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Still, he is usually on the left. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gives his Senate record a rating of 80 out of 100; Mondale gets a 92, Glenn a 65. Like almost every other Democratic presidential candidate, Hart favors a cutoff of aid to El Salvador unless its leaders put a stop to quasiofficial political murder of civilians. Domestically, Hart says, "I see Government as a problem solver." For him that includes aggressive efforts by Washington to remedy racial and sexual inequities. He has even endorsed the problematic feminist principle of equal pay for comparable work.
Yet Hart's liberalism is not automatic. He is probably more of a "neoliberal." He respects the primacy of market forces and thinks business growth is generally a good thing. He voted against imposing a windfall-profits tax on newly discovered U.S. oil. Nuclear power, he believes, cannot be phased out until the next century, when conservation and "renewable energy technologies" might pick up the slack. Nor is he reflexively sympathetic to labor unions; they are skeptical of Hart but supported him in both his Senate races.
To shrink the budget deficit, Hart has said that social-welfare "entitlements" such as Medicare ($59.8 billion this year) and Medicaid ($20.8 billion) must be reduced. Typically, though, Hart does not advocate simply cutting back medical aid to the poor. He would change the way Government-subsidized medical care is delivered, emphasizing preventive medicine and expanding coverage for treatment at home. Indeed, Hart's fundamental "new idea" is that Washington policy debates too often turn into deadening arguments between fiscal generosity and fiscal frugality. To Hart, the more important question is how Government money is spent, not simply how much.
After nine years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hart is a specialist in military matters. He favors increasing the defense budget by 4% to 5% a year—roughly what Mondale or Glenn would spend. But Hart, who co-founded the Congressional Military Reform Caucus, offers a whole range of proposals for reshaping the military.
First he wants the U.S.
to redefine explicitly its global security interests, then to reckon exactly what weapons are necessary to defend those interests. Unlike Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who feels the U.S. needs highly sophisticated arms to keep up with the Soviets, Hart favors rugged and comparatively simple weapons.
He would build squadrons of nimble F-16 jet fighters instead of expensive, oversophisticated F-18s. He would beef up the Navy in particular, implementing his "maritime strategy" by procuring many small conventional carriers instead of the two $1.6 billion nuclear carriers now on order. He would spend more on unglamorous areas such as pay and supplies, less on vast strategic systems.
His foreign policy is cautious, probably less interventionist than his main rivals'. He called for the withdrawal of Marines from Beirut in September 1982, long before Mondale or Glenn did. He favored the deployment of U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe, but only reluctantly; NATO solidarity, he believes, is too much at stake to do otherwise.