At the Presidential Starting Gate

...His previous book, The Economic Illusion, made an eloquent case for the compatibility of equity and efficiency...

...Republicans vote a lot and low-income Democrats tend to stay home unless they see a good reason to trek to the polls...

...Reviewed by Robert Lekachman Robert Kuttner, an increasingly visible presence in the Boston Globe, the New Republic and Business Week, has become one of our most astute advocates of progressive economic and social policy...

...In 1984, as he recalls, Walter Mondale refused to endorse the Bradley-Gephardt tax reform proposal because too many of his wealthy supporters objected to its limiting their lucrative tax shelters...

...Still, even if progressive populism fails to fly in 1988, a 1992 candidate just might find Kuttner a useful guide...

...Mainstream economists to the contrary notwithstanding, social justice does not inevitably diminish growth and productivity...

...Yet, there is one large argument for the next candidate's ingratitude toward major contributors...

...Democrats must offer a choice not an echo...

...A race between George Bush and Gore or Gephardt will not only threaten mass apathy but terminate in a Republican victory...

...Like other social democrats, Kuttner is a man without a satisfactory ideological home...

...Another to pursue arms control with the Soviets...

...They must become stalwart enemies of Communism, proponents of big Pentagon budgets, and drop all their nonsense about fairness to blacks, women, Hispanics, and gays...

...How such a Democratic Party would differ from its Republican opposition Will does not pause to explain...

...As for the Democrats, they have no hope of 1988 victory unless they re-embrace the late Scoop Jackson via Ben Wattenberg, Sam Nunn and Charles Robb...

...True believers who find Irving Kristol heavy reading, Michael Novak dull and George Gilder frenetic can always feast upon bright Will columns and supplement them by catching him on the Sunday David Brinkley TV program sparring with Sam Donaldson...

...Above all his book celebrates George Will...

...A contest between a conservative Republican and a conservative Democrat will almost surely elect the genuine article...

...17.95...

...The Democrats might luck into the White House if there is a recession...

...The present effort, laden with stale quotations and incessant baseball metaphors, is utterly unneeded...

...How, then, can Kuttner realistically expect next year's Democratic Presidential candidate to embrace his agenda...

...223 pp...

...His agenda for Democratic renewal turns on "that closely interconnected set of issues involving education, labor-market policies, employment opportunities, and related family supports...

...He admires the Swedish government's intervention in the labor market, which emphasizes retraining, subsidized relocation, and decent income maintenance for workers in transition...

...A third not to raise taxes...

...The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election By George Will Simon & Schuster...

...Richard Nixon has advised that if the economy is weak, they can nominate a jackass and win...

...It was a mistake not to have lanced the Sandinista boil...

...But he gives the Reagan Administration high grades for general wisdom...

...George Will is one of the Republican Party's four certified intellectuals...

...I only wish I could share his optimism about the transformation of Democrats...

...Kuttner all too amply demonstrates that the Democratic Party has become financially dependent—especially since the calamitous reign of Robert Strauss as national chairman—upon a handful of liberal millionaires, business PACs, Wall Street operators, real estate developers, and other nonpaladins of progressive populism (the liberal millionaires possibly exempted from this charge...

...Will is basically a standard hardcore conservative on issues like abortion and foreign policy, but he bathes his opinions in his own unique mixture of intellectual pretension and frivolity...

...The trouble is that a Democratic president elected on a vague platform, jackass or not, is likely to replicate the drift and indecisiveness of the Jimmy Carter years...

...What he mostly deplores is failure to follow through on that wisdom...

...It is unfortunately quite probable that Michael S. Dukakis, Albert Gore, Paul Simon, or the lurking Mario Cuomo, will be similarly inhibited...

...To preserve the appearance of independence, this notorious luncher with Nancy Reagan does concede that her husband is a trifle lazy...

...Of the available or potentially available runners, only Simon and Cuomo show signs of listening to voices like Kuttner's, and Simon has handicapped himself by supporting a balanced budget amendment, possibly the kookiest economic nostrum since the Laffer curve...

...To paraphrase a GOP slogan...

...Drawing evidence from Sweden, Austria and West Germany—and noting that although Japan offers its citizens comparatively meager benefits, income and wealth there are far less concentrated than in the U.S.—he plausibly argued that Western European-style prosperity could be achieved by a far more generous welfare state than our grudging version...

...As Walter Goodman aptly said of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he is a legend in his own pages...

...He further proposes radical reform of industrial relations, including genuine worker participation in ownership and management...

...The Republicans, meanwhile, have successfully deployed their amply financed technological command of direct mailing techniques to raise far more money from small contributors than their Democratic rivals...

...He therefore would now like to convert the Democrats into a progressive populist party...

...I agree with practically all of Kuttner's detailed proposals...

...National health, full employment, comprehensive child care, welfare reform, and renewed commitment to housing low- and moderate-income families contribute to a vision of the United States as Sweden writ large...