Bush tries to conjure up some voodoo

"Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, expressing a wisdom that most political leaders can appreciate. Those accused of contradicting their previous views, Emerson advised, should simply claim to have been misunderstood. "To be great is to be misunderstood," he wrote.

Perhaps with Emerson's spirit in mind, the Bush administration last week brushed aside the ridicule that the newest member of its economic team once heaped on two ideas that are sacrosanct in today's White House: the wisdom of deep tax cuts and the insignificance of budget deficits.

N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist nominated last week by President Bush to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, once lampooned the tax cuts and budget-busting policies under President Ronald Reagan as "fad economics" dreamed up by "charlatans and cranks."

Given that Mankiw will be expected to promote Bush's plans for tax cuts and budget deficits at least as big as those run up by Reagan, his writings will almost certainly be used by Democrat opponents to embarrass Bush. But the political reality is that Democrats have also proposed tax cuts, though theirs are much smaller, and both parties say they are more worried about stimulating the economy than balancing the budget.

As a practical matter, few voters change their views about politicians simply because of logical inconsistencies between past and present positions. The elder George Bush won the 1988 presidential election to succeed Reagan even though during the 1980 primary campaign Bush had ridiculed Reagan's supply-side views as "voodoo economics."

Academics and pundits can score points with logic, but the current president faces economic problems like sluggish growth. In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, conducted Feb. 10 to 12, only 38 percent of those questioned approved of Bush's handling of the economy.

The Bush administration is struggling to reconcile more than rhetorical inconsistencies. With Bush's proposal for US$1.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years (which include not only his US$695 billion "jobs and growth" package, but also his proposals to make other tax cuts permanent), the administration is bumping up against a large number of mainstream economists and the unease of many old-fashioned Republicans who still fret about fiscal discipline.

One of those old-fashioned Republicans is Alan Greenspan, who told Congress that he believed that budget deficits could indeed lead to higher interest rates and hurt the economy.