The Arcane Campaign Planks of '08

[December 22, 2007]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sure, the presidential candidates have their talking points on taxes, their policies on poverty, their white papers on war. But look beyond those top-tier issues and voters can find the eclectic ideas that reflect candidates' particular passions, their attention to the arcane, sometimes their outsized expectations.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a health enthusiast, would like to ban indoor smoking anyplace where people work. He says he's not the "grease police," but also likes the idea of prodding poor people to eat their fruits and vegetables by making food stamps worth more when they're spent on healthful foods.

Huckabee, who plays bass guitar in a rock band for fun, also would like to provide every child with art and music education so they can "flex both the left and right sides of the brain." It's not every day that a presidential candidate gets quite so deep in a citizen's head.

Rudy Giuliani, whose record running New York City's sprawling government as mayor is central to his candidacy, talks confidently about letting half of federal jobs go unfilled as employees retire, then getting the same amount of work out of far fewer people. "One person doing the job of two or three," he promises.

John Edwards, who has made universal health coverage a cornerstone of his campaign, promises to yank the health insurance of members of Congress if they don't approve a health-care plan within six months.

He would have no power to do that, by the way.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tried out the idea of giving every one of the 4 million babies born each year a $5,000 savings bond to put toward college or a home.

Giuliani joked about printing Clinton's picture on the bonds.

Clinton's campaign stressed that the baby bonds were just an idea and wouldn't be part of her economic plan. She hasn't talked about it since.

Then there's her idea for urban windmills. At a school appearance in Los Angeles last September, Clinton took note of all the vacant lots. "We could put windmills up, then all of a sudden everyone in the area would get cheap energy. ... We've got to start thinking creatively." A week later, she spoke of all the sun and vacant land in Nevada. "They could be powering Las Vegas with wind and solar," she said.

Speaking of tilting at windmills, there's Sen. Barack Obama's plan to clean up the ethics problems in Washington. He promises that all meetings between lobbyists and government agencies would be put "on the Internet for every American to watch" if he's president.

Urban windmills? A svelte federal bureaucracy? YouTube behind every closed door?

Sure.

Sometimes the politicians' proposals are so lofty the candidates have to assure people they really mean them.

When Mitt Romney, who made his millions in business, talks about hiring a consulting firm to figure out how to reorganize the federal government, he hastens to add, "I'm not kidding."

When Huckabee talks about abolishing the IRS and replacing the income tax with a sales tax, he assures voters, "I'm not being facetious."

"Get rid of the IRS and that would account for most of the problems," he said.

Fellow Republican Fred Thompson has issued his own call for "dissolution of the IRS as we know it."

"I think we need to start over on that one," he said.

Simple. Ah, but then there are all those sticky details.

Getting rid of the IRS as we know it could be like getting rid of the INS as we knew it. Parts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service were merged into Immigration and Customs Enforcement, itself part of the new Department of Homeland Security. Something else very big for everyone to get to know.

Huckabee would need something big to administer his national sales tax, which would involve processing mountains of rebates for certain purchases and cushions for the poor. Thompson would need something big to carry out his plan to let people choose between the tax system they have now and one with two flat rates.

Paul Light, a professor at New York University and self-described "bureaucracy wonk," dismisses Giuliani's plan to pare down the federal work force as "just plain nuts" and the idea of getting rid of the IRS as "beyond nuts. ... It enters the realm of implausibility that stretches the imagination."

[Associated Press; By NANCY BENAC]

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