Then There Were Four

The crucial measurement is the size of the debt relative to the economy. At the end of the second world war it was 118 percent of GDP. It trended steadily down to 22 percent in 1973. With the stagflation of the 1970s and the large deficits of the 1980s, it rose to 43 percent in 1993. Since then the expanding economy has made the debt just 41 percent of GDP. And if projected economic growth occurs, the debt as a percentage of GDP will fall to 20 percent by 2010.

Now, let us suppose something improbable--that Congress would agree to devote a substantial portion of the surplus to deficit reduction rather than spending. McCain must argue that money devoted to deficit reduction is better for economic performance, and for the quality of the American taxpayer's life, than the same sum devoted to tax reduction. That is arguable, but far from self-evident.

One measure of McCain's difficulties is this: Bush has reportedly spent almost $500,000 on television buys in Phoenix, which votes Feb. 22. For Bradley, the pre-primary season has been a crash course in what it is like to be on the receiving end of the Clinton-Gore kind of campaigning. Bradley seems stunned by the fact that Gore will say anything.

To take an example not involving Bradley, a few months ago, when the Senate overwhelmingly refused to ratify the test-ban treaty, Gore said Republicans "decided not even to have any hearings on this treaty before they voted on a strict party-line basis to reject it." But it was Democrats who all voted alike. And in addition to the 26 hearings that involved testimony pertaining to the treaty since the president signed it, after the Senate unanimously agreed to vote on it the Senate held five hearings with 27 witnesses in three committees.

Bradley, too, says some dubious things. Having poured money into Iowa (the Gore camp insists that Bradley, a hero to campaign-finance reformers, will break the legal spending cap there) and not moved his numbers much, Bradley has been badly thrown off stride by the blizzard of Gore charges, ranging from Bradley's alleged callousness regarding farmers to the cost of Bradley's health-care plan and the plan's supposed bad effect on African-Americans (because it replaces Medicaid with vouchers). Gore probably knows that the surest way to needle Bradley is to question his racial sensitivity. The needling knocked Bradley, the foe of negative campaigning, off his high horse. He dusted off the fact that it was Gore in the 1988 New York primary who tied Michael Dukakis to Willie Horton.

Race is Bradley's passion. "I remember," he says, "the exact moment that I became a Democrat." He was a Capitol Hill intern in the summer of 1964, before his senior year at Princeton. After watching the Senate vote on that year's Civil Rights Act, "I became a Democrat because it was the party of justice." Well. Eighty-two percent of Senate Republicans (27 of 33) voted for the act, whereas just 69 percent of Senate Democrats (46 of 67) did. That is, 21 Senate Democrats opposed the act. Only six Republicans did.