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If the idea of presidential ignorance takes hold, the press and Congress will have a field day portraying Bush as a lightweight. Nonetheless, it could permit Bush to accommodate a "newly perceived reality" and then allow him to abandon his "no new taxes" promise. If so, the President will undoubtedly be glad to take a passing hit for having been misinformed. Bush survived Iran- contra, when reporters and adversaries were rooting around in his record to prove his complicity. He is even more likely to survive an Ignorance Sting, since most responsible Congressmen and economists have been hoping that he will somehow wake up and do "the right thing."
But how to proceed to the right thing? Last week's signals from Budget Director-designate Richard Darman were intriguing. At the outset, Darman seemed willing to raise new revenues if euphemisms like "definitional changes" and "user fees" could be substituted for the word tax. Then, in a yin-yang reminiscent of the early 1980s, when he helped craft Reagan's acceptance of revenue enhancements, Darman backed off, invoking the "duck test." No matter what a revenue raiser is called, he told Congress, if it looks like a tax and sounds like a tax, and people perceive it to be a tax, it is a tax -- and thus violates the President's pledge. Unless, he concluded cryptically, there are special circumstances.
A man who has worked with Darman for years calls him a "past master of the three-cushion shot. He'll always travel the more difficult route, in part because he likes the sport, in part because that road invariably leaves him the greatest number of options in the service of the ultimate objective."
It was no surprise, then, that a careful reading of Darman's statements (which also hinted at few, if any, dollars for the President's "kinder, gentler" programs) led some to conclude that he was allowing the Administration considerable wiggle room to raise taxes without using the dreaded T word. Watching Bush and Darman play out the game may become a full- time occupation. They could succeed. Congress is not eager to force legally mandated across-the-board budget cuts next fall. After posturing for partisan effect, the Hill may be more than willing to become a co-conspirator in permitting Bush to backtrack.
Yet a Bush "victory" in retreating from no new taxes would cheat the electorate of a fundamental choice. In a democracy, the central questions are who pays and who gets. How a government taxes depends on its rulers' political philosophy. Had new revenues been required in a Democratic Administration, Michael Dukakis would surely have opted for increasing income taxes. Bush and Darman have already indicated their preference for increasing the regressive sin taxes. Had Bush honestly said, as did Dukakis, that he would raise taxes only as a "last resort," the country might have had a genuine debate.