ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130057
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
AT AN AGE when many a politician is content with elder-statesman status, the Republican candidate has sewn up his party's presidential nomination and intends to make a one-term wonder of the Democratic incumbent.
The contest for the GOP nod was hard-fought; the nominee-to-be's ideal running mate would help unify the party and broaden the ticket's attractiveness to the general electorate. He turns to a former congressman and Cabinet member, not in office at the moment, who is an energetic campaigner and promises to give the ticket a moderating image for the general election in November.
He does so, even though their policy differences have been sharp on the tax-cut issue that apparently will be a campaign centerpiece.
But enough about Ronald Reagan and George Bush in 1980. Let's talk about Bob Dole and Jack Kemp in 1996.
Despite some similiarities in the campaign dynamics of the vice-presidential selection - and Dole's own efforts to evoke the Gipper - 1996 is not 1980. Dole is not Reagan. And Kemp is not Bush.
More than most, Kemp's brand of Republicanism stresses a decently mended safety net for the poor. He supports affirmative action. He calls for revitalizing America's inner cities. But that in 1996 makes Kemp an iconoclast, not an establishmentarian moderate in the 1980 Bush mold.
This is only partly because the GOP itself has changed over the past 16 years, its center of gravity shifted rightward. It is also because Kemp's ideas so often seem at war with themselves.
The depth of Jack Kemp's compassion for the poor is unmistakable. Unfortunately, his faith in tax cuts runs even deeper. And when it comes time to make the spending cuts to pay for tax cuts, it's the poor who tend to take the hit.
Kemp has sidestepped the dilemma with a belief in the power of tax cuts to finance themselves, a cheery credo of classic supply-side economics that has the distinct disadvantage of having been discredited by experience. By contrast, Dole throughout his public career has insisted - wisely - that broad-based tax cuts must be accompanied by spending cuts if deficit disaster is to be averted.
On that point, 1996 is like 1980, only in reverse. Then, it was presidential nominee Reagan who advocated the notion of tax cuts as self-financing; Bush who had termed it "voodoo economics." Their differences were resolved in time-honored fashion: The No. 2 guy yields. Bush abandoned his critique. Reagan pushed through sweeping tax cuts; huge deficits ensued.
This year, Kemp is the Republicans' No. 2 guy. Ordinarily, his views wouldn't matter much. But in another difference from 1980, it's Dole who has changed his tune, proposing last week to cut taxes by more than $500 billion over the next six years.
The plan, say Dole's economic advisers, doesn't rely on the dreamy supply-side vision of tax cuts without spending cuts. But while the tax cuts are outlined in detail, the spending cuts remain unspecified. That, like Kemp's selection, advises caution on the point.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB