WHO'S NEW DEMO PACESETTER? A MASS. GREEK TALKING SENSE

"If there had been a back door at the Alamo, there would have been no heroes there."

Anonymous

* * * * *

Join me for a little contest. Who is the speaker responsible for the following quotes? Is it former Sen. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and author of "The Conscience of a Conservative"? Or Ronald Reagan? How about Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp? Or is it Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas? Or Rush Limbaugh?

Consider:

"Democrats love employment. It's employers they can't stand."

Or this one: "The instinct of the Democratic Party is to be anti-business, class-warfare, and protectionist. That is economic death."

Or this one: "Democrats think of government like an automatic-teller machine. You go and take money out, and don't worry how it got there."

The answer, of course, is none of the above. The man who spoke those lines is the new frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.

He's a former liberal Democratic senator from Massachusetts named Paul Tsongas. That's right: a Greek from Massachusetts is once again leading his party's presidential preference contest, only this time he talks a lot more sense than the one who vaulted to the front four years ago.

Tsongas also offered this pithy observation on his party's tendency to want to redistribute wealth, with no thought given to its creation:

"You can't redistribute wealth you haven't created. My definition of a liberal is someone who can expand the economic pie."

Tsongas takes care to avoid all the class-envy and class-warfare rhetoric so common among Democratic politicians such as Missouri's Dick Gephardt. He has taken the Gephardts of his party straight-on on their enthusiasm for protectionism and retaliation in international trade.

Tsongas argues strenuously for a lower capital gains tax as the way to a more prosperous economy. He knows what Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and so many others know: the only way you can create more employees is to create more employers. And the only way to do that is to create incentives to work, save and invest in new enterprises. And that means a cut in the rate of tax on capital gains the tax you pay when you sell an asset you own that has appreciated in value over time.

And this is the very crucial tax cut President Bush has been asking Congress for since 1989 the one that Dick Gephardt and Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell have blocked.

Nor is the good sense Tsongas is talking limited to tax and economic policy. Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey is a rival to Tsongas for the presidential nomination. Sen. Kerrey is pushing a national health insurance plan, on the apparent theory that the folks who run the Pentagon and the Post Office should be in charge of our health care. Concerning Sen. Kerrey's plan for socialized medicine, Tsongas offers the following zinger:

"The question is, do you believe government and efficiency belong in the same sentence? Because if you do, we have counseling outside."

Bingo. The question then becomes, can anyone talking such unvarnished good sense win the Democratic presidential nomination?

That one remains an open question. It's interesting to watch the panic-stricken reponse of the Washington Democratic establishment to the evident preference of the voters of New Hampshire for a Tsongas candidacy.

These Democratic leaders the ones who've lost five of the last six presidential elections are certain that no Greek with a funny name can win the White House. They're ready to trot out a "proven heavyweight" a man like Dick Gephardt last heard from on the national scene as his presidential campaign guttered out four years ago amid a fog of hoary cliches about class hatred and trade protectionism. Just what we need: a Gephardt candidacy, to explain to Americans how shutting down international trade and keeping taxes high are the path to prosperity.

The Democrats, of course, would be miles ahead with another Greek with a funny name from Massachusetts. Name of Tsongas.