Having heard all the keynote

speeches at both the Republican and Democratic conventions, I have to

give him his due: President Clinton's speech was the best of the

bunch.

Yes, W's speech was also very good, and it had more memorable zinger

lines. GOP speeches were chop full of good zinger lines.

And Gore's speech was pretty good as well. He articulated his positions

well.

But Clinton remains one of the smoothest, most polished, most natural-sounding

speakers that I have ever heard in politics.

I have to wonder how many of the millions of people watching the speech

even remember that he sounds equally natural when he is lying and when

he is telling the truth.

Anyway, Clinton zeroed in on the Democrats' best strategy for November

when he reminded us that the Republican Party was 100 percent opposed

to his plan to improve the economy back in the early days of his administration.

He painted a beautiful picture of how the Democrat-controlled Congress

approved that plan and the economy has blossomed ever since.

He conveniently left out several facts, two of them extremely important.

First is that, contrary to the picture Clinton paints, the economy had

already come out of recession and begun its recovery when he took office.

It was humming along quite nicely.

Second is that following enactment of his economic plan, which included

the largest tax increase in the history of the world, the economic recovery

slowed down and continued to creep along at a very slow rate until something

changed.

What changed was that Republicans took over the Congress in 1994 and got

the federal budget a little better under control, and the economic growth

has clipped along since then at double the rate it was growing during

the first two years of the Clinton Administration.

Clinton's message is simple: "I'm the reason the economy

is so good, and if you elect Al Gore he will continue the same policies

and the economy will remain good. If you elect frat boy Bush, it'll

all come tumbling down."

For 25 years, I've been telling people that the president has very

little effect on the federal budget or the economy. It's the Congress

that passes the budget and the Congress that should get the blame if deficits

go up and the economy goes down, and Congress that should get the credit

if the deficit goes down and the economy rises.

I said it when Jimmy Carter was president and his own party pointed the

finger of blame at him when it was spend-happy Congress that was causing

the problem. I said it when Reagan tried to get deficits under control

but couldn't because Congress was controlled by Tip O'Neill.

I say it again now that Congress has erased the deficits in spite of a

president whose proposed budgets would have tripled those deficits.

Another interesting part of the Democratic strategy that Clinton articulated

nicely is the party's opposition to tax cuts. He actually managed

to sell the idea that tax cuts are an unwise way to "spend"

the budget surplus, and even referred to tax cuts as "squandering"

the surpluses.

I really believe this election will hinge on whether Republicans can effectively

counter this idea that it's somehow risky or unwise to let us keep

more of our incomes. And they'll have to find a way to deal with

the nonsensical assertion that tax cuts only help the super rich.

Clinton plays the class envy card very well.

I'm not really all that worried about who wins the White House in

November, though.

I think W. would work a little better with Congress and would even be

able to push through some moderate-to-liberal social programs that Gore

would agree with but wouldn't be able to sell. Both parties are partisan,

and that's just the way it is.

We also desperately need to rearm the military, and Bush would do that.

Gore probably would not.

But if we can avoid a major military conflict, I could live with four

or eight years of Gore.

What scares me silly, though, is that Congress will change hands.

If that happens, a Bush presidency might just be able to use the bully

pulpit to keep things from completely falling apart. But if Democrats

control both houses of Congress and the White House, prepare to watch

taxes soar (though the increases will probably be disguised in a variety

of ways). And prepare to watch spending rise even faster than taxes.

And pray that Gore has enough sense not to send our military into a serious

ground conflict, even though he claims that it's "ready."

Our people would perform superbly, as always, but I don't want to

think about how many casualties we would suffer due to lack of equipment,

supplies and strength of numbers.