Word: babbitt
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Gary Hart's reappearance has eclipsed the rest of the Democratic field just as it came Babbitt's turn to capture 15 minutes of fame. But despite being stuck at near asterisk levels in the polls, Babbitt could in the end be helped by Hart's claim to have re-entered the race because the other candidates were avoiding substantive issues. Babbitt, with his rumble-voice lectures about the need to raise taxes and restrain entitlements, has long staked his claim as the brave knight of substance. Relentlessly propounding specific proposals and coherent themes, Babbitt offers as many...
...Babbitt's most noted campaign moment was his stunt during the NBC debate in December. "I'm going to stand up," he declared, and did, "to say we can balance the budget only by cutting and needs-testing expenditures and entitlements and by raising taxes." Only a long shot with little to lose, of course, can easily indulge in such bravery (and can ill afford not to). But it was no gimmick: Babbitt has for months been the most courageous candidate in trying to persuade average Americans that hard-nosed policies are the price they must pay to assure prosperity...
...imagery, however, Babbitt has problems selling. With a bobbing and twitching face that folds all over itself, Babbitt seems as comfortable on television as a moose being pelted with buckshot. On the stump he is earnestly plodding and uncharismatic. Nor is his product an easy sell. His austere economic prescriptions are the political equivalent of bran flakes with skim milk: good for what ails the bloated body politic, but not the thing a liberal Iowa Democrat is likely to choose over the buttered and honeyed comfort food that others are promising. If Babbitt advances, it will mark an unlikely triumph...
...Babbitt, the only candidate offering a realistic plan for serious deficit reductions, is at once more fiscally conservative than Ronald Reagan and more rigorously progressive than Walter Mondale. Babbitt proposes to shrink the Federal Government to a size Americans are willing to pay for out of pocket: without borrowing, driving up interest rates and choking the economy. He would accomplish this mainly by "needs-testing" social spending so that more goes to the poor rather than to the upper and middle classes, who now consume nearly a third of the federal budget. He would, for example, raise taxes on Social...
...stump, Babbitt occasionally asks his listeners to stand up if they want their taxes raised or their Government benefits cut. "No takers? Well, let me put it another way," he says, pointing to a young girl in the audience. "How many of you are willing to pick her pocket, just so our generation can consume more than it's willing to pay for?" The line often gets good response, which Babbitt takes as evidence that the "voters know we can't keep spending our children's inheritance...