Harry Truman once said his Republicans opponents employed a “If you can’t convince them, confuse them” strategy.
That’s not just a Republican tactic these days. It seems to be the favored way politicians of every stripe talk to the public. Unfortunately, many of the issues which confront us these days are pretty complicated and easily confusing to both policy makers and the public. Try understanding the pension problems facing Kentucky or choosing between economic visions offered by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan or Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman or understanding the health care debate.
Polling indicates the healthcare reform is unpopular, that many see it as a “government takeover of health care,” a phrase used by Republicans who say they will repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act. But when the individual components of the law are tested in the same polls, comfortable majorities approve them.
Mitt Romney promises to repeal the law if elected but refuses to explain how or why it’s different from the health care reform he passed in Massachusetts when he was governor and on which the federal law is modeled.
Everyone wants to lower the deficit and national debt, but they all have different remedies and all of the remedies are painful to someone. Republicans want to do it all by cutting domestic programs but oppose cuts to the defense budget. Democrats want to do it with fewer cuts to domestic spending, more in defense and increasing tax increases on the wealthy.
Simple math says both sides are wrong. Taxing the top 5 percent at higher rates won’t produce enough revenue to staunch the red ink. Lowering tax rates and preserving defense spending as proposed by Ryan, the chairman of the House budget committee, would increase both the deficit and debt. He wants to close tax loopholes but he won’t say which ones. Democrats say they’re willing to make some cuts in entitlement programs, but they won’t say how.
We get focus-group tested, carefully crafted “talking points” on the issues confronting us. Instead of straight talk, we hear politicians talk about “crony capitalism,” “consumer driven health care,” and “class warfare” or “Wall Street greed.”
Sometimes politicians hearken back to the good old days. Republicans would have you believe we taxed income less in those days and our economy performed better. In fact, tax rates are the lowest they’ve been in 30 years. Only for a brief period toward the end of the Reagan years were the top rates lower than they are now. And those were offset by closing loopholes — which both Democrats and Republicans in Congress rapidly put back into the tax code. But you wouldn’t know that by listening to today’s political debate. Few people realize that only once in our history did we pay off the national debt to zero. That was in 1836 when Andrew Jackson was president and it was followed by the financial panic of 1837.
Nor would you know that the health care industry today bears little resemblance to that of 40 years ago. Procedures which now are routine, such as heart by-pass surgery, didn’t exist; statin drugs hadn’t been developed; and insurance companies were cooperative, not-for-profit organizations of shared risk. No one expected employers or their health insurance to pay for all their routine prescriptions. But then, back then, few people were treated with years of blood pressure or cholesterol drugs. A lot of productive people in today’s world would’ve been dead back then.
But in the world of political campaigns, no one wants to confuse voters with the facts.
•••
RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com.
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Ronnie Ellis
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