Pinkerton: Will Kerry spread the wealth - elsewhere?
By James P. Pinkerton
ANCHESTER, N.H. -- Now that he's the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, John Kerry is shifting his sights to the general election. So it's worth considering what he is saying about a Kerry presidency, and what he's not saying.
Here's a line that you're likely to hear in the next few months: "I have a message for the influence peddlers, for the polluters, the HMOs, the drug companies, big oil and all the special interests who now call the White House home," he says, itemizing Democratic boogeymen. And then comes the populist punch: "We're coming. You're going. And don't let the door hit you on the way out."
I happened to watch Kerry's victory speech Tuesday alongside a half-dozen firemen -- loudly and proudly identifiable in their yellow T-shirts -- who whooped and hollered when they heard Kerry's throw-the-bums-out taunt. Sounds like a keeper, Kerry-campaign-wise.
But I have to wonder: Is Kerry credible as an anti-privilege messenger? Does the history of Big Governmentalism really support the notion that Massachusetts politicians -- think Tip O'Neill, think Teddy Kennedy, whom Kerry outranks on liberal-vote rankings -- can act as the scourge of the K Street-ocracy in Washington?
Is John Forbes Kerry, Yale '66, credible as a Man of the People? Regular folks aren't admitted to Ivy League schools, and even run-of-the-mill Yalies don't get into Skull and Bones, the ultra-exclusive club on the New Haven campus. (One other member was George W. Bush, Yale '68.)
Yet, on Tuesday, Kerry told the crowd that his campaign "belongs not to the privileged, not to the few, but to all our people." Actually, his campaign belongs, in no small measure, to himself; the candidate lent his own operation $6 million.
And, of course, there's Kerry's wife, Teresa -- is she a Woman of the People? Hardly. She's the widow of ketchup heir John Heinz and earns millions annually from her holdings in H.J. Heinz Co. The rest of her assets form a long-long-long list at publicintegrity.org, everything from Air Products and Chemicals Inc. to XL Capital Ltd. The new Mrs. Kerry is forbidden from using her enormous wealth to directly bankroll her husband's campaign but, of course, there's no law that prohibits her from using her enormous Rolodex to solicit contributions from her fellow country-clubbers.
The point here isn't that Kerry is bad because he's rich -- and that he married richer. Nor is it that he's a hypocrite, posing as a populist, when he is, in fact, a plutocrat.
No, the real point is that Kerry's rhetoric conceals more than it reveals. He says, for instance, that he wants to end Bush's "economy of privilege." Now just what does that mean? Kerry's answer is that he wants to repeal Bush's tax cuts for those making over $200,000 a year. The firemen I was with loved that line, too.
Kerry might actually get elected on the basis of such verbiage. But one might recall that Bill Clinton was elected on exactly the same sort of promises in 1992, and yet the '90s were a continuation of the '80s -- a time when the rich got richer, when no DC special interest missed an expense-account meal.
Indeed, the biggest special interest in the United States today is the federal government itself. Uncle Sam will spend some $2.27 trillion this year. With that much money in play, just about every interest group in America finds it worthwhile to hire a Washington lobbyist. Will Kerry shrink that federal honey supply? Of course he won't. And so the Beltway will continue to buzz with honey-suckers.
The truest statement about Kerry's view of "privilege" is that he wants less of it for people he doesn't like, and more of it for those he does like. That is, oil companies will pay more taxes -- maybe -- while public employee unions might get a bigger appropriation here and there. In other words, in a Kerry administration, certain interests will get the boot, but others will get the welcome mat.
Of course, on Tuesday night, amid all his audience-basking and populist applause-milking, Kerry didn't get into any of those details. But if he wins the White House, and not much changes, those psyched-up firefighters are going to be in for a for a letdown. |
