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For all his Gatling-gun rhetoric about the Massachusetts Miracle, Dukakis does have more firsthand experience in managing an economy than any other candidate in either party. Required by his state constitution to produce a balanced budget, Dukakis has confronted the agonizing trade-offs that such a document requires. The picture Dukakis paints is impressive, until one also weighs his refusal to talk plausibly about the federal deficit. After paying lip service to the possibility of a tax hike, he quickly slides into insisting that up to $110 billion a year can be raised through aggressive tax enforcement. Tax economists contend this number is wildly exaggerated, but Dukakis uses it as a shield to avoid harder questions about budget and tax policy.
The report card is equally mixed on Richard Gephardt, a dedicated detail man who has spent the past two years talking bread and butter, doom or boom. His legislative credits are impressive: early advocacy of tax reform, hard work on the House Budget Committee, a key negotiator of the original Gramm-Rudman compromise. The downside is his authorship of the proposed Gephardt Amendment, which would allow a President to impose tariffs or other barriers against nations that run a persistent trade surplus with the U.S. Gephardt, backed by labor unions, denies that the measure is protectionist and argues it would simply give U.S. trade negotiators leverage to open foreign markets.
But the panic on Wall Street brings back memories of the disastrous Smoot- Hawley tariff, and many economists say Gephardt's amendment, if adopted, would spark a new trade war at a bad time. Reconciling Paul Simon's positions on the economy is like squaring the circle: he describes himself as a "pay- as-you- ) go Democrat," supports a balanced-budget amendment, and believes that a large-scale public-service jobs program could be paid for by cuts in the defense budget. His sincerity seems stronger than his arithmetic. Albert Gore has proved himself an innovative legislator in arms control and a number of esoteric fields, but not economics. His plan to restore economic confidence is built around such will-o'-the-wisp notions as securing greater cooperation from Japan and Europe. Jesse Jackson craves being taken seriously, but also wants to pay for ambitious social programs by slicing $75 billion (25%) out of the defense budget.
For all his political problems, Bruce Babbitt deserves plaudits for crafting an economic program that would equitably reduce the deficit without gutting social programs or defense -- and without resorting to flimflam and gimmickry. His secret: testing the American voters' tolerance for financial common sense and sacrifice. The centerpiece is the plausible notion that Government benefits should flow only to those who show financial need. To trim the deficit, he advocates taxing Social Security benefits and levying a $40 billion consumption tax, which would be reduced in case of a recession.
Of course, Babbitt is also a plodding speaker, an indifferent television performer, an ineffective fund raiser and, unless the auguries are all wrong, he will not win the Democratic nomination. Perhaps there is a moral in that somewhere, though not a very happy one.