Strange things get said during presidential debates. Some of them are mere
word-scramblings, such as Steve Forbes's "the stack is decked" and
"investment of menu options" last night. Others are conceptually peculiar,
such as Orrin Hatch's insistence that "[t]he antitrust laws are very
conservative laws" because "[t]hey're laws that try to make sure we even
up and make people equal." Ah yes, egalitarian leveling — that's always
been the essence of conservatism, hasn't it?
On the whole, though, the candidates gave illuminating responses to
intelligent questions. Supporters of each candidate had a reason to be
pleased with their guy's performance and to guffaw at the others'. George
W. Bush did just fine. He answered a question about the EPA's Tier Two
rules in a way that ought to put to rest the charge that he's an
"airhead," and he got off a pretty good line about his environmentalist
critics: "They're pollutin' my record." After speaking kindly of John
McCain, he smiled and said that he had no idea what compelled him to say
that. It was reminiscent of Bob Dole's endearing habit of letting the
audience know he understands the game he's part of. Bush rather neatly
defused the issue of raising the age for Social Security. He did not, on
the other hand, come off well from the question about his reading habits.
McCain was, as usual, politically erratic. One minute he's explaining the
importance of the new internet economy; the next, he's seconding Alan
Greenspan's old-economy fears of a stock-market bubble. Then there was his
answer to the bizarre question about how he would "fill the void" if HMOs
were to "disappear": "Obviously the HMOs need to be made whole," he said,
adding that health-care funding had been increased in the "emergency
supplemental bill." And, of course, he stuck to his campaign-finance
message, explaining that fixing the political process was a vital
prerequisite to all the reforms he isn't going to specify.
Forbes supporters can only cringe as the intellectual content of his
campaign evaporates. He spent most of the night ignoring ideology to make
a vacuous attack on "Washington politicians." Meanwhile, he pandered with
the best of them. He endorsed a passenger bill of rights — which would
create a federal entitlement to peanut-free zones on airplanes. He
demagogued Social Security, and got called on it by Bush. What's happened
to Forbes? There's a vacuum where his principles are supposed to be.
Forbes, in turn, was demagogued on Social Security by Gary Bauer. Bauer
maintained that the reason Social Security has a fiscal problem is that
politicians have been raiding the Social Security fund. He then blasted
Forbes's privatization plan because the money Forbes would have
individuals invest is the same money needed to pay current retirees. If
Bauer understands that Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, as he
must to make that attack on Forbes, how can he turn around and pretend
that there's a "trust fund" building up money against tomorrow's costs?
And why wouldn't Bauer's own plan to cut payroll taxes divert money from
current retirees too?
Of course George Bush was smirking. With an opposition this pathetic, who
wouldn't?
When Bush is done with his geography lessons, he may want to flip through
the
Federalist Papers. At his Reagan Library speech on November 19, Bush
quoted one of the founders: "We believe, with Alexander Hamilton, that the
'spirit of commerce' has a tendency to 'soften the manners of men.'"
Bush's point, that free trade helps avoid wars, is a valid one. But it
wasn't Hamilton's point.
The full quote from Federalist No. 6 is this: "The genius of republics
(say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the
manners of men and to extinguish those inflammable humours which have so
often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be
disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They
will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual
amity and concord."
Hamilton spends most of the rest of Federalist No. 6 attacking this view.
Here is a sampling: "Commerce has been for ages the predominant pursuit of
[England]. Few nations, nevertheless, have been more frequently engaged in
war. . . . The wars of [England and France] have in a great measure grown
out of commercial considerations." And so on.
The Bush campaign told us it had been notified of the error by an
academic. "We won't be using that quote again," says an aide.
