The Oregon Senate Race

The Oregonian
By David Sarasohn
August 01, 2008

The trap door doesn't pop open until the last four words.

For most of the 30 seconds of Sen. Gordon Smith's current TV spot, attacking Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley as a relentless tax-raiser, it's basic stuff. It's true, as other journalists have pointed out, that the spot sometimes refers to votes against tax cuts as votes for tax increases, and sometimes counts the same proposal several times, and sometimes takes comments out of context, but this is politics and we're all big kids.

Then it gets to the end.

Merkley, it warns ominously, is "wrong on taxes," and OK, that's just how Republicans make it clear their opponent is a Democrat.

But then it continues, "Wrong for the economy."

And that gets complicated, because it gets you wondering just what Gordon Smith thinks is right for the economy.

And if he thinks that our current policy -- the one that's giving us a $500 billion deficit for next year (not counting the $300 billion we're lifting from Social Security), the one with 13 percent of Americans thinking the country is on the right track, the one that's collapsed both the housing market and the dollar like a busted accordion, the one that Smith has ardently supported for eight years -- is what's right.

Better to just hint darkly that Merkley has a bumper sticker reading "I Taxes."

Throughout the Bush administration, Smith has occasionally broken away on issues such as health care and gay rights -- and, after four years, on Iraq -- but the Senate has had few more enthusiastic enablers of the administration's economic policy.

In 2003 in the Senate, Smith not only defended Bush against criticism of his economic policy, but insisted that government couldn't do much to affect the economy: "And may we never be able to because if we do, we will have adopted the ways of Western socialist societies, and these are failing models."

Still, by the next spring, Jeff Mapes of The Oregonian was reporting, "Smith predicted that an improving economy and more stable Iraq would build appreciation for Bush in a second term."

OK, anybody can make a mistake.

But throughout that term, Smith has clung to the Bush economic strategy. In 2006, he assured Oregon Republicans at Dorchester that the economy was booming: "Freedom works. It's even filling government coffers."

And when it doesn't, you can always borrow some more from the Chinese.

Given the, um, unusual nature of the political situation these days, the senator has understandably made some adjustments. This year in the Senate, according to The Washington Post congressional vote index, Smith has been voting with his fellow Republicans only 72.7 percent of the time, compared with 87.1 percent of the time in the last Congress (2005-06) and 94.2 percent of the time in the Congress before that (2003-04), when he'd just been re-elected.

It's hard to find the word "Republican" in Smith's re-election campaign, and it seems it will be impossible to find Smith at the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn. Smith's TV spots have featured legislation he worked on with Barack Obama and now John Kerry. At any moment, he'll be comparing his hair styling with John F. Kennedy's.

But even if he's too shy to mention it on TV, no discouraging indicators, no rising or falling tide, can alter Smith's deep loyalty to George W. Bush's economic policies.

As his Web site explains, "I strongly supported President Bush's tax cuts because I believe they helped provide Americans the additional tools and freedom they need to better fulfill their dreams. . . . Recent trends suggest that equipping Americans' natural ingenuity with a favorable tax code has helped revive our economy, and I am proud to continue my commitment to that end."

So when Smith's TV spot ends by explaining that not only is Merkley wrong on taxes but he's "wrong for the economy," it means that Merkley just doesn't see the economy the way George Bush does.

Considering the president's current poll numbers on the economy -- and the current economy -- the end of Smith's spot might pop open a trap door.

And around the country, there seem to be other Republicans falling through it.

Posted August 1, 2008
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