COLUMN RIGHT / DAVID HOROWITZ : Cleverness, Cynicism and Character : We elect someone we trust. Do we trust Clinton to subdue his socialist left?

As the campaign enters its home-stretch, the centerpiece of the Clinton-Gore attack is a 30-second spot that opens with George Bush making his 1988 pledge: “Read my lips. No new taxes.” On comes the voice-over saying: “Then George Bush signed the second-biggest tax increase in American history.” Bush again: “Read my lips.” Then the voice-over: “George Bush increased taxes on the middle class . . . Now George Bush wants to give a $108,000 tax break to millionaires. Guess who’s going to pay? We can’t afford four more years.”

Clever ad. Cynical ad. World-class cynical. The tax was proposed, designed, insisted on, rammed through by the Democrats. And it was a tax on the “rich,” those mythical monsters that Democrats and Marxists always invoke when sticking their hands into other people’s pockets. Even the Democratic-leaning New York Times (Oct. 3) smelled this rat: “The 1990 tax law was largely dictated by congressional Democrats, who at the time hailed it as a working-class victory over the wealthy. Indeed, it sharply raised income taxes on those with adjusted gross income over $200,000 and lowered them on those making less than $20,000.”

In other words, the Clinton Democrats are liars, hypocrites and worse--promoters of civil envy and class hatred. (The capital-gains tax cut of course would not give $108,000 to every millionaire; the Democratic opposition to making such a cut most certainly has already meant unemployment and suffering for millions of average Americans.)

Does anyone care about this cynicism and lying? Not really. All my Clinton friends who were outraged over the campaign of ’88 think that unconscionable tactics when practiced by their own side are fair enough and rather fun. I don’t actually begrudge them this illicit pleasure. After all, politics is a high-stakes dirty business, and George Bush should never have signed on to the tax deal or trusted the Democrats to keep their side of the bargain in the first place.

If Democrats want to pretend they had nothing to do with something they had everything to do with; and if they want to make political hay out of the implication that they think it’s bad, when actually they think it’s good; and even if they want to leave the impression that they would never do it in the future, when actually they’re going to do it every time they get the chance--well, that’s politics. And Republicans can be counted on to behave similarly when given a similar opportunity.

What I can’t abide is the sanctimony of my liberal friends who think they’re above the dirty media politics they practically invented in the campaign against Barry Goldwater in 1964 and have artfully developed ever since.

Another kind of sanctimony that surfaces every election season comes not from the political camps themselves but from people who really don’t like either party or the American political system. These are the people who constantly whine that “the media only focus on personalities, not issues”--which is actually not true.

In the first place, character is the issue in presidential politics. In electing a President we elect someone whose judgment we think we can trust. We can’t possibly vote for a political platform, with policies spelled out in detail as though governments will respect them. Forget the complexities of government policy. Forget that it’s difficult to hold any politician to what is said in the heat of a campaign.

The fact is that our two-party system compels both parties to be coalitions of different and often conflicting tendencies. The main reason why political leaders seem to be talking out of more than one side of their mouths is that they are. They have to. Otherwise, they could never keep the disparate forces that make up their coalitions in line.

Usually it’s Democrats who have trouble with their conflicting components. This year, it’s Republicans. Of course, they’ve been helped by a Democratic press that has done everything possible to exacerbate their difficulties. In any case, leaders of the two parties normally can’t provide clarity on crucial issues because what they represent in their parties is not clarity but compromise. That’s the real reason why the character issue is important.

This year, however, the character issue and the political issue are really this: Trust or change. Do you trust Bush to keep his pledge this time and hold the line on taxes (and everything else)? Or do you trust Clinton to subdue his own socialist left, cut welfare and other out-of-control Democratic spending programs and really change the country’s course?

Frankly, I don’t much trust either, but at least George Bush won’t have to fight his own party to mean what he says.