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Copyright 2000 The Omaha World-Herald Company  
Omaha World-Herald

November 5, 2000, Sunday SUNRISE EDITION

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 9b; Guest Column

LENGTH: 1209 words

HEADLINE: Bush's DUI Doesn't Excuse Gore

BYLINE: HAROLD W. ANDERSEN

SOURCE: WORLD-HERALD CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

BODY:
Some Democrats are trying to make a big 11th-hour issue out of the disclosure that George W. Bush a quarter of a century ago pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while under the influence of al-cohol.

Bush has publicly acknowledged that his past included occasions when he drank more than he should have. So, he has said publicly, he quit drinking 14 years ago, the day after his 40th birthday.

Some Democrats are saying that Bush should have disclosed his 25-year-old DUI guilty plea and that his failure to do so removes "character" as a campaign issue. The implication is that Bush supporters can no longer in good faith talk about Vice President Al Gore's credibility problem.

So character should no longer be a campaign issue? Let's talk about that.

Bush has said publicly that he realized he was drinking too much in his earlier years and stopped. On the other hand, there is no indication at all that Gore realizes that he deals entirely too much in exaggerations and untruths and certainly no indication that he intends to stop. (One explanation that has been offered in Gore's defense is that his compulsive personality drives him subconsciously to exaggerations and untruths - hardly a comforting explanation of a character trait.)

An example of what might be called Gore's failure to mend his ways surfaced last week when the Democratic nominee found a new way to misrepresent Bush's proposed across-the-board reduction in federal income tax rates.

After weeks of alleging that Bush's tax reduction plan is structured so as to make "the wealthiest 1 percent" its primary beneficiaries, coupled with repeated criticism of "big oil" and "big drug companies" and "big insurance companies," Gore had the hypocritical gall to charge that it is Bush, not Gore, who has injected "class warfare" into the campaign. Gore described the Bush plan as amounting to a redistribution of wealth that constitutes "class warfare on behalf of billionaires."

The facts, as Gore very well knows, are that the Bush plan would reduce tax rates for all federal income taxpayers but with top-income taxpayers receiving a smaller percentage reduction in rates than middle- and lower-income taxpayers. The result would be that higher-income taxpayers - Gore's "wealthiest 1 percent" - would wind up paying an increased proportionate share of the federal income tax burden.

When candidate Gore hits full stride, credibility goes out the window. For example, Gore said Bush's proposed elimination of the estate tax - an idea that has received considerable support from Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress - would give $ 25 billion a year to the wealthiest 3,000 families in America.

Some questions: How did Gore identify the 3,000 wealthiest families in America? Even if he had somehow identified the 3,000 wealthiest families, how would Gore know that these families' estate plans would produce $ 25 billion a year in savings if the estate tax were repealed? (Remember that a great many wealthy Americans leave the bulk of their estates to charities or family foundations that are not subject to estate taxes.)

If repeal
of the estate tax were to give the 3,000 "wealthiest" families $ 25 billion a year in tax benefits (Gore's language suggests that this would be an annual raid on the federal treasury), wouldn't it require an annual new cast of 3,000 wealthiest families headed by someone who died during that year?

Exaggeration or pure fiction or whatever, it's clearly another demonstration of the fact that credibility too often takes a beating when Al Gore takes off his coat and works to arouse crowds with his campaign rhetoric.

In its entirely predictable endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New York senatorial contest, The New York Times felt compelled to include this language:

"She has clearly been less than truthful in her comments to investigators     Her fondness for stonewalling in response to legitimate questions about financial or legislative matters contributed to the bad ethical reputation of the Clinton administration     We believe, however, that Mrs. Clinton is capable of growing beyond the ethical legacies of her Arkansas and White House years."

There's an interesting editorial page perspective: Send Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Senate so that there she can, among other things, serve a sort of apprenticeship in honesty.

Let's take another look at some important aspects of a proposed constitutional amendment on Tuesday's ballot in Nebraska: Amendment 3, proposed by the Legislature, would require that a proposal to amend the Nebraska Constitution, to become effective, would have to be approved by the voters at two elections rather than one.

We are told that the issue in question is the initiative process, whereby proposed amendments can be placed on the ballot by initiative petitions. (Note that I didn't say "citizen petitions." These days, the common route to the ballot via petitions is to hire professional circulators who come in from other states and have not the slightest interest in - and frequently not the slightest knowledge about - the issue they've been hired to bring to the ballot.)

The facts are that the two-election requirement in Amendment 3 would apply to all proposed constitutional amendments and predictably would affect many more amendments proposed by the Legislature than petition-proposed amendments. Consider the experience of the past two decades:

In elections from 1980 through 1998, 11 proposed constitutional amendments were brought to the ballot through petition campaigns. That is exactly one-fifth of the number of proposed amendments the Legislature placed before the voters in that period. Some of the Legislature's 55 proposals could be called "housekeeping" matters in regard to details of state government. But others dealt with such basic issues as taxation, local government mergers, pari-mutuel gambling, the writ of habeas corpus, equal protection under state law and a requirement that legislative committees hold open meetings.

One argument advanced against the two-election proposal is that it would keep voters from making prompt changes in the constitution if urgent need developed. Such a need could be addressed by the Legislature by opening the way for the corrective amendment to appear on the primary and general election ballots in the same year or by calling special elections as the constitution allows.

My nomination for the best laugh of the campaign:

Noting that "famed Democratic diva" Barbra Streisand was to appear on ABC's "20/20" telecast four days before the election, The Wall Street Journal said Republicans should not be concerned about what might reasonably be interpreted as an ABC effort to help Democratic candidates.

The Journal's conclusion: "Our view is that any time a network wants to put Barbra Streisand on talking about politics, the Republicans ought to consider it a soft-money contribution." The writer, retired publisher of The World-Herald, may be reached at P.O. Box 27347, Omaha, Neb., 68127. The telephone number is (402) 593-4553.



LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2000




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