Some commentators argue that red-baiting was used by John McCain, Republican presidential nominee in the 2008 presidential election, when he argued that Obama's improvised comments on wealth redistribution to Joe the Plumber was a promotion of "socialism". Journalist David Remnick, who wrote the biography "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama", countered that it should now be obvious that after one year in office Obama is a center-left president and the majority of his policies are in line with the center-left Democratic tradition. In July 2011, "The Fiscal Times" columnist Bruce Barlett argued that an honest examination of the Obama presidency must conclude that he has in fact been a moderately conservative Democrat and that it may take twenty years before Obama's basic conservatism is widely accepted. Similarly, author and columnist Chris Hedges argued that the Obama administration's policies are mostly right-wing.