Real pundits – the kind folks listen to, whether they should or not – all seem to be predicting that our President's new "over my dead body" tax pledge will bite him in the behind as "read my lips" harmed his father. Perhaps. My own suspicion is that the idea here is not to not raise taxes but to make sure that, if and when taxes are raised, Bush can blame it on the Democrats. I seem to recall that when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, one of his aides — presumably, a disgruntled, former one — told reporters that Reagan's fondest wish was for a huge tax increase (which he got) to be passed with his hands clean (which he didn't quite manage).
In any case, here's a thought: The two times that the older George Bush ran for the White House, he somehow got away with a very fuzzy definition of "tax increases." It didn't seem to matter how much a tax increase was or even how many folks it applied to; it was the number of tax increases. If the Dukakis or Clinton administrations had instituted five one-dollar fees on a few denizens of their states, that was FIVE TAX INCREASES, whereas if a Republican administration presided over one huge one that affected everyone, that was only ONE TAX INCREASE. For some reason, a certain amount of Americans never got past the concept that five tax increases are always worse than one.
What's more — and this is the thing that could give our present Chief Exec some woes if anyone ever makes a big issue of it — his father defined any government-mandated collection of money as a tax increase. Somewhere, there's videotape of him arguing that a new "booking fee" that was being charged to folks who were arrested was a TAX INCREASE; that a two-dollar license fee for greyhound racing was a TAX INCREASE, etc. There were many of those and, if one buys his definition, then the current Bush Administration is already planning several. The new "security fee" — or whatever they wind up calling it — that one will pay when one boards an airplane is certainly a TAX INCREASE by the definition that the last Bush campaigns sold to the country. I thought that definition was hooey then. I suspect that if anyone tries to apply it today, both George Bushes will feel likewise. (Not that I expect anyone to mention it. We always seem to let politicians skate on this kind of thing…)