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Among the Republicans, Dole boasts the strongest record of economic leadership. He helped shape the 1982 tax increase, a measure that stripped away the worst excesses of Reaganomics. He fought courageously for a sensible deficit-reduction package in 1985 before being abruptly undercut by the Reagan Administration. But his budget concerns are not always so high-minded: the interests of his Kansas constituents came first when he led the fight for the 1985 farm bill, an ill-conceived subsidy plan currently costing more than $29 billion a year. Dole's principal weakness is the flip side of his pragmatism: his reluctance to articulate a philosophy or grapple with any ideas that are larger than what is necessary for the next congressional compromise.
Jack Kemp, alone among presidential candidates, suffers from the opposite malady: too much abstract philosophy. His early supply-side zeal produced a global world view that included everything from a return to a modified gold standard to maverick notions of monetary policy. Kemp's earnest fascination with economic ideas is praiseworthy, and he displays considerable knowledge of the global side of the equation. But his ideological rigidity often leads to absurd results, such as his insistence, until recently, that the deficits are no big deal. Perhaps the low point for a serious contender came in last week's debate when Kemp declared his flat opposition to any budget accord with House Speaker Jim Wright. That was little more than mindless pandering to conservative firebrands, since the political arithmetic in Congress adds up to no Wright, no deal.
In his insistence on free-market purity, Pete du Pont is another economic ideologue. He displays the courage that only an underdog seems able to muster in calling for the phasing out of farm subsidies. But he has stubbornly avoided discussing any broad economic agenda, even after the market crash, preferring instead to turn every question into a chance to push such peripheral proposals as drug testing in schools. Alexander Haig, with his outspoken denunciations of the Reagan deficits and his sophisticated understanding of international economics, is the last link to the tradition of boardroom conservatism that was once the bulwark of the Republican Party. Pat Robertson's economic views, such as they are, consist mostly of warmed-over Reaganism that barely acknowledges the current economic peril.
The rhetorical excesses of Jesse Jackson aside, most of the Democratic contenders are guilty of timidity in the face of market turmoil. Their vague calls for leadership and ritual denunciations of the Reagan deficits are of scant value in these parlous times. The Democrats are awash in position papers, but these narrow proposals fail to add up to a macroeconomic vision larger than the sum of its parts.