Bush, Gore and the Economy
for The San Diego Union-Tribune (October 1, 2000)
By Dinesh and Dixie D'Souza

Bush’s ‘Prosperity With A Purpose’ Vs. Gore’s ‘Old Democrat’ Populist Themes

First it was Bush, leading by double-digits in the polls and looking invincible. Then Gore surged ahead, and some people said it was over. Now the latest polls show Bush again in front, albeit narrowly, and either man could win in November. The volatility of the polls, like the volatility of the stock market, shows that people are fundamentally confused about what’s going on beneath the surface. Who are these two men, and what are they like behind their public masks? Most important, what is at stake in the November election?

One reason people have difficulty making up their mind is that there is a squid-like cloud of rhetorical obfuscation coming out of both camps. To take a single recent example, Joseph Lieberman gave a stirring speech at the Democratic convention in which he recalled learning about the American dream by serving as an apprentice in his dad’s bakery. "Only in America," chanted Log Cabin Joe, as the rest of America watched with moist eyes. But after Lieberman’s speech, political commentator Ben Stein pointed out that having grown up in New Haven his family knew the Liebermans, and in fact they didn't have a bakery but a liquor store. Somehow that wouldn't have had the same resonance.

Despite the high level of rhetorical humbug, the two conventions were valuable in establishing what the two presidential candidates were not. Bush’s point, directed at conservatives, was that he was not his father; that while he was proud to be his father’s son, politically he was really a descendant of Ronald Reagan. At the same time, Bush was eager to show the rest of the country that he wasn't an extremist, and that the GOP was the party of W, not the party of Newt. Bush’s "compassionate conservatism" was a means of conveying these two messages in a single phrase, and it served its purpose.

Gore’s challenge was different: he had to prove that he was not Clinton, and that he was not an alien. The old Gore seemed wooden and not entirely human: he was like the mechanical toy soldier that walks into the wall and keeps marching. Moreover, he was inheriting Clinton’s reputation for corruption without possessing Clinton’s exculpatory charm. Gore used the convention to demonstrate that he could be a spontaneous guy, just like Clinton. At the same time, he was eager to prove that his amorous feelings—intense as they were—were solely directed at his wife. This was the message of Gore’s famous kiss: it showed the American people that Gore knew how to kiss, and also whom to kiss. (No interns and cigars were in sight.)

Prior to their speeches in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, both Bush and Gore had appeared slightly ridiculous. Bush had sounded both goofy and a little dumb; Gore seemed like a creature from another planet. But the conventions laid these stereotypes—Incurious George and Weird Al—largely to rest. Both men emerged from their speeches looking more serious and more presidential, and the stage was set for a confrontation between them.

The election debate has become a prosperity debate, which is gratifying to those of us who feared that it would become largely a gun debate or an abortion debate or a referendum on Clinton. Fortunately those issues have become peripheral to the big question, a question central to the American dream itself: namely, how can we use prosperity to better the human condition?

Bush’s answer is that we must have "prosperity with a purpose." Bush hasn't been too clear or specific about what this phrase actually means. What he seems to be saying is that getting rich is a good objective but it is not a sufficient objective. Rather, in Bush’s view, Americans should use their newfound prosperity to search for something higher, to enrich their souls, to heal their communities, to strengthen civic and social bonds. Bush sees the government playing a limited role; mainly he wants Americans to pursue happiness in the private sphere.

Bush’s proposal to allow people to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market is his boldest idea, and shows courage in taking on a previously taboo subject. Not surprisingly, Gore opposes the idea, and accuses Bush of imperiling Social Security for seniors. Gore also warns that given the volatility of the market, investing retirement money in stocks is a risky scheme.

But Bush’s proposal is directed less at the elderly, who can keep their current flow of benefits, than at young people. A diversified portfolio of stocks is only risky in the short run, not in the long run, in which markets always go up. Who can doubt that the Dow or the S&P 500 will be higher in 2025 than it is now? Bush is offering young people a chance to get decent returns on the money they set aside for retirement, rather than the zero percent return that the government’s Social Security scheme has traditionally offered.

Initially Gore countered Bush’s prosperity argument by insisting that American affluence should be directed to serve large, national objectives. Let’s pay off the debt. Let’s provide long-term funding for Social Security and Medicare. In short, let’s use the money to shore up the federal government as the protector and guarantor of American health and security. If Gore limited himself to saying this, he would be making the respectable argument that since the government has enjoyed an unexpected revenue surge, the money should be responsibly allocated to reducing debts and building a security buffer for the vulnerable.

But since his convention speech Gore has gone much further. What he now says is that we (meaning Clinton and Gore) have created this prosperity, we deserve the credit for it, greedy oil and drug companies are using their market power to exploit the public, and I, Al Gore, will stand up against these big, bad corporations on behalf of working families.

This is not only nonsense, but also dangerous nonsense. Gore, after all, no more deserves credit for the economic boom than he deserves credit for inventing the Internet. Entrepreneurs produced this prosperity, not career politicians like Clinton and Gore.

To the degree that politics created a framework in which the economy could flourish, the credit goes mainly to Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan whose policies were instrumental in ending the Cold War, lowering taxes, deregulating markets, and privatizing government assets. It was Reagan who celebrated the entrepreneur, not the bureaucrat, as the embodiment of American heroism and possibility. The end of socialism, the global embrace of capitalism, and policies of low taxes and free trade—these are the forces that have created an environment in which the technological revolution has been able to thrive and spread.

Gore seems not to know any of this. Worse, he doesn't know that he doesn't know. Rather, with self-righteous zeal, he wags his finger at us and lectures us on what the new economy means and where technology is taking us. To the uninformed, Gore sounds like Einstein. In truth, his knowledge is thin and shallow.

Recently Gore instructed a group of tech moguls about "Moore’s Law" which states that the computing power of a chip doubles every two years. Michael Dell casually commented that "it isn't a law, just an observation." Dell’s point was that there was no scientific necessity that computing power should double; it just so happened that it had over the past several years. Gore continued to insist that no, it was a law, it had been proven, and on and on he went until his guests, full of chagrin, changed the topic.

The danger of a self-righteous man who doesn't know what causes prosperity and thinks that he has caused it, is that this is a man who can easily wreck the engine of prosperity. Let’s not make the mistake of assuming that because government didn't create the economic boom, government is not in a position to destroy it. Stupid monetary policies, inept foreign policy that leads to a war, and policies that reduce entrepreneurial incentive and make an enemy of wealth creators: these are surefire ways to bring the economy to a halt and send the stock market into steep and lasting decline.

Gore assures us that he is a New Democrat who will preserve prosperity, but everything he has said over the past few weeks shows that he is an Old Democrat who has learned nothing over the past two decades. His is the rhetoric of class warfare; the emotions to which he appeals are fear and resentment. "Don't believe it," Gore’s allies whisper to the business community. They remind business people that Gore has taken huge amounts of money from big corporations. Gore, they confide, is just doing what is necessary to win in November.

So one possibility is that Gore is untrustworthy, a man who will say anything to get elected. If so, this is the real character issue: the last thing America needs is another unscrupulous demagogue in the White House. But the second, scarier possibility is that Gore really believes what he is saying, and is an authentic practitioner of the politics of fear and resentment. Whatever his intentions, if we elect him we will be handing him a mandate to launch a crusade against entrepreneurs and wealth creators, all in the name of "working families." (Don't entrepreneurs belong to "working families"?)

The real issue in the election thus comes down to: do you want to elect a man who wants to help the ordinary guy by demonizing the successful, who has declared war on the entrepreneurs and companies that are the very sources of our current prosperity? Is it worth risking the election of a self-righteous man who is so sure that he knows the correct way the golden eggs should be distributed that he ends up killing the goose?