No straight talk on campaign trail
Here’s what we miss in the current presidential campaign: the Straight Talk Express. You remember it — the bus John McCain rode around the country in four years ago and Howard Dean imitated earlier this year. Oh, sure, it was a gimmick, but at least those candidates thought there was some merit in telling it like it is. Any hint of that candor is sorely absent from the current campaign.
To hear this year’s candidates discuss just about any issue facing the country, the solution is all gain and no pain, plus a good bit of pander. Take George W. Bush’s formula for bringing down the record-breaking $445 billion federal deficit, which he claims he will cut in half by 2007. How? Certainly not by raising taxes – he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. No, the president’s budget rosily predicts that economic growth will bring in more taxes
Then there’s the spending side of the equation, where the usual sleight of hand is going on. The president’s blueprint includes no spending for Afghanistan and Iraq after Sept. 30, a multibillion-dollar expense that will have to come from somewhere. When it comes to domestic spending, Bush, like all presidents, argues that Congress will have to make “tough choices.” But conservative Republicans point the finger at the president, decrying his increases in non-defense spending that are four times greater than those of Democratic presidents Carter and Clinton.
Social Security has the candidates of both parties essentially urging voters to clap if you believe in Tinkerbell. Bush is reviving his idea of allowing workers to place some of their payroll taxes into “personal investment accounts.” He celebrates the concept of ownership for retirement accounts, where workers could pass on their savings to their kids. But he neglects to say how he would make up for that money coming out of the Social Security trust fund.
John Kerry, on the other hand, basically says, “Social Security, no problem.” Promising never to cut a benefit or raise the retirement age, he tells senior citizens that the program would be just fine if the good jobs that have been outsourced to other countries come home. Forget that those jobs aren’t coming back, or that baby boomers will soon start retiring without enough money coming into the system to support them.
Kerry’s energy policy is equally disingenuous. One of his biggest applause lines on the campaign trail, “No American in uniform should ever be held hostage to American dependence on oil in the Middle East,” sounds great. But what does the senator from Massachusetts plan to do about it? Drill for oil in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Certainly not. Take away everyone’s SUVs? Not that either: “You want to drive a great big SUV? Terrific,” the Democratic candidate recently said, “That’s America.” True, but it’s also one of the main reasons we’re so dependent on foreign oil. (Kerry said he and Edwards had both ordered new Ford hybrids that use an electric motor as well as a gas-powered one.)
So what is his plan? More money for corn-based ethanol (something Kerry voted against until he realized he’d be running in Iowa) and other farm-derived alternative fuels, and for clean-coal research. Did someone say West Virginia? Could the economies of the battleground states have played into the plan?
We know that campaign rhetoric is regularly overblown and that promises are more often made than kept. But it seems worse than usual this year. Will somebody bring back the Straight Talk Express, please?
Cokie and Steven Roberts are syndicated columnists.