Misery Index' Sets Up Challenge for Dukakis
For a candidate who says he will win on the basis of fundamental economic issues, the central political problem facing Michael S. Dukakis as he prepares to resume campaigning Monday is contained in these numbers: 13.5, 20.6, 9.7.</br></br>In 1976, the Democrats invented "the misery index," a number combining the current unemployment and inflation rates. At this time that year, the index stood at 13.5-the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent and inflation was 5.7 percent-and the individual suffering that those numbers represented helped Democrat Jimmy Carter defeat President Gerald R. Ford.</br></br>But like Frankenstein's monster, the misery index has turned against its creator in every presidential election since 1976. In the late summer of 1980 it stood at 20.6, setting the stage for Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Carter. Today, the index is at 9.7, less than half the Carter level and 28 percent lower than under Ford.</br></br>Coupled with a relatively stable international situation and apparent improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations, this blunt measure of domestic prosperity has provided Republican presidential nominee George Bush with the classic "peace and prosperity" formula on which to campaign. It has also left Democratic nominee Dukakis with the difficult task of convincing the country that the numbers do not add up to what they seem.</br></br>Beginning Monday, Dukakis will resume that task, returning to his central economic message in the critical days leading up to his first nationally televised debate with Bush a week from tonight. From the beginning of the general election campaign, Dukakis strategists have argued that the election outcome eventually would turn on fundamental attitudes toward the economy and the country's economic future.