‘Reinvesting in People’ Will Cost You : Mondale Was Right: Democrats Do Stand for Higher Taxes

The national conventions of the two major political parties are more and more becoming conventions of journalists. There are about 13,000 media people in Atlanta this week. With the presidential nomination itself long since decided, they do not have much real news to report, but that doesn’t bother the journalists because the convention is an opportunity to meet with one another and with politicians at numerous functions.

In 1984 there were about 15,000 journalists in San Francisco for the Democratic convention. A fair number, myself included, spent much of the time inside the Railroad Lounge at the convention center availing themselves of the free refreshments provided by the railroad unions, and using C-SPAN TV monitors to keep a desultory eye on the speeches from the podium.

As anyone who watched television on Monday night can attest, the official convention proceedings are no longer terribly interesting.

It now looks as though the big news of the convention will be the display of unity and friendship by Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Jesse Jackson. I wonder if, in retrospect, this may not prove to have been a mistake from Dukakis’ point of view. Throughout the primary season he has clearly benefited by a Jackson positioned noisely to his left. With the Republicans to his right, Dukakis became the moderate in the middle. But a display of unity with Jackson will probably be perceived as a leftward shift by Dukakis. And indeed the philosophical differences between them are not all that great. Both seek to expand the role of government in everyday life--Jackson more candidly, and with greater speed.

The keynote speech by Ann Richards of Texas was surely not in the same league as was the performance of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in 1984. For one thing, she spent too much time on the defensive. “The Republican Administration treats us as if we were pieces of a puzzle that cannot fit together . . . no wonder we feel isolated and confused.” Not exactly stirring stuff. She continued in the cartoonists’ vein of dismissing Vice President George Bush with pitying ridicule. (“Poor George. He can’t help it.”) It will be interesting to see how this plays with the voters. Maybe it will be more effective than the hostility directed so futilely at Ronald Reagan in 1980 and ’84. Bush certainly invited contempt by saying that he would like to be remembered as the education President. But condescension may be no more effective than fury as an anti-Republican weapon.

The Democrats’ great weakness is that they lack conviction on the issues. Jimmy Carter’s appeal “for a decent planet on which to live” had a plaintive note, and his concerns about the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect failed to rally the troops. More seriously, there is an incoherence in the Democrats’ continued harping on the budget deficit. This used to be a Republican issue, remember, and it never got them anywhere. Are we to believe that Democrats now really have been transformed into fiscal conservatives?

Most of the voters probably realize by this time that there are only two ways to reduce a deficit: either by cutting spending or by raising taxes. The Democratic Party platform is filled with veiled appeals for more spending--although that word has now been eliminated in favor of such code phrases as reinvesting in people and increased access.

Furthermore, as a network anchorman informed us, two-thirds of the delegates now in Atlanta believe that the country needs a tax increase. Unlike Walter F. Mondale in 1984, Dukakis has taken care to remain non-committal concerning the tax issue, but prospective voters might be forgiven for thinking that if Democrats really believe that the deficit is as important as they say, there is only one way in which they plan to eliminate it: by raising taxes.

No one is saying it, but the Democrats are facing a new problem in Atlanta: how to raise the cash for new spending programs. In the ‘70s, inflation was the great revenue raiser, silently pushing people into higher tax brackets. But, with indexed brackets, that no longer works. And before Reagan, fiscally conservative Republicans could be relied on to raise taxes to balance budgets, to act as tax collectors for the welfare state. Now that no longer works. So Democrats must raise taxes on their own, thereby risking defeat.

Maybe Sen. Lloyd Bentsen or Dukakis or both will turn things around, but by mid-convention, for the first time in this election year, I was beginning to suspect that the Republicans will once again prevail in November.