THOMAS OLIPHANT

Bush, Gore Start Defining Themselves

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Staff, June 15, 1999

WASHINGTON - With any luck, the presidential campaign should now be able to proceed without the burden of two ridiculous propositions that have been disseminated by the political establishment:

1. Texas Governor George Bush has no views.

2. Vice President Al Gore doesn't exist except as an extension of President Clinton.

You'd never know it from the silly press coverage of Bush's first foray out of Austin, but in fact, the governor gave a self-portrayal in stump speech form that vividly put him on the Republican map and co-opted rivals in important areas.

And in Gore's case, the endless scouting reports about a dull-witted Clinton clone are about to clash with the reality as his own campaign formally begins this week. His campaign is making much more about the personal and family Gore. And in an interview, the vice president spoke as someone "with different priorities, different approaches, different interests" -- epitomized by the zeal he brings to the subject of education, especially for very young children.

But first, president-in-waiting Bush. In an interesting decision, he chose his first remarks to declare his support for cuts in marginal income tax rates and for the diversion of a portion of federal payroll taxes away from the Social Security trust fund to support new individualized retirement accounts.

Presidential politics aside, this is a remarkable development. It matters not at all that Bush isn't ready yet to say which of the rates he'd cut by how much. The real point is that he made the basic commitment, which is far more consequential than his awkward venture last week into special-interest land in vowing to veto income tax increases.

The reason it's consequential involves both the economy and Bush's self-identification as a "compassionate conservative." As Bob Dole discovered in 1996, tax cut proposals that are not specifically balanced by spending cuts come off in this era as both irresponsible and lacking credibility.

Dole's proposal of a 15 percent reduction across the board not only went nowhere for those reasons; in the end it probably backfired. One reason is that the hole left in the budget -- worth hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade -- could not be filled with anything less than an evisceration of federal domestic programs. And by not being willing to fill it, Dole was vulnerable to the charge that he was risking the economy's prosperity with a new round of federal debt and, therefore, interest rate increases.

The problem would only be compounded by any diversion of existing Social Security revenue into retirement accounts. The initial outlay to fund such a diversion (the standard proposal is 2 percentage points of the payroll tax) would be gigantic. And, in the end, the resulting program would not be Social Security as we know it.

In a general election, the economy is just about everything. When told of Bush's remarks, Gore's eyebrows arched. While avoiding direct comment on words he hadn't seen, he sounded just as he did in '96 debating Dole's running mate, Jack Kemp, in Florida.

"Risky tax schemes will drive our economy right back into debt all over again and threaten our prosperity," he said. And on Social Security, Gore said, "The key is to preserve the budget surplus until we are certain Social Security has been saved. And protecting it, and Medicare also, does not require threatening the standard of living of the elderly. Above all, the first thing it requires is that we keep the prosperity going."

Nonetheless, Bush's move is likely to help him in the Republican contest, getting a jump on Elizabeth Dole and partially co-opting Steve Forbes, Dan Quayle, and Lamar Alexander, who have been more specific and more radical.

His downright confrontational attitude toward the party's right wing was also significant. Bush was most explicit in denouncing protectionism and advocating "free trade" (take that, Pat Buchanan and Gary Bauer). But it should have been noted that in his maiden voyage he had nothing at all to say about stopping abortion, promoting school vouchers, restricting immigration, denouncing gun control, or attacking the supposedly immoral popular culture.

The best thing for the country that could come from a Bush nomination, won convincingly and early, would be his and the party's liberation from the right's vice-grip. Let's see if he stays independent.

Interestingly, the candidate I heard over the weekend who was most upset about a status quo was Gore. He spoke about "a crisis confronting the American family" involving work, health care, and education, creating what he called a "serious care deficit." He doesn't belabor the point about his total identification with the president's record and his deep involvement in it. Instead, turning to the future, he shows much greater zeal about a new set of issues.

It's too early to assume that either of these guys will be nominees 14 months hence. But it's not too early to argue that the standard descriptions of Bush and Gore are mostly wrong and that theirs would be a serious, consequential campaign.