There are few more ominous signs of a grim read ahead than "advance praise" by the pompous, pedestrian, and stupendously dull Bill Bradley. According to the former New Jersey lawmaker, "Death by a Thousand Cuts" (Princeton University Press, 372 pages, $29.95) is "immensely readable ... an illuminating look at the estate tax and its implications for future American tax policy." The phrases "tax policy" and "immensely readable" are not usually found in the same sentence, but Mr. Bradley is, for once, quite right. Written in a bright, breezy style, "Death by a Thousand Cuts" is as about as accessible as a book about tax could ever hope to be. It is, indeed, "illuminating," but not in the way that the much unmissed senator would like you to think.
While "Death by a Thousand Cuts," a chronicle of the events leading up to the repeal of the death tax, has much that is intriguing to say about that blessed event, its real interest is as evidence of the way many members of the liberal establishment (the book's authors are both professors at Yale) have been left by an electorate set on ignoring their advice. Accepting that they simply lost the argument is out of the question. Instead they prefer to fall back on "forgive them; for they know not what they do" as an excuse for the voters' intolerable behavior - an explanation that is, when coming from anyone other than a messiah, remarkably patronizing.
So, for example, Thomas Frank, the writer of the best-selling "What's the Matter With Kansas?" a sporadically entertaining, if nutty, polemic, concludes that the inhabitants of Toto's home turf (and by implication much of the rest of the country) have been so befuddled by the culture wars that they fail to understand that their self-interest really would be best served by adopting the economic policies of William Jennings Bryan. "Death by a Thousand Cuts" shares that same disdain for the average voter. Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro throw a highbrow hissy fit at the gullibility, effrontery, and downright stupidity of a nation of rubes unwilling or unable to understand what is in their best interest.
Struck by the fact that only around 2% of corpses will actually pay the death tax (the tax euphemistically referred to as the "estate tax"), the authors conclude that the widespread opposition to this squalid levy among the less affluent can be explained by their ignorance and, more sinisterly, the manipulation of that ignorance by a small coterie of determined ideologues conspiring to end "progressive" taxation, trash the New Deal, wreck the Great Society, and, doubtless, slaughter the firstborn. Okay, perhaps not the last.
For tales of conspiracy to resonate, however, the conspirators need a little heft and a lot of secrecy. The difficulty faced by the authors of this book is that the principal plotters - a think tank or two and, inevitably in a tax scrap, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform - look a touch puny, and they did much of what they did in public. They were trying to win a debate, and it's difficult to object to that. To beef up the sense of menace, therefore, Messrs. Graetz and Shapiro throw in tales of funding by "big money" and the "ultrarich," including Richard Mellon Scaife, a useful bogeyman since, at least, the dog days of the Lewinsky era.
The handy implication is that the abolition of the death tax owed as much to plutocratic selfishness as it did to genuine political conviction. Better still, if the authors can show that defenders of the tax were outspent by those who wanted to scrap it, then they can argue that it was not ideas that made the difference, but cash. The problem is that, despite a chapter subtly titled "Money, Money, Money," they cannot.
While the abolitionists may ultimately have had more resources specifically dedicated to this issue than their opponents, the death tax had enormous institutional support. Immune from serious challenge for decades, it was seen in Washington, in the academy, and in the press as part of the social consensus, as American as apple pie and April 15. Those who challenged it were underdogs, no-hopers, long shots - Davids, not Goliaths. But, as Davids are sometimes prone to do, on this occasion they won.
To claim, as Messrs. Graetz and Shapiro try so hard to do, that this was principally a triumph of generous funding, canny propaganda, and false consciousness is nonsense. The death tax may have been levied on the few, but it did its unfair share to darken the dreams of the many. As voters came to understand, and as was proved by the repeated reluctance of politicians to increase the level at which it began to bite (in 1993 Dick Gephardt even proposed lowering it to include estates of $200,000), the death tax was an attack on aspiration, a door slammed in the face of those strivers essential to the success of any economy - strivers who unlike the very rich have neither the time nor the money to construct elaborate shelters against the depredations of a greedy government.
Even now the death tax is not dead. It will shrink over the next few years until "final" repeal in 2010, only to come roaring back from - and for - the dead in 2011.This will not only undo all the good that will flow from its demise, but will also make 2010 an exceptionally perilous year for rich folk with greedy relatives. A far better course would be to put a stake through this monster's heart once and for all - and soon. Mr. Norquist? Professor Van Helsing?
