Vision quest: how John Kerry can create jobs by taking on K Street.

• Author: Glastris, Paul

Listen to a speech by John Kerry, and you're likely to hear him vow to take on "Big Oil" and other "powerful interests that stand in your way." This is the signature language of his chief campaign consultant, Robert Shrum, who penned similar populist rhetoric for Al Gore in 2000. Democratic rhetoric of this sort has tended to vilify the rich as a class and corporations in general, but failed to get much traction with voters, for the simple reason that most Americans work for corporations and would like someday to be rich.

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Listen a little closer, however, and you may pick up a subtle but important difference in the Shrumian phraseology this time. Unlike past Democratic hopefuls, Kerry more pointedly distinguishes who he thinks the bad guys are: not corporations or the rich per se, but "lobbyists," "the privileged," and others who "cut corners and break laws and get special benefits, while those who do what's right get the short end of the stick." This terminological difference is very good news for anyone who wishes the senator well in November. Kerry is signaling one of the real problems before this country: the increasing power of Washington's crony capitalists. As this magazine has pointed out (see "Welcome to the Machine," by Nicholas Confessore, July/August 2003), the K Street lobbying community, which once played (and corrupted) both sides of the political aisle, has in the last few years formed a virtual phalanx around the GOP and George W. Bush, and the lobbyists' wish lists form the essence of that party's agenda. Bush has been perfectly open about his association with these groups, and the mischief that at least some of them have caused is clear to the vast majority of the public. Kerry needs only mention. "Halliburton" or "Enron" to make the point.

Kerry's populism, then, is not the kind likely to alienate middle-class voters. Far from it. Rather, his real Achilles' heel is his lack of a theory of how he would cream jobs. He talks a lot about how to preserve existing jobs--for instance, by taking away tax breaks that enable "Benedict Arnold" corporations to outsource work overseas. There's nothing really wrong with such ideas. But the emphasis on them boxes him in. Too much talk about protecting existing jobs, and you begin to sound like a protectionist whose policies would actually reduce overall employment.

By contrast, George W. Bush does have a theory of how to create jobs: Cut taxes to put more money in people's pockets, so they'll spend it and create demand for new hires. Yes, it's a dumb theory. Yes, it's been tried twice in the last three years and demonstrably failed. But that does not completely subtract from its surface plausibility. And anyway; when you're running for office, even a dumb theory is better than no theory at all.

It is worth noting that the last Democrat who took on a sitting president named Bush had a theory for how he was going to expand employment. During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton argued that for the previous 12 years, the Republicans had allowed the Japanese to pummel American industry. If he became president, Clinton vowed, he would use trade agreements to force open other countries' markets for American goods, while helping American workers obtain the extra training they needed to fill those high-paying export-driven positions. Soon after being elected, Clinton added another component to the theory: that cutting the federal deficit would lower interest rates, which would raise incomes, spur investment, and lead to the creation of jobs. Whether or not you credit these policies with producing any of the 22 million jobs created on Clinton's watch, there's no denying the fact that he had a theory, and that voters understood it.

If he hopes to win, John Kerry needs a theory, too. Though Clinton's may still have some merit, these are different times. Bush's doesn't work, and, anyway, it's taken. Fortunately, Kerry's own populist rhetoric points directly to an untapped but promising theory of job creation: take on the Washington lobbyists.

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