Bruce Babbitt, one of the younger Western Democrats who has been urging his party to redefine liberal politics, joined the presidential race Tuesday by saying that the next president must ”dare to be different” and ”risk offending some potential supporters.”
Babbitt immediately did both.
In speeches here and in Des Moines, he offered more specific proposals than most contenders do when they announce their candidacies, and two of them risk offending two of the Democratic Party`s most powerful constituencies
–organized labor and the elderly.
As he has in the past, the former Arizona governor said that affluent Social Security recipients should pay higher taxes on their benefits to help finance more generous payments to the elderly poor.
”Do the Vanderbilts and Mellons really need just the same tax-exempt Social Security benefit as a widow in a cold-water flat?” Babbitt asked, also calling for less spending on other government programs which benefit the wealthy more than the poor.
He also proposed ”nothing less than a transformation of our economy,”
by altering the way most workers get paid.
Babbitt calls his proposed transformation ”gainsharing,” in which some of a worker`s pay would be stock in the employer`s company, not cash. The worker would pay no income tax on the stock portion of his or her compensation until it was sold.
Babbitt said it would be his goal ”that by 1996 two-thirds of American workers will directly share in the profits and losses of their own business,” a system which he said would increase productivity and foster cooperation between labor and management.
In a press conference following his announcement, Babbitt said that he had discussed his plan with union officials and that ”their response is cautious.” Labor leaders have traditionally viewed such plans as backdoor wage reduction techniques.
Babbitt said ”gainsharing” would be encouraged by changes in the tax laws, but would not be compulsory.
Even if voluntary, the plan involves a substantial and perhaps unprecedented governmental intrusion into the private economy, one of his chief strategists acknowledged.
Nor was this the only indication that for all his quarrels with orthodox liberalism, Babbitt favors an activist government which owes a special obligation to the poor.
He called for making every poor child eligible for Medicare, a ”national child care voucher” for lower-income parents who need day care services so they can work and tough environmental protection laws.
”It`s time we told every polluter: `If you poison our water you will go to jail and your money will be spent to clean up the mess,` ” he said.
The money to pay for these programs, Babbitt said, would come from eliminating subsidies to wealthy farmers, eliminating the deduction for mortgage interest on vacation homes and curbing defense spending. He acknowledged, though, that to balance the budget some tax increase might be needed, but he used the word ”revenues” instead of ”taxes.”
Most presidential contenders begin their formal campaigns with speeches outlining a general theme, not by making specific proposals. In Babbitt`s case, though, the act of putting forth the proposals was the theme–that he would be the different candidate, the one willing to ”say and do what other politicians dare not even think.”
Babbitt and his strategists think that this approach will distinguish him from the other little-known Democrats challenging the early front-runner, former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado.
The others are Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri. Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas and Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts are deciding whether to enter the race. Jesse Jackson is also likely to run.
Babbitt is perhaps even more unknown than the other challengers, but his bigger problem may be a speaking style which is often wooden and an earnestness which sometimes makes him seem pompous.
Politicians can often get away with seeming pompous, but not young politicians. Babbitt is only 48. As a general rule, pomposity does not begin to work until a candidate is 60.
