Candidates would rather not go there
On Wednesday outside the Throwback Brewery in South Hampton, N.H., Vice President Kamala Harris stated her intention, if elected to the White House, to help spur the growth of an estimated 25 million small-businesses in the United States.
Specifically, the Democratic nominee for president proposed a tenfold expansion of the federal tax credit for small business start-ups, from $5,000 to $50,000. She also set her sights on making it easier, and presumably cheaper, for small business owners to file federal tax returns, among other measures.
She also broke new ground by announcing support for a top capital gains tax rate of 28%, significantly lower than the 44.6% rate favored by President Biden. The rate currently in place is 23.8%, enacted in 2018 during the Trump administration.
How Harris will spin these small-business proposals into an all-purpose stump speech is yet to be revealed. Maybe she will, maybe she won’t fit it in, depending on the crowd she’s addressing.
If she does put it out there, it might go something like this: “And we’re for the hard workers who want to operate a business of their own. We want to make it easier for them and their families to realize the American dream, and we will!”
Specificity is important. But rarely has this been the case on the campaign trail. In the frenzy of a run for the presidency, details are more frequently cast aside in favor of generalizations. Appeals to the heart work; appeals to the intellect less so.
Boarding the Far-Back Machine to 1880, when the problems facing the country included the rise and regulation of big-business and the wealth-gap, we find President Rutherford B. Hayes telling future president James Garfield that the best way to run for president is to “sit cross-legged and look wise.” In other words, keep your yap shut, Jimmy-boy.
That, of course, is not a plausible campaign tactic in 2024. (Or in any year, oh, since 1904, or thereabouts.)
Modern presidential candidates have been more attentive to detail, though not by much.
Now, there have been times when being definitive is called for. The year 1968 comes to mind when another sitting Democratic vice president, Hubert Humphrey, late in the campaign, broke with President Johnson over the war in Vietnam in a pretty specific way. Humphrey immediately rocketed up in the polls.
Humphrey narrowly lost that campaign to Richard Nixon, who vaguely promised a Vietnam peace plan that, he said, had to remain secret, due, presumably, to the prospect of an enemy counter-plan that just might thwart the whole thing.
Signaling intent and direction count in a campaign for president. As the esteemed historian, the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., wrote, “Politics in a democracy is ultimately an educational process, an adventure in persuasion and consent.”
Does this mean candidates should root around in the details of policy? Hardly.
Democratic governance is the art of the possible. A president doesn’t generally do himself or herself, or the nation, any favors by making detailed promises as a candidate that cannot keep once in the White House, once all the other players – members of Congress, for instance – are in place.
Besides, it’s not at all clear that voters are waiting to hear the candidates detail their plans for the climate, for instance, or the ways and means of foreign policy, beyond a reference to the support of NATO, maybe, or to an insistence that foreign governments pony up in order to keep the United States on their side and in the game.
We all know, in context, what the last two statements likely entail.
American voters are plenty cued into campaign signals. They seemed to comprehend, to cite one example, that a whole lot more government was at hand in 1964. That was the year Lyndon Johnson, in the middle of a madcap day on the stump, bellowed, “And I just want to tell you this – we’re in favor of a lot of things and we’re against mighty few.”
Henry Adams remarked that presidents “must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.”
Lately, Vice President Harris has heard plenty about granting more one-on-one interviews with major media. The Washington Post has been established vociferously in this regard, wanting, it seems, to wring every last ounce of detail out of the candidate. This might be a good idea, but then, again, it may be entirely unnecessary for Harris’s purpose of being elected president.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.