Bush's campaign of distortion

Author: Scot Lehigh

Published: October 8, 2004

IN THE FIRST presidential debate, George W. Bush asserted that he'll win reelection because he knows how to lead -- and but for an absent prefix, the president might have been revealing his closing-stretch strategy. To wit: to mislead undecided voters as they make up their minds

With John Kerry in hot pursuit as the campaign enters its final few weeks, the Bush campaign has essentially opened the van doors and started rolling burning barrels back at the Democratic nominee.

On Wednesday Bush unloaded on Kerry with a long speech that cast his foe as a tax-and-spend liberal ready to raise middle-class taxes, have the government take over healthcare, and retreat in Iraq.

Now, it remains an important challenge for Kerry to reassure the nation that despite his complicated stance on Iraq, he is tough and determined enough to keep the country safe against terror. Yet the notion that the administration should enjoy the benefit of national-security doubt has been rendered risible by the facts. Indeed, the tattered remnant of the administration's credibility was further shredded on the very day that Bush launched his latest broadside against Kerry.

Although the president insisted he was right to go to war with Iraq to keep Saddam from passing "weapons or materials or information" to terrorists, Charles Duelfer, chief US weapons inspector, told Congress that Iraq had had neither nuclear, chemical, nor biological weapons, nor concrete plans to produce them at the time of the invasion -- though the report did say Saddam intended to reconstitute his weapons program if the UN dropped its sanctions.

On the day of the second presidential debate, it's worth taking a moment to examine Bush's other charges and insinuations. Yes, Kerry has occasionally voted for higher taxes. But to arrive at his contention that the senator supported higher levies 98 times, Bush has counted every single tax increase included in omnibus bills and then tallied each of the many procedural votes any bill undergoes, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a well-respected referee of political combat.

To reprise a Bush line from the 2000 campaign, talk about your "fuzzy math."

Now, George W. Bush didn't explicitly charge that Kerry would raise middle-class taxes -- but he certainly worked hard to create that impression. After claiming that Kerry had opposed middle-class tax relief and "is proposing higher taxes on more than 900,000 small business owners," Bush added that though Kerry said his tax increase would only hit the rich, "the rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason -- to stick you with the tab."

Actually, what Kerry has called for is rolling back the Bush tax cut for families earning more than $200,000. But he has repeatedly stressed that he will keep the income tax breaks for those earning less.

Yes, some of those upper earners are small businessmen, but Bush's estimate of how many would be affected by restoring the old tax rates is exaggerated.

"If you narrow it down to people who actually have employees, the number is something like 470,000," says Len Burman, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

On healthcare, the president charged that Kerry's plan "would put bureaucrats in charge of dictating coverage, which could ration care and limit your choice of doctor," adding: "Senator Kerry's proposal would put us on the path to `Clinton-care.' "

"That is a joke," declares Jamieson. "Anyone who has paid any attention to healthcare policy knows the architects of Kerry's plan avoided every mistake the Clinton plan made. They worked to make sure it wasn't a government takeover or government run."

Indeed, the part of Kerry's program that would affect those who currently have health insurance works through incentives, not mandates. Companies wouldn't be forced to join -- but if they did, the government would assume 75 percent of their catastrophic costs, thereby lowering premiums for others in the risk pool.

Now, it's certainly true that upper earners carry much of the income-tax burden in America. But if Bush feels that retaining tax relief for them outweighs the value of using those dollars to help expand healthcare and lower premiums, he should make the case forthrightly, rather than blurring the issue.

So why, instead, is the president engaged in a campaign of blatant distortion?

Simple: George W. knows that running against a caricature of John Kerry gives him a better chance at a second term than embracing his own record. Or the truth. Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.