THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610190030
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: 65 lines
Herbert Stein, a thoughtful man who served as an adviser on economics to Presidents Nixon and Ford, doesn't like Bob Dole's promised tax cut. He's like most economists in that regard, if polls are any indication, and like most voters who seem to feel either that taxes won't be cut, or shouldn't be. The overriding need, says Stein in The New Republic, is to end deficits, reduce debt and shore up Medicare and Social Security before baby-boomers retire. Tax cuts don't compute when spending exceeds revenues.
But if Stein doesn't like his party's fiscal nostrums, he does like Bob Dole and plans to vote for him. A President Dole, Stein thinks, wouldn't make the ``silly mistakes'' rooted in the ``naivete and conceit'' that have plagued Bill Clinton. Stein sees virtue in Dole's experience and talent at compromising opposing views, while regarding Clinton as injudicious.
Stein's case has some appeal because Clinton, indeed, has oversubscribed the one-term quota of silliness, a prime exhibit being the waste and witlessness of his health-care initiative. His period of on-the-job training, both as chief executive and political leader, was extensive. At midterm he was on the ropes.
That Dole would do better is a fair inference for Stein to draw from Dole's legislative career. He is a careful and serious man not much taken by ideologies - or ideologues - including the tax-cut ideology he now professes and the religionists-in-politics on whom he bestows an occasional drive-by embrace.
Dole as a Senate leader looked for results. Knowing the score, being dependable and winning trust were essential traits. But now he is in a new role as head of a party and a campaign. It is an executive role requiring policy decisions, and the stamp of personal leadership. Stein doesn't assay Dole's performance, but some points deserve review.
First off, Dole went for tax cuts and undercut his credibility as a tough and consistent foe of deficit spending. What it takes to cut taxes and balance the budget is will, Dole emphasized, and he has the will. Money's much better, though; not even the true-believer testimony of Jack Kemp makes voters want to revisit Reaganomics. They owe $2.3 trillion on the last trip, plus annual interest of $151 billion.
Dole's choice of Kemp, who sold Reagan on tax cuts, was another executive decision. He said he wanted a No. 2 with congenial views ready, in a pinch, to be president. Neither criterion was met. Kemp has a good heart but is a compulsive talker who has his own problems with naivete and panaceas.
Before putting aside his pay-the-bills conservatism and his personal and political aversion to Kemp, Dole tried out the arts of compromise among party activists. He wanted to pitch a tent big enough for opposing views to come together. But with his ``tolerance'' plank in hand he beat a hasty retreat, yielding his asserted right as nominee to have some say about the party platform. Which fact reminds that seniority and position won the nomination for Dole rather than persuasion or personal popularity.
As it happens, neither presidential candidate seems to draw on broad or deep allegiances. Nothing new, of course, but still regrettable. After the election, one of them is going to have to break the bad news that the business at hand is cutting back rather than expanding government benefits. Dole won't be bundling children off to private schools, tax-paid tuition in hand, and Clinton won't be shielding Medicare from ``cuts.''
One way of thinking about the candidates is to ask which has the better chance of getting out of all those free-lunch promises and into the reality of hard choices.
Herbert Stein must be pleased to have answered the question and put it behind him. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB