In Political Blame Game, Logic Is the Loser

Time for a political pop quiz:

Four years ago, the U.S. Senate passed President Clinton’s tax-raising, deficit-reducing economic plan on a cliffhanging vote of 51-50. The decisive vote was cast by a) Barbara Boxer b) Dianne Feinstein c) Bob Kerrey d) All of the above, or e) None of the above.

The correct response is . . . well, that depends. It seems the answer varies according to which state, or election cycle, you happen to be in.

Back in 1994, Republican challenger Michael Huffington said it was California Democrat Feinstein who cast the deciding vote. But now GOP Senate hopeful Darrell Issa says it was Boxer. He even points to the same one-vote margin that Huffington cited against Feinstein as proof.

In fact, Republican candidates across the country have suggested that no less than seven Democrats were responsible for casting the decisive vote for “the largest tax increase in history,” according to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The latter assertion, regarding the historical ranking of the $240-billion tax hike, also happens to be a matter of dispute.

It is true that not a single Republican in either the House or Senate backed Clinton’s economic package, the centerpiece of his first four years in office. After the House approved the plan on a 218-216 squeaker, Sen. Kerrey of Nebraska ended days of suspense by announcing he would be the 50th senator to support the president, ensuring enactment of the tax increase and spending cuts. Kerrey’s decision allowed Vice President Al Gore to cast the tiebreaking vote, sending the package to Clinton for his signature.

Thus, it could be said that Gore provided the decisive vote--and no doubt it will be if he runs for president in 2000 as widely expected.

Presented with these facts, half a dozen mathematicians and logicians were hard-pressed to comprehend, let alone explain, how seven senators (and counting) could have been responsible for casting the one determinant vote.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Ken Hoffman, retired head of the math department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Not everyone can have the decisive vote,” agreed Donald Saari, who teaches math at Northwestern University.

“It’s just common sense. You don’t need a PhD for this,” concurred Ingram Olkin, PhD, a Stanford professor of education and statistics.

But to Stuart Roy--who admitted taking college algebra five times--it is perfectly clear. Roy is a Washington spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which coaches GOP hopefuls nationwide.

“They’re all right,” Roy said of the seven Republicans who have leveled the decisive-vote accusation against their respective rivals. Roy noted that if any one of the Senate Democrats had voted differently, the tax package would have failed. Therefore, he concluded, each can be said to have cast the deciding vote.

Matt Cunningham, a spokesman for the Issa campaign, made the same assertion. “When the vote margin is that close,” he said, “then everybody really had the deciding vote.”

Which is perfect nonsense, according to Keith Devlin, dean of sciences at St. Mary’s College of California and an expert in the field of logic.

“It just doesn’t hold together according to the basic rules of logic,” Devlin said.

Since all votes were weighted equally and any one vote could have made the difference, it is wrong to say that a particular one of the 50 votes was any more decisive than any other, Devlin insisted.

It just may be one of those Mars-Venus things, where the elegantly empirical world of mathematics collides with the more elastically interpretive world of politics.

“There’s no point trying to hold political advertising to logical standards,” said UCLA’s Shanto Iyengar, an expert on the subject. “That is not the way it’s practiced.”

Or as James Beniger of the Annenberg School for Communication at USC said: “There’s nothing wrong with the logic. I just think it’s inappropriate for this situation.”

As for the magnitude of the 1993 Clinton tax increase, calling it the biggest in history is somewhat misleading. True, at $240 billion it was the largest in nominal dollar terms. But adjusted for inflation, the biggest tax hike of all time was the $214-billion package signed into law in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan.

But squabbling over that mathematical equation is an altogether different war of words.