Okay, so it wasn't quite as sexy as the Weather Underground question, but Charlie Gibson certainly got a doozy of an answer from Obama last night, on, yes, a tax question. James Pethokoukis reports on USNews.com:

In the YouTube moment of the debate, co-moderator Charlie Gibson of ABC News asked Obama twice why he wanted to raise capital-gains taxes since such a move would both 1) hit the middle class and 2) produce less government revenue. Obama--who didn't seem to know that middle-class people pay capital-gains taxes, since he had just moments earlier promised not to raise taxes on people making under the $200,000-to-$250,000 range--gave this answer:

"Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness...[And as to higher rates bringing in less revenue], well, that might happen or it might not. It depends on what's happening on Wall Street and how business is going... ...And if we can stabilize that market and we can get credit flowing again, then I think we'll see stocks do well, and once again I think we can generate the revenue that we need to run this government and hopefully to pay down some of this debt."

OK, let me get this straight: Obama thinks we may be heading into a near depression, and he wants to double a tax that might or might not, as he sees it, have a negative effect on economic activity, all for the sake of "fairness." Now that is a man of principle.

Yowza. John McCain might not feel so bad about "not understanding economics" now. Expect this to come up again if Obama becomes the Democratic candidate.