Investment Gap' Serves as a Rallying Cry; Clinton, Following in Predecessors' Footsteps, Uses Warlike Metaphor to Justify Policies
John Kennedy vowed to close the "missile gap." Ronald Reagan warned of the "window of vulnerability." Each used the warlike imagery to rally the American public behind his program.</br></br>Now Bill Clinton has hit upon thedefining metaphor for his new administration: the "investment gap" that exists between the United States and its economic competitors, Japan and Germany.</br></br>To hear it from the president-elect and a steady stream of like-minded speakers at today's confab here, the United States has been on a 20-year economic decline because of the reluctance of business to fund research and the purchase of new equipment, and the failure of government to provide decent public schools and upgrade the country's stock of bridges, roads and water systems.</br></br>"We must invest in our people - their education, their training and their skills," Clinton said. "We must increase investment, both public and private, to create jobs."</br></br>Presidential historians say creating a simple, stark rallying cry to focus public attention is a familiar technique, in peace and war.