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Los Angeles
Times
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January 3, 2000, Monday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 5; National Desk
LENGTH: 1085 words
HEADLINE:
WASHINGTON OUTLOOK;
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE;
With Best of
Intentions, Candidates Still May Fail to Keep Their Promises;
Many
congressional liberals would probably oppose Bradley's idea of eliminating
Medicaid. . . . Republicans and moderate Democrats would bridle at the plan's
overall cost.
BYLINE: RONALD BROWNSTEIN, Ronald
Brownstein's column appears in this space every Monday
BODY:
If New Year's resolutions were easy to
keep, there wouldn't be so many weight-watcher ads in the newspaper every
Monday. Everyone may set out with the best intentions. It's just that making
promises is usually a lot less arduous than keeping them.
It's not that
different for presidential candidates. More than they are usually given credit
for, the ones who get to the White House do try to keep almost all the promises
they make along the way. But they can't always persuade the country and Congress
to go along.
The need to build a broad coalition for any major change is
often forgotten at this early stage of the presidential race. Indeed, the need
to court the party loyalists who dominate the voting in the primaries often
compels the contenders to make promises that are difficult to fulfill precisely
because they are so targeted toward one narrow slice of the political spectrum.
Much of what the major candidates are discussing this year--from George
W. Bush's plan for more state testing in education, to Al Gore's call for
expanding access to preschool--could have bipartisan appeal and a real shot at
implementation in 2001. But, as always, the candidates have also made their
share of pledges that promise political headaches down the road. In the spirit
of the doomed New Year's resolution to start reading Shakespeare instead of Tom
Clancy on the bus, here's an admittedly subjective list of seven promises from
presidential candidates that might be the toughest to keep--ranked roughly in
the order of difficulty.
1. Gays in the military: Like Gore and Bill
Bradley today, Bill Clinton in 1992 also pledged to let gays serve openly in the
military. Clinton didn't abandon the pledge; he just couldn't push it past
determined opposition in Congress and the military--nearly capsizing his
presidency in the process. Times have changed somewhat since, but almost
certainly not enough to reverse the result if Gore or Bradley tried again. No
Republican presidential candidate has endorsed open gay service, which suggests
the pressure Republican legislators would face to resist it.
2. The flat
tax: Admittedly, a Steve Forbes presidency committed to replacing the
progressive income tax with a single-rate flat tax does not look like an
especially high probability right now. But Sen. John McCain of Arizona says he'd
like to move toward a flat tax too. Here's a bet: a President McCain, after
taking the temperature in Congress, would move very modestly toward the idea.
Few if any Democrats want to abandon the principle that the rich should pay
higher income tax rates. And Republicans have grown more enthusiastic about
using the tax code to reward favored groups (parents with small children) and
activities (such as charitable giving). Put it together, and the flat tax looks
like a cause that is flat-lining.
3. Campaign finance reform: Gore,
Bradley and McCain would all have a genuine opportunity to ban unlimited
soft-money contributions to the national political parties; such a ban passed
the House this year and drew a majority of votes in the Senate (though not
enough to overcome a filibuster). But Bradley wants to go a huge step further by
creating a public financing system (like that used for the general election in
the presidential campaign) for congressional elections. That's asking incumbents
both to unilaterally surrender their fund-raising advantage and to open
themselves to charges of using taxpayer dollars to finance their own
reelections. Don't bet on many raising their hands to enlist in that crusade.
4. Licensing and registering handguns: Even with a grisly series of
shootings as the backdrop, the National Rifle Assn. has stymied a relatively
modest bill to impose background checks on purchases at gun shows. Licensing
handgun owners (Gore's idea) or registering handguns (Bradley's) cuts to the
primal NRA fear that government will catalog all gun owners so that it can
someday confiscate their weapons. Any such change would probably require years
of building support and even then would be an epic struggle because so few rural
and Southern Democrats could safely support such measures.
5. Minimum
wage: Bush has tried to thread a needle by saying he'd support a minimum wage
increase if states are allowed to opt out. Good luck. With the AFL-CIO
unwaveringly opposed (it would require them to fight 50 state battles instead of
one campaign at the national level), Bush would have a better chance of being
tapped for Mensa than attracting enough Democratic votes to break a Senate
filibuster.
6. Bradleycare: The basic structure of Bradley's plan to
provide coverage for the uninsured--giving people subsidies to purchase private
insurance--has considerable appeal to conservatives. But as now constructed, it
would probably face a squeeze of resistance from left and right. Like Gore, many
congressional liberals would probably oppose Bradley's idea of eliminating
Medicaid and sending off the poor to replicate its services in the private
market. Republicans and moderate Democrats would bridle at the plan's overall
cost. That might force a President Bradley to abandon his call for subsidies to
improve the coverage of low-income workers who already have insurance, and to
accept a cap on his prescription drug benefit for the elderly.
7.
Permanently banning Internet taxation: McCain has won applause (and opened
wallets) among the e-commerce set by proclaiming that the
Internet should remain forever free of sales
taxes. But the governors, understandably wondering how they will
replace the lost revenue if retail sales flee into cyberspace, aren't keen on
the idea. Given both parties' interest in slavishly courting the e-tycoons, a
ban isn't out of the question. But when was the last time the governors got
rolled on something they truly cared about?
Don't read the wrong lesson
into this list. It doesn't mean the next president and Congress can't accomplish
anything. It does mean they are most likely to approve ideas that can attract
support from both parties in what is almost certain to be a precariously divided
Congress. "Unless we have a cataclysmic change no one is foreseeing," says
Marshall Wittmann, director of congressional relations at the conservative
Heritage Foundation, "in order to make something happen, you have to have some
bipartisan support--that's the critical element."
*
See
current and past Brownstein columns on The Times' Web site at:
http://www.latimes.com/brownstein
GRAPHIC:
GRAPHIC-DRAWING: (no caption), JEFF DANZIGER / For The Times
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