argument is that taxes should be as low as possible. It has a natural appeal, because who wouldn't like paying less in taxes? It's when things get specific that they run into problems. When you start cutting taxes you have to make choices, about who gets the cuts and what kind of government services you have to cut in response if you have less money to work with. When they make those choices, they reveal their true priorities, which is why just about every Republican tax plan begins with huge cuts for the wealthy (Trump's plan is no exception). So it's there that the liberal argument becomes much more popular. The point, liberals say, isn't whether taxes are low or high, it's fairness. It's who's paying more and who's paying less.

Though you might not realize it, most Americans aren't all that upset with the amount of taxes they pay. In fact, polling consistently shows that a majority say that they pay about the right amount. But they do say that the wealthy don't pay enough. For instance, in this Pew poll from last year, only 27 percent said they were bothered a lot by the amount they had to pay in taxes, but 61 percent said they were bothered a lot by the wealthy not paying their fair share. Similarly, Gallup polls have for decades shown at least six in 10 Americans saying the wealthy are paying too little.

The idea of fairness is a thematic undercurrent in public opinion about all kinds of domestic issues, even when we seldom talk about it explicitly. It's why even many people who take advantage of government programs simultaneously think poorly of the safety net, because they're convinced that while they deserve what they get, other people are taking advantage of the system to receive benefits they don't deserve. And it's why, when they see a guy who never hesitates to remind you how rich he is bragging about not paying taxes, they aren't likely to react well. They understand that getting out of paying taxes isn't something smart people do, it's something rich people do.

You might do the same thing as Donald Trump or Mitt Romney if you could afford to hire lawyers and accountants who could carefully organize your assets to escape the clutches of the IRS. But most of us can't. And we understand that even if we don't jump for joy every April 15, and even if we don't like many of the things the government does with our money, it's an inescapable fact of life. "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society," reads the inscription carved onto the face the IRS building in Washington (it comes from Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes), and even if most voters might not put it in quite such lofty terms, they're on board with the basic idea.

It isn't a question of whether we're going to have taxes. The question is who's going to pay them. Donald Trump says: anybody but me. That makes his feelings all too clear.