"Read

my lips," George Senior said petulantly. "No

- new - taxes."

I remember

when he said it, and I remember thinking, "You had

better mean it. Those are the sort of words that can sink

your ship."

And they

did. When you say something that's easy to understand,

you don't hedge even a little, and then you emphasize it

yourself wide open.

The whole

furor over John Rocker reminds me of the Bush debacle in

a way. In both cases, they might as well have handed an

axe to Lizzie Borden and bowed their heads.

Bush's sin,

though, was not lying. Millions went to the local fire

station and voted against him, all the while cursing him

for lying, but he didn't lie. His sin was in believing he

could predict the future.

He had no

intention of going along with any tax increases, and

that's what he should have said. Instead, he let a

reporter get under his skin and made a promise he

couldn't keep.

President

Jimmy Carter made a similar error, though it was this

particular error that caused me to vote for him. He

promised, unequivocally, that he would balance the

federal budget within four years.

The leaders

of his party dealt him the death blow on that one. Carter

offered Congress budgets every year that were designed to

gradually reduce the deficit until in the fourth year the

budget would be balanced. The Congress took his carefully

crafted budgets and piled on the pork, and you know the

rest.

Ever since

then, I've been less concerned with who the president is

and more concerned with what happens in Congress. No

president can do anything about the budget, except to

give Congress a good starting place. During the last

several decades of runaway spending and borrowing,

Congress was to blame, just as in the last six years of

gradually bringing the deficit beast more under control,

Congress, not the president, deserves the credit.

I've been

watching the current crop of presidential candidates for

any similar errors, but so far I haven't seen any.

They're a careful lot, which makes the whole election

process about as exciting as nap time at the home.

The same is

true of the New York Senate race, by the way. (I only

bring that up because that race is getting more media

attention than the presidential race.) TV talking heads

Sunday tried their best to get Rudolph Juliani to promise

that he would absolutely never run for anything else

(like president) during his six-year term in the Senate,

if elected.

He was too

smart for that, and said quite reasonably that he would

be a fool to tell you with any certainty what he would be

doing in three or four years.

All anyone

can tell you right now, if he's being truthful, is what

his intentions are, backed up by his history - by

what he has done.

As I watch

the candidates for president, I'm not basing my final

decision on anybody's "ironclad" promises.

I'm looking

primarily at their records on issues like taxes and

balancing budgets, a strong defense and generally

reducing the size, power and reach of the federal

government in favor of more state and local government

control, and more personal freedom.

I'm afraid

that as I read their lips, I'm not hearing that

"F" word, "freedom," very often from

the top half dozen candidates. But more on that some

other time.

For now,

the lesson for today, boys and girls, is to pay attention

to what they say, but compare it to what they do.