British historian Paul Johnson (author of “Modern Times,” “History of the Jews,” “History of Christianity,” “A History of the American People,” and his more recent “Art, A New History,” among others) is one of my favorites. In this WSJ ($) op-ed, Mr. Johnson notes that the nastiness of the 2004 Presidential Campaign really does not hold a candle to the campaign of 1928 between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams:

[The 1928 campaign] inaugurated the habit of long campaigns, since Tennessee nominated Jackson for president as early as Spring 1825, more than three years before the vote. . .
Adams’s supporters retaliated by the campaign poster known as the Coffin Handbill, listing 18 murders Jackson was supposed to have committed. Those who claim the current election is the dirtiest know little about 1828. An English visitor, shown a school in New England (where Adams was paramount), put questions to the class, including “Who killed Abel?” A child promptly replied “General Jackson, Ma’am.” An Adams pamphlet accused Jackson of “trafficking in human flesh,” another accused his wife of being a bigamist and adulterer. After seeing it, she took to her bed and died shortly after the election. To his dying day Jackson believed his political enemies had murdered her. On his side, pamphlets accused Adams of fornication, procuring American virgins for the Tsar while serving as ambassador in Russia, and being an alcoholic and sabbath-breaker. A White House inventory listing a billiard-table and a chess-set led to the accusation that Adams had introduced “gambling furniture.” (His most curious presidential habit, of taking a daily swim in the Potomac stark naked, went unnoticed.)
Jackson won the popular vote in this first razzmatazz election, 647,276 to 508,064, and the College by a clear majority. His inauguration was followed by a saturnalia in which thousands of his supporters invaded the White House and engaged in a drinking spree. The Spoils System (a new term) was inaugurated by the ejection of Adams’s men from public offices, a process called The Massacre of the Innocents.

And what does Mr. Johnson think about the qualitiy of the current campaign? Apparently, not much:

In recent decades the most significant election was 1980, when Reagan beat Jimmy Carter and so inaugurated the policies which demolished the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union, and ended the Cold War in a Western victory. Reagan won this election, which I covered closely, with wit and one-liners. The current election is likely to be significant, too, in deciding the strategy and tactics of the war against terrorism. But wit, alas, will play little part.

This post from last week addressed the hypocrisy of John Kerry’s political position that the federal government should raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans while his wife continues to use loopholes in the tax laws to pay a lower percentage of taxes than most other Americans.
In this editorial, the Wall Street Journal ($) takes deal aim at the issue and points out the advantages that super-rich folks such as Mrs. Heinz-Kerry have over working stiffs, starting with Ms. Heinz-Kerry’s avoidance of the payroll (i.e., Social Security) tax:

One point we failed to mention is that Mrs. Kerry paid only a token Social Security tax. That’s because the payroll tax is assessed on wages, and Mrs. Kerry declared very little wage income. She gets most of her income from dividends and interest, as many wealthy people do. This is fine by us, but it is one more advantage she has over the vast majority of Americans who draw a weekly paycheck and must (with their employer) cough up the 15.3% payroll levy.

And that advantage is just one of many that super-rich folks such as Ms. Heinz-Kerry enjoys under that income tax system that Mr. Kerry seeks to perpetuate:

Our main point is that this is one more advantage Mrs. Kerry would have over working stiffs on salary if her husband wins the White House and follows through on his plan to raise taxes.
It’s very hard to dodge a tax increase on salary income, especially for middle-class folk who need the money. Many couples who earn more than $200,000 a year are non-wealthy Americans who happen to be at the peak of their earning years and have big bills (such as college educations) to meet now or down the road. They haven’t had time — or been lucky enough to marry rich — to build up the assets to be able to live off tax-free investments the way Mrs. Kerry can. The super-rich, as opposed to the merely successful, are the ones who are really able to avoid taxes — which, come to think of it, may be why so many billionaires are supporting John Kerry.

The data on average tax rates actually reflects the highly progressive nature of the tax system, except for the super-rich who can hire lawyers and accountants to avoid paying taxes:

As it happens, the IRS has just released its data on individual income tax returns for 2002. And they reinforce our point about average tax rates. Recall that Mrs. Kerry paid an average tax rate of 12.4% on her declared income of $5.07 million. In 2002, even after the first round of Bush tax cuts, the average rate paid by all taxpayers was still higher than that at 13.03%.
As for the folks in her wealthy neighborhood, in 2002 the top 1% of taxpayers paid an average rate (also known as the effective tax rate) of 27.25%. By the way, the income threshold for getting into that 1% group was only $285,424, down substantially from 2000 and 2001. And that same top 1% of earners paid 33.7% of all income taxes in 2002. The way to think about these numbers is that, despite the Bush tax cuts that allegedly so favored the rich, the tax code remains highly progressive. And these people kept paying the lion’s share of all taxes even though their earnings declined amid the recession and stock-market slump.

But the most interesting question in regard to Ms. Heinz-Kerry’s tax return is the following:

But back to Mrs. Kerry: Some readers wondered how she could be worth nearly $1 billion (as the Los Angeles Times has estimated) and earn only $5.07 million in 2003. Good question. It’s impossible to tell given that Mrs. Kerry has disclosed only two pages of her 1040 form and declines to explain how her assets are deployed. But we agree with those readers who suggest that much of her wealth must be tied up in trusts and estates that don’t require a declaration of income. Like many of the super-rich, Mrs. Kerry can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to create these shelters for her and her heirs.
The late, great Wall Street Journal editor Barney Kilgore used to say that the rich don’t mind high taxes because they already have their money. Mrs. Kerry and her husband are cases in point.

Inasmuch as the Bush Administration has done nothing during its first four years on making the income tax system in the U.S. simpler and more transparent, it is disappointing to me that the Democratic challenger’s platform in this area is a hypocritical and demogogic appeal for votes rather than a substantive proposal for reform of a broken system.