B Y J A M E S C A R V I L L E
Desperately seeking Bob Dole complaining about here's a modern-day truth we hold to be self-evident: It's damn near impossible to knock off a sitting President when the economy is going strong. Believe me, that fact has not escaped Bob Dole. So what is Dole doing? The only thing he can: distort. He's got no choice but to spit into a gale-force wind of reality and say that the economy "is in the tank." I wish all my clients could put the economy in a tank like this. Barron's, the conservative business magazine, concluded in its August 12 issue that President Clinton's economic record is stronger than that of any administration in more than three decades. But why rely on Barron's to make this case? Hell, Bob Dole might try to say that the Barron's article is just another example of the "liberal media" trying to make him look bad. So let's turn the floor over to someone who has no incentive whatsoever to give the President the benefit of the doubt -- someone whom Bob Dole trusts like no one else: "It is also true, as some have said, that our economy is the strongest it's been in 30 years." Guess who made that grandiose claim? Bob Dole himself. He said it in an off-message moment, in Concord, New Hampshire, back in February. Americans agree with that assessment. The New York Times came out with a poll about a week ago that showed that seven out of ten Americans say the economy is in good shape. Seven out of ten! Three days before that, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found that the number of Americans satisfied with the way things are going has tripled since 1992. Bottom line: trying to convince America that the economy is in bad shape is an uphill battle. Here's a classic example of just how pathetic Bob Dole's battle has become. Not too long ago, Dole came up with a bizarre claim. He said that because of President Clinton's failed leadership, the economy had been so stunted that more than a million new jobs and billions of dollars in economic gains had been lost. Where did Dole get these shocking figures? He said they were from a "reliable study" put out by a conservative think tank called the Heritage Foundation. I decided to find out how reliable that study really was. It seems that Heritage based its study on a fancy model designed by outside consultants. Unfortunately for Dole, even these consultants, the respected firm of Lawrence Meyer & Associates, thought the Heritage study was a crock. The consultants were so ticked off with Heritage that they sent a note to all their other clients, saying, "We state unequivocally that we believe this work to be seriously flawed, having been produced through injudicious use of our model, against our advice, and over our objections." No mincing of words there. And here's another classic example of how Dole butchers other people's data. Two months ago, the Republicans ran attack ads claiming that "under Clinton, the American family now pays over $1,500 more in federal taxes." The stated source of this factoid, the Tax Foundation, went ballistic when they saw the ad. Why? Because the Republicans had conveniently forgotten to mention the real reason why the typical American family was paying more in taxes: because under President Clinton, the typical family was making a lot more money -- $6,260, to be precise. Folks, it doesn't get any more shameless than that. Basically, Bob Dole is down to only two lines of attack on the President's economic record: wages and growth. Let's look at wages first. On the stump, Dole always says that "wages have stagnated under Clinton." The implication here is that wages were growing before Clinton came to town. Not even close. In real terms, the average wage fell by 80 cents an hour during the dark days of Reagan and Bush. Did this depressing trend continue under President Clinton? No siree, Bob. America's workers have finally gotten a raise. Real hourly wages have increased in real terms. It's not nearly enough yet, but it's moving in the right direction. And just wait until the minimum wage increase kicks in next month. Ten million people will be getting a raise. Not only did Bob Dole fight the increase in the minimum wage; last year Dole voted to hike taxes on eight million working families struggling to get by. Bob Dole complaining about stagnant wages is like Marie Antoinette complaining about malnutrition. The other remaining line of attack is that our economic growth is anemic. Simply not true. Under President Clinton, private-sector economic growth has averaged a healthy 3.2 percent a year, compared to 1.3 percent under Bush and 3.0 percent under Reagan. If Reagan's overall growth rate was faster, it was only because he was spending the government silly. We'd like to grow the economy even faster, but how do we get there? I'm not an economist, and I don't even play one on TV, but I can tell you that it's no mystery how to goose more growth out of the economy. The country needs to save more money and invest it in things that make workers more productive, like new factories and machinery and education. Not a single economist in America would disagree with that. So why the hell would Bob Dole come up with a budget-busting tax scheme that would shrink our savings and diminish our ability to help our workers become more productive? It just doesn't make sense. By definition, raiding the piggy bank to pay for unaffordable tax cuts reduces our nation's savings. With less savings, there's less investment. With less investment, there's lower productivity. With lower productivity, there's slower growth. Bob Dole just doesn't get it. I'm happy to see that the rest of America does. Dole's tax plan has been about as popular as Jack Kemp's crusade for a return to the gold standard. Poor Bob Dole is left with only one option: Go for the sympathy vote. Russell Baker, the New York Times columnist, jokingly advocated the sympathy approach a few weeks ago. Now, it looks like Dole is taking the advice seriously. Last week, as he visited a town hit by Hurricane Fran, he tried out this tear-jerker of a line: "My wife, Elizabeth, has traveled to the scenes of many natural disasters these past five years. That doesn't include my campaign, of course." I'll admit it: the line worked. My wife and I felt his pain. Who knows? He'll probably even get one of our votes. Do you feel Bob Dole's pain? Can his campaign be saved without resorting to desperation tactics? Join Carville in Table Talk.
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