Since the Bush-Cheney campaign has moved heaven and earth to make the incumbent's character his trump card in this election, it's about time everybody asked whether simple honesty is a character trait that should be valued in a president.

The strange nature of Mr. Bush's parallel universe has been especially apparent in his campaign's recent attempts to frame the debate on health care policy. Just yesterday, the president said John Kerry "has got a massive, complicated blueprint to have our government take over the decision making in health care." The Bush-Cheney campaign is currently running an ad that not only repeats the "big government" charge about Kerry's health care plan, but also asserts that "President Bush and our leaders in Congress have a practical plan."

Both claims are laughably out of line with reality, especially if you look at them closely. Consider these characterizations of Kerry's health plan from the official Bush-Cheney website:

The Kerry Health Care Plan Will Lead to Government-Run Health Insurance.
John Kerry's health care plan amounts to little more than the same government-run health insurance schemes proposed by Hillary Clinton in the 1990s. The Kerry health plan will ration care and place significant restrictions on the services and medicines that doctors can prescribe. Meanwhile, it will displace Americans with quality coverage and force them to accept a government-run health care plan that is less effective, less efficient, and more restrictive.

It's hard to know where to begin in analyzing these four sentences of total nonsense. The general effort to identify the Kerry plan with ClintonCare is a deliberate distortion of both. The Progressive Policy Institute's Health Policy Wire put it best: "As an organization that opposed President Clinton's health care proposal because it violated the principles of managed competition by imposing price controls and government limits on health care spending, we can assure you that John Kerry's health care plan is not the same as President Clinton's." The Bush-Cheney claim that Kerry's plan involves rationing of health care or restrictions on services and medicines is literally made up out of thin air.

And the nonpartisan Centrists.org said: "Kerry's proposal avoids the usual pitfalls of Democratic health care proposals... The plan wouldn't over-regulate the health system. It doesn't attempt to guarantee universal coverage on the cheap... Three elements of the Kerry plan -- (1) the 'premium rebate' subsidies for the health insurance costs of the sickest patients, (2) the group purchasing system for small businesses and (3) expanded public-sector coverage for people under poverty -- are likely to attract ongoing bipartisan support, regardless of who wins the election this fall."

The "government-run health care plan" the Bush-Cheney web page refers to is the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHPB), which provides health insurance options for public employees, including the president and the Congress. Kerry, like many other policymakers from both parties, suggests that Americans be given the opportunity to voluntarily join the FEHBP system, benefiting from the purchasing power of the plan and its broad array of choices for individual coverage. Interestingly enough, the president himself proposed making FEHBP the centerpiece for Medicare reform as one of the many now-discarded promises of his 2000 campaign.

Here's another howler from that same Bush-Cheney web page:

The Kerry Health Care Plan Will Cause Employers to Drop Existing Coverage.
Sen. Kerry's health plan gives all employers the incentive to drop the quality coverage they currently provide to their employees. The Kerry health care plan creates a new, government-sponsored health insurance plan that employers can place their employees into. Because they realize the government-run plan is available to their employees, employers will not hesitate to drop coverage and save themselves the administrative hassle of continuing to run their own health care plan.

In fact, the Kerry plan takes great pains to build on the strengths of existing coverage, especially employer-based coverage. The FEHBP buy-in proposal in no way encourages employers to "drop coverage;" in fact, it simply offers them the opportunity to offer their employees greater health insurance options at lower costs.

Bush's own plan, however, does undermine existing coverage. Its central thrust is to encourage the purchasing of individual health insurance policies, which are often far too expensive for middle-class employees, especially those with chronic health care conditions.

Moreover, the single biggest threat to existing employer-based coverage is skyrocketing premiums, which, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, have gone up an average of $3,512 per family since the incumbent took office. That's one of the reasons the ranks of the uninsured have gone up more than 5 million during the same period. And whatever you think of the Kerry health plan in general, its most striking feature is a determined effort to hold down rising health costs, especially though its proposal to subsidize coverage for the sickest, and highest-cost patients.

But there's the problem: It took the Bush-Cheney campaign two paragraphs to completely mischaracterize Sen. Kerry's health plan, and about 800 words to refute the lies. In health care, as in other dimensions of Mr. Bush's parallel universe, the incumbent is relying on the simplicity and consistency that systematic dishonesty makes possible.

The weak link in this strategy is that Americans live not in Bush's parallel universe, but in the real world, where people are working harder, making less money, paying more for health care and other essentials, sagging under the burden of public and private debt, and enjoying less security -- personal and national -- than they deserve.

This real world should be the focus of the choice Americans will make during the remainder of the presidential contest.

Blueprint Keywords: Extra Bush Record