A recurring theme in the mainstream press is that the presidential race doesn’t offer much of a choice. George W. Bush and Al Gore aren’t quite two peas in a pod, the story goes, but as candidates struggling to occupy the political center, they aren’t that far apart either. In truth, there’s some basis for this view. On health care, Bush has proposed an expensive program for the poor and uninsured that sounds like it came out of Bill Clinton’s playbook. On China, Bush insists he’d treat China as a competitor and not a partner, but the distinction is more rhetorical than real. On school reform, he’d use the power of the Education Department in Washington as unashamedly as Gore. And so on.
But there are overriding issues on which Bush and Gore, and the Bush and Gore administrations, would differ dramatically — so dramatically that this presidential race is truly important. Here are three such issues: Social Security, missile defense, the rule of law. The fate of all three will be decided by the outcome of the presidential election.
Start with Social Security. Bush has come to grips with the demographic reality that before long there will be as few as two workers generating payroll taxes to fund benefits for each retiree. Gore hasn’t. Instead, Gore has adopted the reactionary liberal stance that any change in Social Security will put the entire program at risk. Left unreformed, though, Social Security will soak up more and more of workers’ earnings as payroll taxes soar, and this will create economic and social havoc. Gore argues that this possibility is too far in the future to be of concern now. This pleases organized labor, which is leading the charge against Bush’s bold proposal to allow workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes in the stock market (or bond market). Labor leaders, of course, are desperate to prevent workers from achieving financial gains in ways not negotiated by them in union contracts.
Bush hasn’t spelled out the details of his reform plan and won’t before Election Day. But from the outline he’s presented, we know it’s both modest and a necessary first step to save Social Security. Current recipients and those nearing retirement won’t face benefit cuts. Meanwhile, workers now paying into the system will be able to invest perhaps 2 percent of their income, or roughly one-sixth of the 12.5 percent they fork over in payroll taxes. Given the stock market’s average gain of 7 percent over time, they would build up a retirement nest egg and reduce the amount they’d need later in Social Security benefits. By itself, this won’t save Social Security. But, especially if expanded beyond 2 percent, it would go a long way in that direction. And the point for 2000 is Bush would start in that direction. Gore wouldn’t.
The same is true with missile defense. The Clinton administration, including Gore, is considering deployment of a minimal missile defense system in Alaska, but only if the Russians agree to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty of 1972. This is likely to come to naught as the Russians are leery and Clinton, Gore, and the rest of the arms control crowd regard the ABM treaty, which was negotiated with the now-defunct Soviet Union, as sacrosanct. Even if the Russians go along, the Alaska site won’t provide much protection. Bush, on the other hand, has proposed to build a missile defense system that would protect against the realistic threats in the foreseeable future — rogue states like Iraq, countries with small nuclear arsenals such as China, crazies, terrorists, an accidental launch. At the same time, he would reduce the number of American missiles aimed at Russia. This would ease Russian fears if a Bush administration took the perfectly legal step of pulling out of the ABM treaty altogether.
What’s important to keep in mind is that an America with a missile defense system would also be better able to answer regional threats by the Saddam Husseins of the world. As Robert Kagan noted last week in the Washington Post, without such a defense system, a president would be fearful of challenging a belligerent move by a Saddam armed with nuclear missiles that could reach Europe and the United States. With a missile defense system in place, Saddam, and not the United States, would be deterred. As for China, it wants to deter American support for Taiwan. One way is by warning that Chinese missiles can reach Los Angeles. “The Chinese understand that a worried, vulnerable America is more likely to be pliant in negotiations over Taiwan’s future than a confident America,” Kagan notes. Again, the point for 2000 is that Bush promises real missile defense. Gore doesn’t.
Finally, the rule of law. If there’s a single compelling domestic reason for ousting the Clinton-Gore regime, it’s to clean up the sadly corrupted Justice Department. Virtually every week, there’s fresh evidence that Clinton has turned Justice into a personal legal defense team. Two weeks ago, it was testimony by two FBI agents that a top Justice official had argued in 1996 against an independent counsel to probe Clinton-Gore’s campaign finance abuses on the ground that Attorney General Janet Reno was under pressure, presumably from the White House, and might lose her job. Last week, we learned that the inspector general of the Defense Department found the Pentagon had violated the Privacy Act in revealing information about Linda Tripp, though Justice had kissed off any Privacy Act prosecution. This case involved exactly the kind of violation of privacy that sent Charles Colson to jail in Watergate. In the end, there’s only one way to uproot the corruption at Justice and that’s with a new administration from a different party.
There’s another crucial issue of the law, the makeup of the Supreme Court. The court is at a crossroads. On states’ rights and federalism, for example, it has made a number of important decisions in recent years, but only by 5-4 margins. Four justices recently accepted Congress’s ludicrous argument that an alleged rape in southwest Virginia involved “interstate commerce” and thus could be the subject of a civil suit in federal court. With one more justice on their side, they would have prevailed. One or two more justices would also be decisive when the court rules, as it surely will during the next few years, on school choice, same-sex marriage, racial preferences, religion in politics, and abortion rights.
Once more, the point is the difference between Bush and Gore. Bush has vowed to nominate one type of Supreme Court justice, Gore another. A Bush court would approve of school choice (including private and religious schools), refuse to create a right to same-sex marriage, minimize racial preferences, and expand the public role of religion. A Gore court would do the opposite. After four or eight years of a Gore-shaped Supreme Court and federal judiciary, American constitutional law would no longer bear any relationship to the Constitution.
Reforming Social Security, missile defense, and the rule of law — who says the stakes aren’t high on November 7?
Fred Barnes, for the Editors
