CAMPAIGN PROMISES AND OTHER POLITICAL MYTHS

KENNETT, Mo. -- I expect by this time you have had it up to here with this year's presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and legislative campaigns and the multitude of candidates who would sell their mother's souls for a bloc of votes. Starting with the New Hampshire primary, which now seems like millenniums ago but was actually only nine months earlier, the nation has been following the candidate's discussions on what they, the wannabe presidents and congressman and governors, wanted to discuss.

By the time we had official approval of the two candidates by major parties, whose names we already know, the discussion of ersatz dilemmas facing our nation was in full swing, with the Republican nominee having covered them point by point in one primary state after another, while the Democratic nominee began discussing issues only when his principal opponent, a Missourian named Bill, brought them up.

Since the party conventions, however, the candidates have pretty much maintained the same agenda as they paraded themselves before crowds of gushing admirers who would sometimes applaud even when the candidate coughed. The agenda of both Gore and Bush has remained intact since late this summer, changing momentarily when the morning headlines were different.

It isn't difficult to detail what the candidates have been talking about and, presumably, which voters will study and digest and make their selections from the views of George and Al. Their list isn't complex because it's relatively brief: tax cuts, surplus spending, saving Social Security and Medicare, military strength and what Washington will do to solve what's wrong with our kids' schools. These are pretty much the subjects either of the two men has been willing to discuss at any length, which is not the same as saying with any degree of insight or extrasensory perception. By the time one is inaugurated, most of us won't remember what the new president promised he would do to resolve problems that now monopolize campaign dialogue.

Let's examine the candidates' issues just to refresh our memories and determine, finally, how relevant each is to those of us who constitute the great unwashed.

• Taxes. Both candidates agree they want to lower them. Of course they do. It's an issue right up there with motherhood and God and country. Neither of the candidates has admitted that, when it comes to taxes, about all that he can accomplish, once moving into the most powerful job in the world, is to respectfully ask a majority of both chambers of the U.S. Congress to give expectant taxpayers a break.

Whether one of them wants to slash the tax rate to 50 percent of its present level or just push it down by 5 or 10 percent is virtually irrelevant by the time we approach April 15, 2002. I haven't forgotten about 2001, but only if you believe in miracles do you believe that tax day next year, 2001, will see any change in how much you send Uncle Sam.

If the candidate's honeymoon is over and members of Congress are already beginning their ritualistic tribal dance against the Oval Office orders, you'll probably still be waiting for that promised tax cut when the presidential campaign is in full swing four years from now. If the economy stumbles, forget tax relief. You'll then get lower taxes because your paycheck will be smaller.

* Saving Social Security and Medicare is a biggie this campaign because we are allegedly going to enjoy a federal revenue surplus, which will be considerably below estimates if there is a tax cut or if the economy turns sour.

Since both candidates have discussed expanding Medicare, which is already the biggest single item in the federal budget, and since our population is aging faster and living longer than most actuaries believed possible, any expansion of these programs will be, by necessity, smaller than any candidate has been willing to mention in a voice loud enough that anyone could hear.

It will be at least two and a half decades before anyone in Washington will be motivated to bite the bullet and correct the almost certain shortfalls. If you believe a newly elected president is going to propose the highly unpopular steps required to correct Social Security's underfunding and jeopardize his chance for another term in the Oval Office, I have a few shares of the Brooklyn Bridge you might be interested in.

* As for military spending, if you believe the Russians are lying about their catastrophic economy and if you believe there are at least two people in the world who still believe the old Soviet Union is just pretending to have collapsed, then you're probably in favor of buying several billion dollars worth of new heavy bombers, and if you really believe there is substance to the hallucinations of the Yellow Peril, then you probably support billions more for armored tanks and heavy artillery.

The problem is that if you discuss these perils with too many people, you may find yourself the subject of a sanity hearing. We're spending billions and billions on arms, equipment and warfare trinkets that will never get out of the packages they're delivered in.

As for the rogue nations of the world, they are quite aware that one U.S. general can turn a switch and BAM! they're history.

* Education may be the biggest illusion of the year. Adding more teachers, building new classrooms, giving new tests, firing dingbat principals, making kids learn all part of today's political pap.

Schools belong to the communities they serve and the states that have principal responsibility. The feds may send extra billions to state capitols and command brighter students, which is what they're doing now, but none of this makes it so.

Most of us trust the dedicated teachers we know and the superintendents who have dedicated their lives to children. Better education starts in concerned communities, not political offices hundreds of miles away.

Election issues are not important just because politicians constantly talk about them, and answers are valid when they're not wrapped in campaign sound bites.

~Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.