LETTER: Column exploits class envy to criticize Forbes' campaign

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by C.S. Miller

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To the editor:

I am writing in response to Sheffy Gordon's March 15 column, "Clinton best prospect."

Gordon correctly holds that one must vote responsibly and even makes perceptive comments about the Buchanan candidacy.

However, his comments on the Forbes candidacy were widely off the mark.

I would like to assist Gordon in his crusade for responsible voting by setting the record straight on Forbes.

Gordon introduces Steve Forbes with the word "billionaire," clearly anything but a badge of honor coming from someone who claims a few paragraphs later that he "do[es] not actually work." A man's personal wealth is his own business.

His ideas should be judged on their own merits, not by the size of his bank account. It is revealing that Gordon feels the need to resort to the transparent device of class envy to make his point.

Ad hominem attacks have no place in a column ostensibly about making an intelligent choice in an election.

But Gordon also completely misrepresents Forbes' views as "trickle-down economics." Forbes did not intend for the wealthy to "replace government investments." Forbes wanted to cut spending , the only way to effect a real deficit reduction.

Our present administration is using accounting tricks to claim a deficit reduction when in fact the deficit will increase from $200 billion per annum to $300 billion in the next five years.

Also, as Forbes points out, even with the proposed Republican budget, federal spending would still increase to $1.87 trillion by 2002.

This is the budget whose "cuts" (actually only reductions in projected spending increases) are too draconian for our "best prospect" to sign. So much for Clinton as a champion of fiscal responsibility.

As for the budget expansion during Reagan-Bush, I am not here especially to defend either man, but since Gordon decided to "remind" us of those budget increases, let me remind him that the Democrats controlled both houses during all but two years of that period and happily lent their expertise to the credit spree.

Forbes, of all the candidates, came closest to understanding the fundamental issue of the budget impasse: confiscatory taxation and onerous regulation (and the evisceration of our rights they entail) or a return to freedom and prosperity.

Gordon claims that what he calls "trickle-down economics" "didn't and won't work."

Seventy years of state planning did not work for the former Soviet Union: Continuing to make our economy more like that one will not work for us, either.

Deficit reduction does not mean throwing widows and orphans into the streets.

It does not mean student loans will end tomorrow.

But sooner or later we will all lose our special favors from the government because we will either reform it or it will destroy our economy.

We all lost when Forbes was forced to withdraw from the race, for both parties are riddled with contradictory views, and the candidates reflect this.

The Republicans (sometimes) espouse a free economy, but undercut themselves with their "pro-life" views and their failure to reject the draft on principle every time they attack Clinton for being a draft dodger.

How can one argue that one has a right to his wallet when he does not have the right to his own life?

The Democrats are worse. Their ideas on economics have corroded property rights for a half century.

In the past, they at least stood for such noble ideals as intellectual freedom, but our "best prospect," who exhibits bipartisanship only at the worst possible times, signed the Telecommunications Act -- Internet censorship -- into law. (Not a peep was heard from the Young Democrats.)

What is our "choice," then? Two professional politicians, neither of whom has the ideas or vision to initiate positive change.

We have a president (whose term has been like a four-year infomercial for the Republicans) against a man who compromises so much he makes Bush look like a dogmatist.

Assuming continued Republican control of Congress, Dole might be slightly preferable since he would (perhaps) not obstruct the urgent task of reducing the deficit. But years of fence-sitting will make him, at best, only as good as Congress.

Not voting in this election as a means of protest is an option, if one makes a point of explaining why. Refusing to make a choice of this kind is not a "crime."

Misrepresenting issues in a column about responsible voting is.

C.S. Miller Jr.

Graduate Student

Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 29, 1996 issue.

Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights Reserved.
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