It’s Deja Vu as Bush Hits Taxes, Crime

It was just like old times: Here was candidate George Bush pledging not to raise taxes, no ifs, ands or buts. And here he was again, accusing his opponent of being soft on crime, while horrifying his audience with tales of a truly gruesome crime and proposing that the perpetrators can “rot in jail” for all he cares.

But there’s a hitch: The year is 1992, not 1988.

Four years ago, the twinned issues of taxes and crime became a club that Bush wielded against a hapless Democratic opponent. Now they are more like a wand that he hopes will work some magic on the presidential campaign and make Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s lead in the polls disappear. A Washington Post-ABC poll released Monday put that lead at 51% to 42%.

And so, he worked both themes on Monday, first telling a morning television audience before he left the White House that the statement he tossed out three weeks ago--that he would not “ever, ever” go along with a Democratic tax increase--was a pledge that meant the same as “no new taxes.”

“That’s exactly what it means. Exactly. Yeah,” he said, all but using the words “read my lips” to recast in cement the broken promise that has haunted his reelection drive.

Then in St. Louis and again in Dallas, he brought out the crime issue, visiting downtrodden neighborhoods in two politically crucial states to call for widened use of the death penalty.

“Drive-by shootings, random violence, gang massacres--these people are merchants of death, who trade in death. And the death penalty is warranted in these cases,” the President said.

While Bush has never called explicitly for the death penalty in connection with drive-by shootings, the crime bill he submitted to Congress more than three years ago would make reckless drug-related offenses punishable by death, and aides contend this would cover most drive-by cases.

For car hijackers, he called on Monday for federal legislation that would carry with it sentences of up to 20 years, or life imprisonment if the crime involves kidnaping, serious injury, attempted murder or attempted kidnaping.

But even as Bush hammered away at Clinton, his campaign was focused on two meetings taking place behind closed doors in North Dallas. There, representatives of the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns met, one after the other, with the leaders of Ross Perot’s United We Stand, America organization as White House officials wondered whether Perot would return to the presidential race from which he had dropped out in July. Bush’s own visit to Dallas was scheduled well before the Perot meetings were set up.

The meetings were built around what each candidate would do about the federal deficit, and Bush, at the start of the day, made it clear that higher taxes would not be part of his solution.

During the first of three sessions this week on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” Bush said: “I’m going to hold the line on the taxes, I’m going to get them down.”

Was he offering a pledge that in a second Bush term there would be no new taxes, he was asked.

He replied: “As far as I’m concerned it will be.”

Later on the campaign trail, Bush’s toughened approach on crime lacked any images as direct as Willie Horton, the black murderer who raped a white woman while on furlough from a prison in Michael S. Dukakis’ Massachusetts.

Instead, the President told his audience gathered in the parish hall of St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in the Fox Park neighborhood of St. Louis about a car hijacking that took place earlier this month in a suburban neighborhood halfway between Washington and Baltimore.

In that case, a woman was killed after two men forced her out of her car. Tangled in a seat belt, she was dragged almost two miles until “the thieves tried to knock her off by banging into a fence.” Her baby, in a car seat, was tossed out of the car “like a piece of trash” but survived, Bush said.

“We cannot put up with this kind of animal behavior. These people have no place in a decent society. And as far as this President’s concerned, they can go to jail, they can stay in jail and they can rot in jail for crimes like that,” he said. “I want thugs who take cars at gunpoint to stay in a cell so long that when they get out they’re too old to drive.”

Even before Bush spoke out on the subject, the Senate approved legislation Saturday making car hijacking a federal crime punishable by life in prison if a death occurs.

It was just a short leap for Bush from a car-jacking in Maryland to Clinton’s record in Arkansas. Unlike Dukakis, Clinton favors the death penalty and has presided over several executions as governor. But Bush said that last year the average inmate in Arkansas served less than one-fifth of his sentence, while federal prisoners served, on average, 85% of their full sentence, and that violent crimes increased 60% in Arkansas during the 1980s, twice the national average.

Indeed, Arkansas shared in the national trend of crime spreading from large urban states to smaller, rural ones, and while violent crime increased 33% nationally from 1982 to 1992, it was up 66% during that period in Arkansas while Clinton was governor.

Other measures pressed by Bush include authorizing the death penalty for murder committed in the course of a sex offense, making crimes committed by street gangs federal offenses carrying severe penalties, and making theft of firearms punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

For a week, Clinton supporters have taken to twitting Bush over the failure of the two campaigns to agree on a format for a presidential debate. At nearly every public presidential appearance, one or two people dressed in chicken suits have shown up to make their point. Monday was no exception.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl in Washington contributed to this story.