The Democrats would certainly be entitled to call on President Bush to advise the public in the matter. Using political language, it's his war, not the Democrats' war, and the costs of it should be his to apportion. The administration has made no public accounting of the cost of the war framed in this language. Candidate Kerry could seek to reorient the whole question by telling us what we have forfeited on account of the war -- more health care, education, job creation and America-building. But he can't do this effectively without first telling us how to do away with the war in Iraq and its attendant implications. To talk about raising taxes on the wealthy may be effective boob bait, but it leaves unanswered the question of how to finance national defense operations.
President Bush can try to skim over the question much as President Reagan did. If the economy grows, so do tax returns at current levels. But Mr. Bush has to take a very deep draught of optimism to explain how we are going to alter the current forecasts, other than by inflation. The debt is at $7 trillion and is projected, in 10 years, to be at $9 trillion. That figure can only be attenuated by a relative rise in income, over against outlays. Or -- by inflation, which, whatever its incidental benefits, is the surest enemy of stable growth and an impartial reward to savings and enterprise.
The administration isn't in a position to establish absolutely that the tax relief for the wealthy generated more for the economy than the amount of that tax relief. Mr. Bush profoundly believes that this is so, and practitioners of supply-side economics accept this as a doctrinal matter. But Mr. Bush has to arrive prepared to cope with the immediate appeal of Candidate Kerry's call for more taxes for the wealthy. This is not easy to do, because the imagination tends to freeze when higher taxes on the rich are pleaded. In the good old days we could begin our thinking the other way around, not by saying that the tax cuts help or hurt, but by saying simply: The money is theirs, not ours. So think of something else.
Mr. Bush has some fine writers on his staff. Add this one to their special challenges.