Could a truly honest politician become president? [View all]

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(About the author: Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, home of FactCheck.org and its sister site, FlackCheck.org. She is a co-author, with Kate Kenski and Bruce W. Hardy, of “The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election.”)

Remember Walter Mondale’s 1984 pledge to raise taxes? “Let’s tell the truth. . . . Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

Mondale lost in a landslide.

The problem was not that he told the truth, but that Republican ads twisted his words, alleging that, rather than using the new revenue to pay down the deficit, the Democrat would squander it on a social spending spree.

(...)

To win over the public honestly in 2012, a presidential aspirant would tell us things we need to hear but don’t want to. Such a candidate might acknowledge that the United States will be more affected by — than have and effect on — the dramas unfolding in the Middle East and the European Union. An honest candidate would need to specify how he or she would address the more than $1 trillion budget deficit, which might include defense cuts; eliminating some of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts; taxing employer-provided health-care coverage; slowing the growth rate of Social Security and Medicare; phasing in a higher eligibility age for Social Security; eliminating the payroll-tax limit; and getting rid of the interest deduction for some home mortgages. President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney aren’t avoiding this discussion, per se, but they’re not offering specific plans for how they’d address the impending crisis, either.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/could-a-truly-honest-politician-become-president/2012/07/06/gJQAGK4OSW_singlePage.html