HOW HE SEES IT Deception dominates Kerry's DNC address

By JAY AMBROSE
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Perhaps no sentences in John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention were more indicative of his willingness to play the role of know-nothing demagogue than the ones that said, "As president, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits."
What will he do then? Let the crisis arrive so that this one program will flatten the federal budget, thus necessitating either a drastic cut in benefits, a drastic hike in taxes, unaffordable deficits or some dreadful combination of all three?
If after 19 years in the Senate, Kerry has not yet learned that baby boomers will start retiring in large numbers before the decade is out and that Social Security will thus be put in awful jeopardy, he has been snoozing on the job.
And if he does not know that individual retirement accounts (or what he calls privatizing) are a means of helping to rescue Social Security without threat to recipients, he has either been looking in the other direction or is far short of how he described himself in his speech, as someone who sees complexities.
Successful examples
Versions of private accounts have been tried by both right-leaning and left-leaning governments around the world -- England, Australia, Sweden, in much of South America -- with success. Washington think tanks have run the numbers and shown how such a system can work here. One of the foremost experts on Social Security in the United States -- Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- came to favor the idea before his death. It does not require Moynihan's brilliance, though, to understand that allowing workers to invest a portion of payroll tax dollars can produce an immensely helpful revenue stream.
What was particularly contemptible in Kerry's speech was that he preceded his declaration of irresponsibility by first saying he subscribed to the commandment requiring us to honor our fathers and mothers. The implication was that privatizing would hurt our elderly parents. No one in fact is proposing any change affecting present recipients. As for eventually cutting benefits, the need to do so increases if the government does not adopt a private account system.
More deceptive talk
Other instances in the speech of deception:
U Kerry pledged to crack down on "outsourcing" of jobs. Do that and you will soon find that more jobs come here from abroad than go abroad from here. His position is a cheap-shot way of getting votes from people who understand less than he does.
U He wants to let Medicare "negotiate lower drug prices for seniors." This would be a form of price controls because the government would be a big enough customer to dictate prices. Price controls inevitably lead to shortages, as Kerry must know.
U He made it sound as if you can cut taxes and enlarge and launch major programs while cutting deficits in half. You can't. And the fact that he wants simultaneously to raise taxes on those making over $200,000 a year won't make up the difference.
U He accused Bush of misleading the nation into war in Iraq, as if he himself did not have access to intelligence reports before the war, as if he had not made public statements that went as far as anything Bush said about the need to corral Saddam Hussein and as if he had not voted to permit the war.
U He went on incessantly about his four months as skipper of a gunboat in the Vietnam War with scarcely a mention of his 19 years of voting against weapons systems as a member of the U.S. Senate.
Total candor is not the way of American politics or of politics anywhere. But think for a moment about Walter Mondale, who was interviewed on TV during this year's convention and was asked about the Democratic convention in 1984. That's when he was the party's candidate and said in his acceptance speech: "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."
Mondale said he was proud of his frankness. While I doubt honesty compelled him to be that unequivocal, and while I am not convinced there was a need to raise taxes, I also find the remark admirable -- and think Kerry could learn from him.
X Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers.