ELECTIONS '08

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Over here is the real world, and over here is the campaign for president, and the two do not meet. It's not just that Hillary Clinton had imagined herself dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, or that Barack Obama had embraced a pastor convinced AIDS is a government plot. It's that the two are blithely ignoring a coming catastrophe while merrily offering plans that would exacerbate it.

Neither of them has seriously addressed the single most serious domestic issue that is the explicit, inescapable responsibility of the federal government, namely the entitlement obligation that over the approaching decades will whack us like we've seldom been whacked before.

Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are already consuming close to half the federal budget, and — if nothing is done — could be consuming just about all of it as baby boomers retire in vast numbers. Or, along with other federal spending, the programs could do something worse: They could take such gobs of taxes as to leave working families in a condition of hapless financial scrambling.

Economic wreckage is heaving into sight, along with intergenerational warfare, and what do you get when you ask Clinton what she proposes to do about just one part of that issue — Social Security? Why, this self-described political warrior says she will name a bipartisan commission to study things.

The most timid, inexperienced bamboozler in the world could propose still another commission that, like the last one, will likely arouse something on the order of zero interest in the halls of Congress. What's needed is an undauntedly courageous leader who will test bold ideas in a campaign, and so if that's not Clinton, maybe it's Obama? Sorry. When you turn to him you find that while he does have a plan — removing an income cap on the payroll tax — it won't come close to doing the job. It's a wink at a hurricane.

No, what these two propose in the face of this entitlement mess is mammoth new spending programs, including yet another monster entitlement: universal health insurance.

Americans may mostly agree that revisions are needed in health-insurance coverage, but the most vital ones can be accomplished by the tactic of shifting insurance tax credits from employers to individuals with no extra cost, as the Republicans' presumptive presidential nominee, John McCain, proposes. We can in no way afford either the Clinton or the Obama plan, and neither candidate has proffered any plausible idea on how to do the financing.

Both want to raise taxes on people making over $200,000 a year to a level that prevailed before the Bush years, but this wouldn't produce funds even close to adequate. Obama pledges no new taxes on the middle class, but has one in mind, a hike in the capital gains tax, as if the middle class did not owns stocks and bonds its members will need to draw on as they leave the work force.

As editorializing students of the subject have pointed out, raising this tax gets no new revenues. What's the point?

McCain is not much better than these two on Medicaid or Medicare, but does have a serious Social Security proposal and, despite a plan to boost funds to the military, is believable on plans to cut back spending. Still, none of the three is helping the public stare reality in the face. They are playing a game of let's pretend, and some might suppose this great republic deserves better.

— Jay Ambrose is former Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers.