AN EDITORIAL: Back to the future On the domestic front

Published: October 7, 2004

DID YOU sense it, too? That wave of nostalgia when the moderator of Tuesday evening's big debate, Gwen Ifill, downshifted to domestic issues? It was almost a sci-fi, time-shift moment: Suddenly we were all back on September 10th, 2001, when every pol was a-twitter over school uniforms, globalization, HillaryCare . . . . Not that health care, the economy, education and all the pocketbook issues don't matter. Of course they do. But with memories of 9/11 still sharp and a war on, whether all of us know it or not, those issues don't have the same life-or-death feel to them the way they did in the old dot-com days. The New Paradigm has got old, but we're obliged to John Edwards for reminding us of those heady days.

It took us back, the way John Edwards sprang to life during this lick-and-promise portion of the debate. As if he'd time-traveled directly from the Nineties, along with his empathetic charisma. The senator from North Carolina and-all together now-Young Comer never sounded more clintonesque than when he told the personal story of Valerie Lakey, a young girl he represented after she was badly injured in a swimming pool. "John Kerry and I are always going to stand with the Valerie Lakeys of the world, not with the insurance companies!" That's straight out of the Clinton-Gore playbook-put a name to the issue, make it personal, and align The People against The Millionaires Around Their Swimming Pools. (Gosh, don't millionaires do anything besides sit around swimming pools? What ever happened to Roman orgies?) John Edwards may have arrived at this party about three years too late. He would have been an ideal candidate in a pre-9/11 world. If he didn't do all that well on issues of war and peace, the senator from North Carolina shone when questioned about the home front. He's clearly a quick study with a sharp mind, and a trial lawyer's ability to explain his case (but not over-explain it) to the jury, uh, the people.

Mostly, this classic young Southern pol brought to mind the now old New Democrats of the Clinton Era: tough on deficits, but not wholly opposed to tax cuts, and armed with all kinds of minutiae on education and health care that may or may not be accurate. It's really the anecdotes that move people, the more sentimental the better.

DICK CHENEY, on the other firmly clasped hand, looked the part of a grumpy dad, worn out from a day of putting out fires at the office, having to explain to Junior how he runs the business. When it comes to economic issues, nothing better sums up the Bush-Cheney position (or rather the Cheney-Bush position) than the vice president's straight-forward comment in that I've-only-got-a-minute way of his: The best way to create jobs in America is to make America the best place in the world to do business. And the way you do that is (a) decrease the tax burden, especially on small businesses and entrepreneurs; (b) discourage frivolous lawsuits and outlandish damage awards, both of which tend to make health insurance unaffordable; and (c) create a first-class public school system. In short, let American business do business and emphasize education, education, education.

Who could argue with that? John Edwards, naturally. As the No. 2 on the oppo party's ticket, that's his job. But what saddened was the way the senator seemed to disassociate education from job creation. As if you could have one without the other. Who does the senator think will be creating all those jobs in America in a few years? It'll be the kids who're now studying English and history and sharpening their curious minds-the young Michael Dells and Bill Gateses and Larry (Google) Pages. If we're fortunate (and energetic), jobs will be created in industries we can't even imagine now. So what America has to do is make sure this next generation of innovative thinkers isn't stifled at every turn by bureaucratic regulations, burdensome taxes, lick-and-apromise schools, and demagogic politicians.

THE JOHNS, Kerry and Edwards, do have a plan for the economy, and the Young Comer did a great job of explaining it clearly Tuesday night. He wants a smaller deficit, tax cuts for the middle class, and an end to the era of big government. (There's that nostalgic feeling again.) And at the top of the John-John Plan for Economic Growth is rolling back the tax cuts for those Americans who make more than $200,000 a year.

No muss, no fuss, no pain, lots of gain. Hey, who isn't for sticking it to the Greedy Rich, especially if it means a few more bucks for the little guy? The problem, as Dick Cheney was quick to spot, is that there are a lot of Little Guys in that $200,000-plus bracket. They're called small-businessmen. They're responsible for maybe two-thirds of the jobs created in this country, and they often file as individual taxpayers instead of corporations. So when you're hurting them, you're hurting all our chances for a better future. The vice president claimed some 900,000 small businesses would be hit by a Kerry tax increase. Which sounded like an exaggeration to us. So we took the vice president's advice and went to factcheck.org,where we found that Dick Cheney was using a very liberal definition of small business. He could be talking about a partner at a big law firm with a business deal on the side, not necessarily the guy who owns the local diner. So that 900,000 figure sounds as suspicious as John Edwards' claiming his running mate voted 600 times to cuttaxes. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center figures that John Kerry's proposed tax increase would hit "only" about 470,000 small businesses. Which would still be quite a blow to the economy. Conclusion: When politicians, Democratic or Republican, start throwing numbers around, Beware!

But one thing we don't need to factcheck.org is general economic philosophy. Bush-Cheney: hands more or less off. Kerry-Edwards: hands tightly on. You can't say the choice isn't clear, Gentle Voter.