i'm not sure why he came to that conclusion, other than democrats may want to posture themselves as tough on trying to address the deficits and other fiscal issues...
but, yes, if they want to win the presidential election, it would be a tough sell for them to justify increasing taxes...
nonetheless, deficits will continue to rise as long as no party will do anything meaningful to address them while two ongoing wars are draining the government's coffers...and those wars will continue through at least the next presidential term...
even nixon, who won the '68 election on a drawdown of troops platform to turn over fighting to the so. vietnamese, i.e. vietnamization...well, it took over 4 years for us troops to finally leave vietnam (in '73), so i would estimate that the us will maintain a sizeable troop presence in iraq/afghanistan until at least 2012...that is a lot of dollar spending to finance these wars...unlike in vietnam, there is no conventional force a la the NVA in iraq/afghanistan...thus, a future president can't try to bring a quick end to involvement in these campaigns through an aggressive air campaign to destroy the enemy (which nixon secretly tried to do through his entire first term while downsizing troop presence)...
i don't buy any "cut and run" strategies in iraq/afghanistan taking hold at all, because it is a totally different type of conflict than vietnam...in my opinion, it is actually worse than vietnam since the enemy lines are blurred...thus, the strategy of attaining victory is even more complex...i guess until a presidential candidate can define what victory will be, and if enough voters buy into it, then and only then will a withdrawal from iraq/afghanistan be probable...
until that time, billions of dollars will continue to be spent to finance these campaigns... |
