NOT A dime of George W. Bush's planned $170 million in campaign expenditures this year is going to earn him my support. The president gets my vote for free. As a former College Republican officer turned conservative columnist, the thought of casting a ballot for John Kerry seems about as appealing to me as the ads for The Rock's latest movie. Many other Republicans are likely to make the same choice, overlooking Bush's departure from the GOP's traditional preference to minimize government spending. However, the president's latest campaign strategy risks calling too much public attention to his own fiscal liberalism by foolishly and hypocritically accusing John Kerry of the same thing.
On Monday, the Bush campaign announced the release of its John Kerry "spendometer," a running tally of how much the presumptive nominee's proposed spending plan would cost taxpayers if implemented. The meter currently sits at a value of $1.7 trillion over 10 years. Republicans have compared this value to the potential $650 billion increase in tax revenue following Kerry's promised tax cut rollback, pointing out that the government couldn't possibly foot the bill under such an arrangement. Though Republicans have fired critiques like this at Democrats for years, they lack legitimacy in 2004, when Bush is as guilty of creating a "tax gap" as anyone.
As much as they may favor his social agenda or foreign policy, hard-line conservatives have beaten themselves over the head in frustration over Bush's tendency to spend throughout his first term. Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken up a fair chunk of the federal budget, as have expansions of homeland security programs and Medicare. Add these expenditures to the Bush tax cuts and the plans for a manned Mars mission, and the incumbent's fiscal platform appears to be no thriftier than the challenger's. If Kerry is continually faced with accusations of overspending, he should have no difficulty in convincing the public that Bush has little room to talk.
Since both Kerry and Bush have shown a tendency to spend wildly, it seems logical that neither candidate would have an interest in turning fiscal responsibility into a campaign issue. However, if the rhetoric does shift in that direction, as the Bush camp is trying to make happen, Kerry holds an advantage over Bush in potentially escaping with his candidacy intact. As a sitting president, Bush has a concrete record of deficit spending behind him. Kerry, on the other hand, possesses only senatorial experience and has never performed the presidential role of implementing a complete spending agenda on his own. His spending "record" is simply a collection of flexible ideas that could conceivably be modified mid-election, a luxury Bush does not have.
Realistically, Kerry has no chance of stealing votes away from the Republican Party's traditional core of support, regardless of how much Bush accidentally incriminates himself on matters of spending. The real danger of the spendometer strategy lies in the impression it threatens to make in the minds of non-ideological swing voters. The bulk of the current administration's spending frenzy consists of high-profile programs, and the general public is smart enough to connect the dots if Bush starts disparaging Kerry for being a big spender. At best, the president will come across as hypocritical and untrustworthy. At worst, he'll lose further credibility for making claims about unrelated issues, such as al Qaeda and Iraq.
Several ways to attack Kerry exist regarding issues on which Bush can speak without pointing the finger of blame back on himself. The Massachusetts senator's liberal record on gay rights starkly contrasts Bush's social conservatism and could be easily exploited to diminish Kerry's chances in rural America. Also, while Bush has generally been uncompromising in his core beliefs, Kerry stands to be portrayed as wishy-washy and unprincipled, having voted in the Senate for the same Iraq war that he now vehemently speaks out against. With other options like these, there is no reason the Bush campaign should feel the need to spotlight the issue of spending.
Bush will not simply coast back into the White House on the back of an unsound campaign strategy. Whatever strengths he might have, restrained spending is not one of them. The president cannot open up this type of dialogue without falling prey to his own record. Unless his campaign changes its current path, Dubya could end up following in his father's footsteps again, this time as a one-term president.
Chris Kiser's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ckiser@cavalierdaily.com.
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