The Cruel Politics of the Budget : So little has been produced by so many

In the never-never land called Washington, late into the deep of last night, Congress was still debating the merits of the latest federal deficit reduction plan. Which one was it again? The one that socked it to the rich? The one that had lower capital-gains tax rates that were said to make the rich even richer? The one with higher tax brackets and the same personal exemption schedule? Or the one that allowed fewer exemptions?

You can’t remember? Well, don’t develop an inferiority complex. There were probably at least a few politicians last night who couldn’t remember, either. It’s not Alzheimer’s disease you’re suffering from but Budgetheimer’s: This is the progressive, arguably irreversible Washington disease characterized by degeneration of economic brain cells.

The truth is that if Washington isn’t shaken by the many months of tortuous budget politicking, the country may be. Even voters with a low expectation of politics must be struck by a process that has produced so little by so many over such a long period of time. Are there any lessons?

For the Republicans, the lesson is that the fairness issue is a potent one in American politics. The genial Ronald Reagan, in his genius, managed to skirt its raw power but the less charming George Bush is now feeling its sting. The distinguished commentator Kevin Phillips, whose page one essay in tomorrow’s OPINION section lays out Bush’s problem very well, recently published a book that described the pent-up earthquake of the fairness issue. Its force is not such to suggest that America is tending toward the kind of ideology-bound society that suffocated Eastern Europe until recently. But it is to suggest that the notion of tax progressivity is a strong one and the politician who is any less of a wizard than Reagan ignores it at his peril.

Another lesson is that the President needs better, basic, hard-core in-touch-with-reality domestic political advice than he has been getting from his handlers. Washington correspondents reported this last week that the President enlisted the counsel of long-time trusted adviser James Baker, who of course has been serving as the U.S. Secretary of State. Perhaps the pragmatic but clearheaded Baker was able to set the President straight. His current domestic staff is not up to the task.

Rooting for the president to regain control of his political destiny is not to side with one political party over the other. It is to express the wish that the nation not have to endure the prospect of yet another failed Presidency. No doubt many Democrats are gleeful over the writhing of the Republicans in their political agony. And all’s fair, one supposes, in love, war and Washington.

But with more than 200,000 American troops on an Arabian peninsula facing a well-armed and arguably fanatical military foe, it would be comforting to think of the White House in terms other than besieged, faltering, troubled. The relationship between domestic and foreign politics is never remote.