What would a "discerning reader" who doesn't have CBO's current-law and alternative baselines:

engraved on their brain make of these two paragraphs? Such a discerning reader would note that:

• Jason Furman throws numbers around with facility and ease...
• What these numbers mean is unclear, but there sure are a lot of them...
• Jason Furman is not a neutral arbiter here: he is Barack Obama's economic policy director...
• Nevertheless, Mike Allen pushes Jason onstage and gives him the microphone: Mike does not offer an alternative rebuttal quote from some "fiscal conservative" "excited" about McCain's plans to balance the budget...

Such a "discerning reader" might reason as follows: "that Mike Allen gives Barack Obama's economic policy director a large, unrebutted, my-eyes-glaze-over two-paragraph quote reasonably high up in an article about McCain tells me that Allen wants me to think that the McCain campaign is bulls---ting me." And I do, in fact, think that that is how Mike Allen hopes his discerning readers will reason.

But how many "discerning readers" are there? How many of those who read Mike Allen's stuff have ears sensitive enough to pick up the message of this dog-whistle journalism? I guarantee you that McCain's spinmasters this morning are happy with Mike Allen's article--have probably boxed up and sent him a new pair of kneepads--because they think the number of readers who pick up the dog-whistle journalism is very small, and that the takeaway for the overwhelming number of eyeballs that see the article is the headline: "McCain promises to balance budget."

I should note that Jason Furman likes and respects Mike Allen. As Jason wrote me in an email back in 2005:

Mike Allen is a great reporter and a very smart guy. If anything, he's more willing to "make the call" than a lot of other reporters. For years I've been frustrated when budget reporters write "pox on your houses" stories. (Allen is) one of the rare exceptions...

From my perspective, the bar is low.

UPDATE: I am reminded that P. O'Neill had something smart to say about Mike Allen:

There is another defence of Allen, not specifically related to the econ stories. He broke the Schiavo Republican talking points story, and had to endure two week of getting trashed by Powerline, Michelle Malkin, and Mickey Kaus, and even when he was proven right they still trashed him. He managed to stick to his line but it's dissipating to be up against the War on Facts crowd all the time. Probably contributes to a bit of gun-shyness on other stories...

Here is the execrable Mickey Kaus trashing Allen, yet another reason that friends don't let friends read Slate:

Mickey Kaus: March 30, 2005: Blogging in Print: According to de facto MSM Damage Controller Howie Kurtz, WaPo's Mike Allen is apparently now admitting what has been obvious to everyone else who has followed the controversy over those alleged "GOP Talking Points": the Post's stories were not entirely "accurate and carefully worded" (Kurtz's words), nor is it true that Allen "stuck to what we knew to be true and did not call them talking points or a Republican memo." Instead, he let an early version of his story ship out containing the unsupported claim that the memo was "distributed to Republican senators by party leaders."... Obviously at some point Allen thought or assumed the memo was a GOP leadership document, and before he'd nailed that down he temporarily let his scooplust get the better of him. This is a perfectly forgivable mistake. At least I hope it is--I make it all the time. You get all excited thinking you have a great story and then when you think more about it you realize you have a not-quite-as-great story, so you go back and make it "carefully worded"!...

Here is Allen's final word on the Schiavo memo:

washingtonpost.com: Counsel to GOP Senator Wrote Memo On Schiavo: The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night. Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said. Martinez, the GOP's Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo.... The mystery of the memo's origin had roiled the Capitol, with Republicans accusing Democrats of concocting the document as a dirty trick, and Democrats accusing Republicans of trying to duck responsibility for exploiting the dying days of an incapacitated woman.... The document was provided to ABC News on March 18 and to The Post on March 19.... At the time, other Senate Republican aides claimed to be familiar with the memo but declined to discuss it on the record and gave no information about its origin...