The_Wall_Street_Journal_Asia__September_13_2016

A10| Tuesday, September 13, 2016 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

OPINION

Return to JFK’s

‘Rising Tide’ Model

S

ince 2000, U.S. economic output

has inched along at a rate of 1.8% a

year, an astoundingly low number

almost half of the long-term average of

more than 3%. This isn’t the way Amer-

ica is supposed to be. The U.S. has regu-

larly achieved more than 3% economic

growth as a matter of course, as it has

led the global industrial and technologi-

cal revolutions with millions of new

jobs, entrepreneurial wonders and mass

prosperity in tow.

The two greatest political figures in

America since World War II staked their

presidencies on economic growth: John

F. Kennedy in the 1960s and Ronald Rea-

gan in the 1980s. Kennedy was the pio-

neer. When Reagan rallied to the cause

of growth 20 years later, he did so ex-

plicitly following Kennedy’s “a rising

tide lifts all boats” model.

Americans often think that the

1950s were a decade of economic

growth. True, there were gains for peo-

ple lucky enough to work for the big

firms. But there were three recessions

during Dwight Eisenhower’s presi-

dency (1953-61), including one from

1957-58 that saw a similarly severe

two-quarter drop in gross domestic

product as during the Great Recession

of 2008-09. Structural unemployment

(the number out of work at the eco-

nomic peak) rose remorselessly in the

1950s, as did youth and African-Ameri-

can unemployment.

By the end of 1960, the average rate of

growth during the Eisenhower presidency

was just 2.5%. Kennedy won the presi-

dency that year after a campaign in which

he specifically pledged 5% growth to the

nation. As president, he kept the number

“118,573” tucked in his suit pocket, to re-

mind him of the cat’s whisker margin of

his popular-vote victory and the need to

keep his campaign promise.

When the Democrat Kennedy took of-

fice in January 1961, he put three Repub-

licans in cabinet-level positions, includ-

ing C. Douglas Dillon as secretary of the

Treasury. The 35th president was part of

a high-level tradition in American poli-

tics of inclusiveness and the desire to

win debates on the merits.

Spurred on by his campaign theme to

“get this country moving again” and to

deliver on his 5% growth goal, Kennedy

put together a coalition of growth-

oriented officials and officeholders—Dil-

lon and his tax assistant at Treasury,

Harvard law professor Stanley Surrey;

Wilbur Mills, the Democratic chairman

of the House Ways and Means commit-

tee; and the nation’s top business leader,

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President H.

Ladd Plumley, and top labor chief,

George Meany of the AFL-CIO. By 1963,

each member of this diverse group had

joined Kennedy in calling for significant

across-the-board cuts in income-tax

rates, in the context of a dollar guaran-

teed against gold, as the policy mix nec-

essary to sustain 5% growth.

JFK created the model—king dollar

and tax cuts—assembled the coalition,

and kept his eye on the economic objec-

tive. The opponents who remained were

liberal Keynesian economists in the White

House, beneficiaries of tax loopholes that

derived their value from high rates, and

deficit-hawk Republicans in Congress.

The Kennedy coalition prevailed, and by

the time the president’s policy became

law in February 1964, the nation had be-

gun a nearly nine-year run of 5% annual

growth. This feat remains one of the

greatest success stories in the modern

history of American public policy.

Running for president at the end of the

stagflationary 1970s, the Republican Rea-

gan, like the Democrat JFK two decades

earlier, understood the importance of re-

storing economic growth. In 1980, Reagan

adopted Rep. Jack Kemp’s “duplication”

(as Kemp called it) of the Kennedy tax

cut. The masterful communicator then

persuaded so many Democrats and liberal

Republicans that both the 1981 and 1986

tax cuts had big congressional majorities.

The 1986 act passed the Senate 97-3 and

took the top income-tax rate down to

28%, one of the lowest levels ever. Along

came another two-decade period of

growth mainly between 4% and 5%.

The JFK-Reagan policy nexus shows

that we have the model to return to

growth. It works. There is no reason the

model cannot be used again now. The

greatest Democrat and the greatest Re-

publican of the past 50 years both rose

above partisan politics and in a civil and

optimistic manner convinced the nation

that the king-dollar, tax-rate-cut policy mix

will work—and it did. Whoever becomes

America’s next president should follow in

their pro-growth, bipartisan footsteps.

Messrs. Kudlow and Domitrovic are

the authors of “JFK and the Reagan Rev-

olution: A Secret History of American

Prosperity” (Portfolio, 2016).

By Lawrence Kudlow

And Brian Domitrovic

U.S. Congress Can

Save the Internet

President Obama

wants this to be the

last month of an

open, uncensored

internet guaranteed

by the U.S. govern-

ment. His plan to

end American

stewardship would

hand new power to

authoritarian gov-

ernments offended

by the internet as we know it.

The good news is it appears congres-

sional leaders have agreed to rescue the

internet in time to prevent the Sept. 30

expiration of U.S. oversight. Sen. Ted

Cruz, who has pushed hard against the

plan since it was announced two years

ago, told me last week he’s “cautiously

optimistic” legislators will block it

through a rider to the federal budget:

“The basic proposition of keeping the in-

ternet free has united Republicans across

the spectrum and should also unite Dem-

ocrats with Republicans.”

Top Senate and House Republicans

have signaled they will ensure U.S. over-

sight continues to protect the Internet

Corporation for Assigned Names and

Numbers, or Icann, and its stakeholders.

The leaders of the four congressional

committees that oversee the internet—

Sen. John Thune and Rep. Fred Upton

(Commerce) and Sen. Chuck Grassley

and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary)—sent

a detailed letter last week to Commerce

Secretary Penny Pritzker and Attorney

General Loretta Lynch: “This irreversible

decision could result in a less transpar-

ent and accountable internet governance

regime or provide an opportunity for an

enhanced role for authoritarian nation-

states.” They focused on several fatal

problems with the Obama plan:

Several countries are committed to

ending Icann’s status as a U.S. legal en-

tity, which would invalidate its legal

protections. “The matter of jurisdiction

alone raises questions,” the legislators

wrote. “These critically important juris-

dictional issues cannot wait for resolu-

tion after the transition occurs.”

“We have serious concerns about the

ability to ensure that Icann would follow

its own bylaws” absent oversight, the

lawmakers wrote.

The legislators also rejected the claim

of Icann’s general counsel that Icann never

had an antitrust exemption. They cited a

federal appeals court decision in 2000

finding antitrust immunity arising from

operating the root zone under the U.S.

government contract. That’s important

because authoritarian governments would

argue Icann could only regain antitrust ex-

emption by joining the United Nations or

another government-led organization. The

lawmakers found it “troubling” that

Obama administration lawyers failed even

to ask what happens to Icann’s antitrust

status if the U.S. contract ends.

The Constitution says Congress must

approve the sale of government prop-

erty. The Icann contract is government

property worth billions of dollars, yet

the Obama administration has ignored

the requirement to seek congressional

approval. “Absent clear legal certainty,

moving forward with the transition

could have devastating consequences

for internet users,” the legislators write,

because litigation would create ques-

tions about who has authority to award

and manage internet addresses.

Each of these objections is enough to

retain U.S. oversight, but the broader

point is that Icann’s stakeholders—de-

velopers, engineers, network operators

and entrepreneurs—are free to operate

an open internet because U.S. protection

prevents Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and

other authoritarian regimes from med-

dling. The Obama administration may

not be comfortable with American ex-

ceptionalism, but the internet fosters

free speech and innovation because it

was built in the image of the U.S.

The administration has been reduced

to arguing that having been promised an

end to U.S. oversight, other countries

will now be upset if this doesn’t happen.

Too bad. Why make authoritarians happy

by giving them the power to censor web-

sites globally, including in the U.S.?

Sen. Cruz observed it was interesting

that the Obama plan “doesn’t have much

in the way of outspoken Democratic sup-

port,” though the Democratic platform

supports the Obama handover, which the

Republican platform opposes. It would be

fascinating if internet freedom became

an issue in the presidential election.

One of the first people to object to the

Obama plan was Bill Clinton, whose ad-

ministration created the system of U.S.

stewardship of the internet in the 1990s.

Soon after the plan was announced in

2014, Mr. Clinton warned: “A lot of peo-

ple who have been trying to take this au-

thority away from the U.S. want to do it

for the sole purpose of cracking down on

Internet freedom and limiting it and hav-

ing governments protect their backsides

instead of empower their people.”

What does Mrs. Clinton think?

INFORMATION

AGE

By L. Gordon

Crovitz

The White House will end

U.S. oversight on Sept. 30

unless lawmakers step in.

Clinton and the ‘Deplorables’

I

n one of Saturday Night Live’s more memo-
rable political skits, Jon Lovitz playing Mi-
chael Dukakis in 1988 exclaims after an-
other silly statement by Dana
Carvey as George H.W. Bush
that “I can’t believe I’m losing
to this guy!” More than a few
Democrats are beginning to
wonder if Hillary Clinton could
soon be saying that about Don-
ald Trump, of all people.
That’s the essence of a Fri-
day story in the Washington Post headlined
“Democrats wonder and worry: Why isn’t Clin-
ton far ahead of Trump?” The reporters quote
former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as
saying that given “all the things that Trump has
done, the numbers should be far more explicitly
in her favor, but they’re not.”
The tone is Lovitz-like disbelief, which
helps to explain why the polls are tightening.
Democrats have convinced themselves that
Mr. Trump is such a threat to the republic that
they can’t recognize that Mrs. Clinton is
equally as unacceptable to most of the coun-
try. In a year when most Americans want
change in Washington, Democrats don’t want
to admit that they’ve nominated the epitome
of the self-dealing status quo that disdains
their fellow Americans.
Consider the reaction over the weekend to
Mrs. Clinton’s comments Friday night that
“just to be grossly generalistic, you could put
half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the
‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sex-
ist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—
you name it.”
The remarks echo Mitt Romney’s comment
in 2012 about the 47% on the government dole.
The media played up the Romney comments as
emblematic of an out-of-touch rich guy, and
they probably contributed to his defeat. Mrs.
Clinton’s comments were arguably worse, at-
tributing hateful motives to tens of millions of
Americans, but the media reaction has treated
it like a mere foot fault.
Mrs. Clinton apologized, sort of, on Saturday
by saying in a statement that, “Last night I was
‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good
idea. I regret saying ‘half’—that was wrong.”
But she went on to say she was otherwise right
because some of Mr. Trump’s supporters are the
likes of David Duke.
Yet the rest of what she said was almost as
insulting. She said Mr. Trump’s other support-
ers are “people who feel that the government
has let them down, the economy has let them
down, nobody cares about them, nobody wor-
ries about what happens to their lives and their
futures, and they’re just desperate for change.
It doesn’t really even matter where it comes
from. They don’t buy everything he says, but
he seems to hold out some hope that their lives

will be different. They won’t wake up and see

their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel

like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we

have to understand and empa-

thize with as well.”

So she thinks half of Mr.

Trump’s voters are loath-

some bigots and the other

half are losers and dupes

who deserve Democratic pity.

It’s no accident that Mrs.

Clinton said this at a fund-

raiser headlined by Barbra Streisand, the

friendliest of crowds, because this really is

what today’s elite progressives believe about

America’s great unwashed.

Mr. Trump has certainly made appalling com-

ments, but Republicans and media conservatives

have criticized him for it. They denounced his

praise of Vladimir Putin. They assailed his at-

tacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel and his insensi-

tivity to the Khan family. Some have said they

can’t support the GOP nominee.

But where are the Democrats raising doubts

about Mrs. Clinton’s behavior? Mrs. Clinton re-

neged on her confirmation promise to the Sen-

ate not to mix her State Department duties with

the Clinton Foundation by doing favors for do-

nors. She maintained a private email server to

hide her official emails and lied about it to the

public. Yet no prominent Democrat we know

has denounced this deception, and former

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says there’s “too

much ado” about it.

The great liberal media watchdogs aren’t

challenging Mrs. Clinton either. They’re beat-

ing up NBC’s Matt Lauer because he spent too

much time asking Mrs. Clinton about the

emails during last week’s military forum. This

is best understood as a collective warning to

the moderators of the coming debates not to

jeopardize their standing in polite progressive

company by doing the same.

iii

As Mrs. Clinton’s support has eroded in the

polls, Democrats are figuring out that they may

have nominated the only candidate who could

lose to Donald Trump. But then they didn’t give

themselves many good choices. Their Congres-

sional leaders are old, and their bench in the

states is thin after their election wipeouts of

2010 and 2014. Mrs. Clinton’s bid to be the first

woman President fit the party’s priority for

identity politics, and the Clinton machine would

do what it takes to win.

Mrs. Clinton is still leading, and Mr. Trump

is always a driverless-car accident waiting to

happen. But it’s also obvious that a majority of

Americans do not want to vote for an extension

of the Clinton dynasty. They aren’t “deplor-

ables.” They’ve seen Mrs. Clinton in public life

for 25 years and they know what they’ll be get-

ting if she wins.

Her comments about

Trump voters—her

fellow Americans—show

why she could lose.

Honesty and Presidential Health

H

illary Clinton left a 9/11 memorial ser-
vice after feeling overheated on Sunday,
her campaign first dismissed it as noth-
ing, but then her physician re-
leased a statement saying Mrs.
Clinton was diagnosed with
pneumonia on Friday.
The event understandably
raises new questions about
the Democrat’s health. Yet
neither presidential nominee
has released a thorough medi-
cal history, while both are among the oldest
and least trusted by Americans in modern
times. The candidates could help voters with
an independent and bipartisan review of their
health records.
For weeks Donald Trump has suggested Mrs.
Clinton is not physically fit for office, tweeting
that his opponent lacks “drive” and “stamina”
and in a separate subtlety asking “#WheresHil-
lary? Sleeping!!!!!” The Clinton campaign dis-
missed these swipes as “idiotic,” to quote vice-
presidential candidate Tim Kaine in an interview
with ABC News. Mrs. Clinton’s traveling press
secretary told an NBC reporter who published
a story on the subject to “get a life.”
The public has an interest in the health of po-
tential Presidents, and the issue is hardly new: In
1995 a Time magazine feature asked about
then-72-year-old Republican front runner and
eventual nominee Bob Dole: “Is he too old to be
president?” In early 2008 the press rolled out a
cascade of stories that Arizona Republican Sen.
John McCain, who was 71 at the time, might be too
damaged to be President after years of torture
during the Vietnam War and bouts of cancer.
Mrs. Clinton, 68, is the oldest nominee in her
party’s history. Mr. Trump, 70, would be the old-
est president ever sworn into office if he wins.
Both have reached an age when medical risks
multiply, though plenty of younger presidents
have suffered health trouble: John F. Kennedy in
his early 40s had Addison’s disease, which he hid
from the public.
The candidates have released perfunctory
statements, but it isn’t much. Mrs. Clinton’s phy-
sician, Lisa Bardack, last year put out a two-page
summary of the Democrat’s health: blood clots
in 1998 and 2009; a fractured elbow in 2009; and
a concussion in 2012 that resulted in a blood clot
in her head and temporary double vision. She
was treated with blood thinners and, according
to the letter, the clot dissolved. Mrs. Clinton’s
cancer evaluations are “all negative.”
The former first lady has seasonal pollen al-
lergies, occasionally drinks alcohol and “eats a
diet rich in lean protein, vegetables and fruits.”
(We don’t tell our doctors about pizza on the

campaign bus, either.) Mrs. Clinton is in “excel-

lent physical condition,” the note concludes, and

Dr. Bardack reiterated that judgment as recently

as last month.

Mr. Trump in December re-

leased a four-paragraph letter

from Harold Bornstein, a New

York gastroenterologist who

asserted that the GOP nomi-

nee would “be the healthiest

individual ever elected to the

presidency.” Cardiovascular

status? “Excellent.” Lab results? “Astonish-

ingly excellent.”

If this sounds glib, perhaps that’s because

Dr. Bornstein has since told NBC that he wrote

the letter in minutes while a black car idled out-

side. Mr. Trump has disclosed no other health

information, aside from the occasional photo

of him working through a bucket of Kentucky

Fried Chicken.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump should be held

to the same standard as Sen. McCain, who in

2008 invited medical experts and journalists

to scour more than 1,000 pages of records,

many from the Mayo Clinic, where he was

treated for melanoma. Reviewers could not re-

move the documents from a private room, but

the campaign sent out a detailed description

of the Senator’s history from more than one

specialist who treated him. Nothing turned up,

and questions faded.

Marc Siegel, an NYU professor of medicine,

was among those who reviewed Mr. McCain’s re-

cords and describes the episode nearby. He sug-

gests that the Trump and Clinton campaigns al-

low similar access.

The irony is that the reporters who chased

Sen. McCain are now dismissing any questions

of candidate health as a conspiracy against Mrs.

Clinton, as if her campaign has never fibbed

about private email, the Clinton Foundation or

sundry other topics. This pattern of dishonesty

is one reason health rumors persist. By the way,

Mrs. Clinton told the FBI recently that she

didn’t remember certain briefings because she

was recovering from her 2012 concussion. So

add that to the list of reasons her neurological

records are relevant.

Mr. Trump has said he’s willing to release his

full history if Mrs. Clinton does, and that he

may even disclose his first. If he’s so sure he’s

struck a winning issue, then he should. No one

expects a President to be an Olympic athlete.

But the public is entitled to a review of the evi-

dence, and the brouhaha over coughing and

other tedium is the latest symptom of a broader

malady: That voters are wondering if either

candidate is leveling with them.

Trump and Clinton

should both be held

to the John McCain

medical standard.

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