THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 12, 1996 TAG: 9608120054
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 77 lines
Bob Dole and Jack Kemp charged Sunday afternoon from an excursion boat in San Diego as if they were taking a beachhead - a rousing start for the Republican campaign for the White House.
Usually, a presidential candidate introduces his running mate, the two embrace, and, after a few words, that's that for the day.
This time, Kemp, the former professional quarterback, was a fervent cheerleader who extolled his new boss as if he were nominating him on the spot.
Dole had shed his mystifying herky-jerky delivery and was once again forceful and smooth in what amounted to a preview of his acceptance speech Thursday night.
To the media talk that loquacious Kemp would be speaking out of turn, Kemp countered by saying to Dole, ``Bob, you're the quarterback and I'm the blocker and we're going all the way!''
Democrats scoff that one can't cut taxes without cutting the budget, but Kemp replied, ``They don't know Bob Dole and they don't know Jack Kemp either. Working with a pro-growth Republican Congress, Bob Dole has the will and Bob Dole can do it!''
An exuberant Kemp said the GOP team would ``build a zone of opportunity from sea to sea.'' It would also, he said, stretch a net through which nobody could fall and build a ladder of opportunity everybody could climb.
Kemp ended by quoting Lincoln, ``You can serve your party by serving your nation first.''
Dole, approaching the podium, began by growling, ``We're going to win one for the Gipper,'' thereby evoking Ronald Reagan.
In one afternoon the pair, let us hope, used enough sports analogies to fill the entire campaign.
``Everything before has been a warm-up day, a trial heat,'' Dole cried. ``Here in San Diego the real race begins. We're going to do what Bill Clinton's people say can't be done - balance the budget while cutting taxes.''
With a pro-growth Republican Congress, it's just a matter of presidential will, he said. ``If you have the will you do it, I have it and I will do it.''
People would pay 15 percent less federal taxes, ``That's not complicated,'' Dole said.
Now in many families, he said, one partner has to work full time to support the family and the other has to work full time to support the government.
What does he mean by his ambiguous pledge to end the IRS ``as we know it''?
Please, tell us more.
Today's beginning must have pleased House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
With brutal simplicity, Gingrich urged Saturday that Dole devote 80 percent of his campaign to talking about his proposed tax cut.
``And my advice to the Dole campaign is to make that speech in the morning and to make that speech at lunch and to make that speech in the evening.'' And run ads morning, noon and night ``until you've driven the point home so decisively that you have broken the back of the Clinton presidency.''
Just call him Gingrich Khan.
Amid the growing economy, people feel better off than they did four years ago, but they still feel uneasy about the future, Gingrich told the editors of The San Diego Union-Tribune.
For a cooler appraisal of Dole's tax proposal, I called Martha Phillips, executive director of the non-partisan Concord Coalition, founded by former senators Republican Warren Rudman and Democrat Paul Tsongas.
``It's one of those things that looks too good to be true, and it probably is,'' she said.
The nation needs to get in touch with the choice of balancing the budget and solving the problems of long-term entitlements, she said.
``To try to do both of those things and absorb a whopping tax cut just makes the job at hand probably impossibly difficult.''
A Republican herself, she is the wife of Kevin Phillips, the Republican seismologist who traces political tectonic shifts deep within the American population.
Meanwhile, a Newsweek poll last week showed that 70 percent considered Dole's economic plan political, and a majority was wary of trying to cut taxes and balance the budget.
Gingrich may get more than he wished, as often happens, and find that his GOP tandem is involved 100 percent in the budget-tax cut battle.
KEYWORDS: REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION 1996 by CNB