VOICE FROM AMERICA
When two and two make ten trillion
he other day on a campaign stop in Texas the President of the United States announced that he had agreed to sell 150 of the nation's F-16 fighter planes to Taiwan. The announcement made for stirring tele- vision pictures of a mob of munitions work- ers waving American flags and cheering for George Bush. Since then it has been cyni- cally suggested that, were the planes manu- factured anywhere but vote-rich Texas, they would not he manufactured at all. For the deal with Taiwan has badly angered the Chinese leaders with whom Bush himself has gone to such inhumane lengths to remain chummy. It might even trigger a retaliatory transfer of nuclear technology from China to Iran, which would start a chain of events that could end with all of Texas being blown to bits by some mad mullah.
This snapshot of the desperate lengths to which the current President will go to keep his oval office called to mind a lunch I had just a few weeks before. It too would never have happened if the election were not so closely fought; and it too had its unpleasant side-effects. An eager young Bush propa- gandist called me out of the blue to explain to me the finer points of his boss's econom- ic plan. One mark of his desperation was that he had selected a journalist with no interest whatsoever in economic policy. All I can recall now of him is that he came to the lunch table with a briefcase chained to his wrist, that he wore large cuff-links fac- ing outward and hearing the White House insignia, and that he got right to the point by thrusting a pile of papers filled with numbers between me and a roasted chicken sandwich. On the top of these — which turned out to be a photocopy of the federal budget for the 1993 fiscal year — were what Bush campaign staff call facts. There were two of them: • As opposed to Governor Clinton's eco- nomic plan of 23 pages, the Bush budget is 1,713 pages in length.
• The Clinton plan weighs three ounces; the Bush programme weighs in at over six pounds.
Faced with the alternative of reading through the 1,713 pages, I could only nod dumbly in agreement. But it is now clear that the whole thing was a hoax. For just before the President announced his plan to help the Iranians acquire nuclear weapons, he unveiled what he now claims is his true 'economic plan'. And it looks nothing like the plan I was shown. Entitled Agenda for American Renewal, it is a slim, dark blue
booklet of a mere 29 pages. It weighs no more than six ounces. And it has caused everyone here who wasn't already clued up to realise that for the last three and a half years the President has had no economic plan whatsoever.
The first thing that must he said about the Agenda for American Renewal is that, except for a suggestion to reform the legal system so that the loser pays the cost of the winner. it is almost entirely without inter- est, at least if it is taken at face value. It hints at a number of minor ways in which the government might meddle a bit in the free markets. This is only what one would expect. since Bush can't very well stand up and celebrate the economic theory to which he supposedly subscribes, that it is best for the unemployed to relax and let the mar- kets follow their natural course. So, instead, he has proposed $1.7 billion in government loans to small businesses, $2.8 billion in government grants to poor children and some grudgingly small sum of government funding for research and development of obscure technologies. The meagreness lends credence to Dan Quayle's boast earli- er this year that 'George Bush will lead us out of the recovery'.
The real interest of the Agenda for Ameri- can Renewal lies not in its ideas but in the wonderful implausibility of its maths. It opens with the flat promise to expand the annual gross national product to $10 tril- lion by the year 2000. At its current rate of growth it would take the American econo- my 120 years to expand to $10 trillion. Not surprisingly, the plan fails to cite the prove- nance of this suspiciously round number; it seems simply to have been plucked from thin air to give the whole thing a sense of grandeur. The document further subscribes to the glittering Reagan credo that the President can cut taxes and at the same time reduce the federal budget deficit; moments after President Bush made this claim, however, the number-crunchers at the International Monetary Fund embarrassed him by calling it irresponsible. On top of the outright fibs, the Bush economic plan includes a disin- genuous pledge to cut the pay of all federal employees earning over $75,000 by 5 per cent, when just two years before the Presi- dent fought to raise the pay of precisely the same employees. From these and other recent Republican deceptions a pattern has emerged. The Republican strategists have clearly decided to hank on the economic illiteracy of the American voter. As they have tested the appeal of their message on small groups of voters before presenting it to the public, this may say almost as much about the voter as it does about the Republican strategists. A recent survey showed that only half of all Americans knew that a fed- eral budget deficit meant that the govern- ment spent more than it took in, and that only 20 per cent had any idea of the size Of the current deficit ($4 trillion). About half correctly guessed that either the President or Congress were responsible for national fiscal policy, but less than a quarter could select from a list an accurate example of a fiscal policy. Less than one-third knew that monetary policy was determined by the Federal Reserve. And so on.
It is hard not to loathe the President for exploiting the ignorance of the people he is meant to lead, but let us try. If one shuts one's eyes and imagines a typical day on the campaign trail one can almost will in one- self a Republican-style cynicism towards the electorate. Consider the day after the economic plan was released from the point of view of George Bush. He awakens and answers flattering questions from the press. He flies to California for a fund-raiser. There he is flattered some more, and intro- duced to the world surfing champion, a man called Joey Hawkins. Having said how 'awesome' it was to meet the President, Mr Hawkins acknowledges that in his life he has never voted. 'It always seems', he tells the President, `that on Election Day the waves are always good.'
This, the President might have thought to himself, is a man who will understand the spirit of my plan.
The Wasp
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