Ideas buried in scary hyperbole

Cedar Rapids will play host to President Obama today. Or, as the chairman of the Republican National Committee insisted over the weekend, the man who will put “an end to our way of life in America.” An enemy of both liberty and freedom, apparently.

I bring this up not to start some rant about the reckless hyperbole that has bludgeoned all sense of responsible decency from our politics. Another day. Instead, I think it's striking to cast that sort of bombast against the real policy debate, which is about as vanilla and conventional as you can get.

Basically, the president will roll in to tell us, once again, he wants to make current tax cuts for middle and lower income Americans permanent while raising taxes on the top two income brackets, from the current 33 to 36 percent and from 35 to 39.6 percent. The 10-, 15- and 25-percent levels stay the same. Not new.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney would lower all current brackets by 20 percent, so 35 would drop to 28, and so on. Romney would reduce taxes on some capital gains, while Obama would raise the capital gains rate and tax dividends, for those earning more than $200,000, and carried interest income like regular income. Both candidates would cut corporate taxes, Obama from 35 to 28 percent, Romney to 25 percent. Both say they would cover budget gaps by closing loopholes and ending some deductions. Obama has targeted breaks that go to wealthier earners. Romney has yet to fully detail his plan. He has signed on to U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, with deeper tax cuts and big cuts in social programs.

A good, broader summary of what we know about each candidate's tax plans can be found here.

Among a long list of economic policy proposals, Romney wants to ramp up domestic energy production, seek trade agreements, get tough with China on trade and, of course, repeal ObamaCare. Obama wants incentives for manufacturers and other businesses that create jobs, to spend more on infrastructure projects, boost local and state public sector jobs, and double the current payroll tax cut.

Now, you can argue the merits of these approaches and priorities. Maybe you think raising top taxes back to 1990s levels will scuttle fragile growth. Iowans who watched I-JOBS know the limits of infrastructure job creation.

Maybe Romney's tax plans will simply make income gaps worse, without much proof that jobs will follow. And how is it that a guy who saw mandatory health coverage as a top priority for his state now sees private health insurance exchanges as tyranny?

You can call this stuff good or bad. You might even notice that there's not much new, creative or innovative here.

But what you really cannot argue, honestly, is that any of this stuff would “end” America. And, actually, a mixture of the candidates' ideas might work best. But now that demonizing has buried compromising, that's not going to happen. No matter who wins.