COLUMN RIGHT : George Bush’s Turn to Be Suckered : It’s easy to see what the President lost; harder to see what his flipflop on taxes gained.

“George Wallace was right,” the conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan said Wednesday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.” “There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the parties.” Later that morning he told me that George Bush’s U-turn on taxes made no sense, “politically, philosophically or economically.” At the 1988 Republican convention, Bush said: “Read my lips.” Now he is saying: “New tax revenues.”

“He has broken his most solemn compact with the American people,” Buchanan said. “He is surrendering the defining difference between the political parties. And for what?” Buchanan is right. It makes no sense.

Bush has contrived both to look irresolute and to yield an important principle (constraining the growth of the federal government by denying it new revenues). He is unlikely to gain anything substantive in return. Earlier budget “deals” have shown that congressional negotiators are unable to deliver when the appropriations bills are voted on later in the year. Congress is too decentralized an institution to permit the necessary discipline. The spending cuts turn out to be illusory. But the tax increases are eagerly written into law. Ronald Reagan was suckered two or three times this way. Now it’s Bush’s turn.

In practice, there may not be much real fiscal change as a result of Bush’s ill-advised concession. The carefully worded statement listed a package of changes, all of which were said to be necessary. Among them were “discretionary spending reductions,” “entitlement and mandatory program reform” and “growth incentives.” The latter is understood to mean a lower capital-gains tax rate. If this indeed were to materialize in the weeks ahead, a few sin taxes would be a small price to pay. But the immediate 30-point stock-market rise, followed by a fall back to a small net loss on the Dow later in the day, suggested a market perception that not much change in the tax law is likely to result. The Democrats will resist entitlement reform and will push hard for higher income-tax rates at upper-income levels and the package is likely to come unglued.

Meanwhile, President Bush will have dealt his own constituency a real blow. The newspapers, it turns out, have been keeping a file on Bush’s earlier statements on not raising taxes and these were gleefully itemized all over the country Wednesday. Bush’s supporters can only be disheartened. It’s easy to see what Bush has lost; harder to see what he has gained beyond the affection of those who enjoy government subsidies and otherwise live at the public’s expense.

The Democrats lost no time in taking advantage of the situation. “I’m chairman of the campaign committee and we’ll make it a political issue,” said Rep. Beryl F. Anthony Jr. (D-Ark.) about Bush’s switch. Others stood in front the cameras and virtuously promised not to engage in finger-pointing just because the President had broken his most important campaign promise, thereby pointing the finger, while slyly gaining Brownie points as team players. One can hardly blame them. Who does Bush think he is dealing with? The membership committee of the Greenwich Country Club?

Washington has been thirsting for new taxes ever since Bush was elected. For decades, tax revenues flowed into the capital almost without anyone having to vote yea on a tax bill. Inflation combined with the progressive tax code to do the job by stealth, moving the middle class into tax brackets designed for the wealthy. All through the 1970s, inflation gave us non-legislated tax increases. Washington could hardly devise programs quickly enough to cope with the revenue gusher.

Today revenues are no longer increasing, economic growth is minimal and there is no more bracket creep (there are only two income-tax brackets, and the line dividing them is indexed to inflation). For the first time in ages, Congress must vote explicitly for higher taxes.

A President who vows to oppose any such move can almost certainly stop it. Bush held out for a while but now he seems to have declared his willingness to “go native.” He didn’t have to do it. The Gramm-Rudman law, devised in the mid-’80s to cope with the budget deficit, would automatically cut spending anyway. The White House has to do precisely nothing. The cuts occur by a process called the “sequester.” President Reagan feared using it because it would cut defense spending. But with the Warsaw Pact collapsing, Congress is now inclined to cut the defense budget even more than Gramm-Rudman would. So conservatives have nothing to fear from Gramm-Rudman.

Bush, like Reagan before him, seems to have succumbed to the desire to be popular inside the Beltway. At least Reagan waited until his second term.