Economic Policy

We are now into the tarmac phase of the presidential campaign -- when all subtlety and most thought is sacrificed on ** the altar of the 10-second television sound bite. Unfortunately, this happens even when politicians start out with the good intention of trying to deal with real problems of real people.Take the middle-class tax cut. This issue has been of central importance to both the Democratic and Republican campaigns. And yet, in the course of the campaign, the initial rationale for a middle-class tax cut has been lost.

WHEN scientists' models of reality stop working, first they check their math.Then they check reality.Astronomer Percival Lowell deduced the existence of Pluto by observing the crooked orbit of Neptune. A similarly small anomaly, this one in the economic universe, may be telling us something equally portentous about the country's future.The unexplained phenomenon is a bulge in federal tax collections.The theoretical, unseen object behind it is economic growth -- growth that surpasses the official figures, growth that is beyond statisticians' telescopes.

NEW YORK -- As the campaign leading to next year's elections intensifies, the Republican Party finds itself deprived of a crucial weapon -- economic policy.This is unprecedented in recent U.S. history, as the economy has been the Republicans' strong suit, and they have usually been able to best the Democrats on the issue of fiscal management.This situation is all the more extraordinary because conservative economists should find plenty to criticize in the Clinton economic boom.In the early 1990s, the Demo-crats appropriated many key ideas previously advocated by conservatives: fiscal discipline, low taxes, reduced regulatory oversight, individual choice and small government.

IN YEARS to come, it is a certainty that Democrats will be forever crowing that one of their guys was in the White House during two terms of unprecedented economic boom in the 1990s. Conversely, Republicans will dismissively assert that this former occupant of the executive mansion merely had the dumb luck to take office when the nation's economy went on a record-breaking run. However posterity may come to view this debate, history will not be able to deny Bill Clinton one significant credit for the economy's performance -- he didn't mess it up. In fact, the main components of the Clinton administration's economic policy -- trust in Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's interest rate massage therapy, promotion of free trade and expanded global markets and using growing tax revenues to achieve the first balanced budget in decades -- were just the right accompaniment for a white-hot stock market.

THE administration and its pro-NAFTA allies have been predicting a major foreign policy disaster if NAFTA is voted down. This is foolish in two respects. First, it is unconvincing as a strategy for winning support. And second, the sponsors risk setting up a self-fulfilling prophesy of exaggerated humiliation should NAFTA lose.Here is a sampler of recent pro-NAFTA hyperbole:The New Republic for Oct. 11 included four pro-NAFTA pieces, opening with an overheated editorial on the magazine's cover: "As much as any event since the communist collapse, the vote on NAFTA could define America's post-Cold War identity.

DID PRESIDENT Bush lie to the American people in his State of the Union address when he said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"? Technically, no. Why? Because "the statement that he made was indeed accurate," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 13. "The British government did say that." Ms. Rice speaks the literal truth, just as her boss does, to distort what is meaningful. Outright lying is not the administration's modus operandi; willful deception is. Like the bank robber who leaves a distinctive mark at the scene of the crime, Mr. Bush's statement on Iraq shows his telltale MO. Moreover, duping the nation into war is only one case of the pattern of calculated deception that has gone on since the outset of his administration.

NEW YORK -- With the recession and a presidential campaign placing an extraordinary emphasis on economic policy, Wall Street Week, a Maryland Public Television production, will feature tonight two of the nation's most prominent economic gurus, Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson.Don't expect either to deliver a rousing new blueprint to quickly reinvigorate the nation, however.Indeed, while candidates and Congress are spewing forth one proposal after another stuffed with tax cuts and special incentives, these two men, heavyweight presidential advisers for the past three decades (as well as academically revered economic theoreticians)

BOSTON - Bored and sitting in a folding chair in a gymnasium at Roxbury Community College, seven miles from Boston's FleetCenter, Job Corps member Lashonda Jackson can't muster excitement for John Kerry. The 18-year-old hasn't registered to vote and - despite the best efforts of Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, leading a panel of political experts in the front of the room who weigh in on the urgency of black voters going to the polls on Nov. 2 - she remains ambivalent about taking part in this year's elections.

WASHINGTON -- Ross Perot may not be the only candidate to have recently vanished from the presidential radar screen. Voters haven't seen much lately of the smooth-talking, slippery fellow they first got to know as Slick Willie.In his place on the campaign trail has been a warm, likable guy who walks hand-in-hand with his wife, rides a bus around America's white picket fences, talks about his meager, small-town beginnings -- and caused Democrats to wonder if, for the first time since the mid-70s, one of their own might actually make it to the White House.

The U.S. Senate recently passed a bill that would allow states to require Internet retailers to collect sales taxes on behalf of local governments. This bill has flaws, but they could be fixed in the House. It should be passed. I don't like the idea of the state and local governments collecting more taxes - they know no limits to their capacity to tax and squander our hard-earned dollars - but the current situation is unfair and bad economic policy. (Also, Marylanders stand to gain from this legislation in another way, because of a state law that will reduce future increases in gasoline taxes if taxing Internet sales is allowed.)