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Daschle Hears "Read My Lips" in "Over My Dead Body"
By Doug Patton
January 7, 2001

Recently, the words "over my dead body" passed the lips of President George W. Bush. He was referring to his feelings on the prospects of tax increases on the American people, thereby inviting the inevitable comparisons to his father's famous "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge.

The jackals of the left who hope for such unequivocal utterances can hardly believe their good fortune. Why? Because they don't think such a pledge can be kept in Washington. They believe that the president will be forced to break his word just as his father did more than a decade ago. They also think that this spells victory for them, both in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election.

Back in 1990, then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and his Democrat cohorts gleefully derailed the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush by convincing him that it was the "bi-partisan" thing to do to break his 1988 campaign promise and sign into law what was then the largest single federal tax increase in the history of the United States government.

Midway through his first term, distracted by the massive buildup of American troops in the Persian Gulf, Bush apparently thought voters would forgive and forget when he went back on his campaign promise. Mitchell and the Democrats knew better, which is why they sandbagged the president in the first place.

The electorate remembered, "Read my lips," and by 1992, Bill Clinton was able to win the White House by campaigning on the ridiculous claim of "the worst economy in fifty years." (Am I the only one who remembers rampant inflation and a twenty percent prime rate under Jimmy Carter?)

Fast-forward a decade. Another Bush is now president and another Democrat, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, is now the Senate Majority Leader. Taking his cue from the Mitchell era, Daschle and company are salivating at the prospect of a midterm Democrat blowout followed by another presidential upset in 2004. Their dream is another one-term Bush.

Tom Daschle is probably the most disingenuous person in Washington. His troubled demeanor belies the rabid, backstabbing partisanship with which he employs every scam in his political bag of tricks. With a shake of the head and a furrow of the brow, the Senator's hangdog expressions signal his sycophants in the national media to report that he is so desperately concerned with the state of the economy, and why can't the president just meet him half way?

In typically partisan form, Daschle now rings his hands over the president's partisanship. He calls the current slump "the Bush recession." And in a striking departure from economic reality, he blames "the Bush tax cuts," as if letting people keep more of their own money somehow causes them to spend less, thereby slowing the economy.

In his insatiable thirst for political power, which many a pundit believes will culminate in a probable run for the presidency, Daschle has misjudged Bush. The Majority Leader doesn't understand that, at least on this issue, Bush's hero does not seem to be his father, but rather Ronald Reagan. Besides, does Daschle imagine for a moment that the current president didn't learn a hard lesson in the destruction of the first Bush Administration?

The president understands that tax reductions stimulate the economy. He remembers that the Gipper's tax cuts resulted in a doubling of revenues pouring into the federal government. He knows that charitable giving shot straight up during that time as Americans not only felt secure and generous, but also had enough disposable income to justify that generosity. He understands the simple premise that it is entrepreneurs - not congress or the executive branch, or any other branch of government - that stimulate the economy.

But most important, President Bush knows that it would be preferable to do nothing rather than raise taxes, because in the end, the power of American free enterprise will prevail. It is a lesson Tom Daschle will never understand.