POLITICAL DECEIT

The American electoral system would be much better off if Congress and the Missouri General Assembly would simply enact a very brief law stating:

"No candidate for public office in any jurisdiction shall utter, while seeking election, the following phrases, 'And if I am elected, I will vote to cut taxes' and/or 'If you will elect me, I will run the government like a business' and/or 'I will install a degree of common sense in government if I am elected.' Any candidate for any public office heard uttering any of these phrases shall automatically forfeit the right to be considered a sensible candidate and shall be ineligible to seek any other public office without first satisfactorily completing a remedial class in political science."

Enactment of such a law would go a long way in focusing the candidates and our election campaigns on issues that can be beneficial, since we have long since passed the point where any of the forbidden phrases mean anything, either to the candidates or those of us in the electorate. I was reminded of this the other day while reading Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's book, The Agenda, on the Clinton campaign and its subsequent denouement in the White House.

As voters may recall, the former governor of Arkansas launched his presidential campaign with the theme of revitalizing the U.S. economy, believing that one of the best ways to accomplish this was to promise a middle-class tax cut. Clinton's theory, not unlike that of his two Republican predecessors, was to cut taxes and stimulate both purchasing and investment.

The Arkansan differed only in respect to the beneficiaries of the cut, with Messrs. Reagan and Bush favoring the wealthy and Mr. Clinton adopting the more populist approach of favoring the middle class.

As Woodward makes clear in his book, the Democratic candidate soon discovered that any tax cut, at any level, would only make his job of reducing the deficit -- and sometime in the next century, the national debt -- virtually impossible were there to be any appreciable reduction in revenue. While he was still seeking to save his tax reduction issue, Clinton and his Ivy League economists toyed with various tax reduction figures that could be extended to mid-income Americans. By the time they had reached the $100-a-year figure, Clinton and his campaign cadre concluded it would be almost ludicrous to promise a tax reduction of no more than $100 spread over a 12-month period. The tax cut promise was soon forgotten by the candidate, although I'm certain millions of voters still remember it.

The tax cut promise wasn't responsible, in every sense of the word, not because taxpayers wouldn't welcome it but because it would be fiscally foolish, and because it ultimately served to weaken the new president's popularity when voters realized there would be no tax bonanza coming, despite all the promises.

It's time for voters and candidates alike to realize that if the budget deficit could be ended and the national debt reduced, the job would have been done long before now. About the only promise that is realistic -- and honest -- is that future large scale spending plans will be rejected and that a serious effort will be made to reduce federal spending. Promising this demands a requisite promise from the American taxpayer, namely that special interests will not oppose serious plans to cut expenses, trim virtually all existing programs and effect savings that impinge on so-called entitlements.

Rather than promise tax cuts, serious candidates should ask voters to support his or her economically sound efforts to reduce federal and state spending. This requires a degree of sacrifice only a small handful of candidates in either party is willing to ask during campaign periods. The agenda of candidates is unlike the agenda of the electorate, and while the latter may be more altruistic, the former is unfailingly the one that prevails.

The candidate's agenda is winning friends, influencing strangers and gaining votes in order to win the election. Voters who pretend they have the same agenda are simply deceiving themselves, since they have no personal investment in any candidate's future. It is difficult to blame a wannabe public official for trying to win votes. That wouldn't be a violation to my suggested law, since no one can blame someone investing his time, work and money in his own career.

What voters forget, however, is that campaigns are for their benefit, not the candidates. Voters have a right to expect, although seldom receive, a rational outline of the candidates' views, beliefs and plans. Since there is no law against willfully trying to deceive the electorate, isn't it about time we made it illegal and began insisting on the truth?

Jack Stapleton, who teaches a political science course on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University, is former editor of the (Kennett) Daily Dunklin Democrat. His column is distributed by the Missouri News and Editorial Service, Inc.