Saturday, May 3 The cover of a recent issue of The New Yorker depicts a medieval vision of hell, row upon row of suffering souls in various stages of agony. At the top, subject to the lesser torments, are shown "politicians who promised to cut taxes." Just below, beset by serpents, are "politicians who promised to balance the budget." The bottom, the very hottest part of hell, is reserved for "politicians who promised to cut taxes and balance the budget." That's about the size of the credibility gap facing the three parties that, together, are contending for about 80 per cent of the vote (90 per cent outside Quebec): Liberal, Reform and Conservative. All three promise to cut taxes and balance the budget -- or indeed bring in surpluses -- a measure of the voters' longing for both, after years of higher taxes chasing ever higher debt interest costs. Yet, to date, the opposition parties' eye-popping pledges of multi-billion dollar tax cuts have failed to catch the public's fancy.

The polls have consistently shown that Canadians are wary of tax cuts. Bitter experience has taught them to disbelieve anything coming out of a politician's mouth. What is more, voters have manifestly got the message about the perils of the still-mounting federal debt. The deeper the tax cut, the more the party that offers it is vulnerable to charges of sacrificing long- term fiscal and social responsibility on the altar of immediate personal gain.

For tax cuts to gain any traction in this campaign, then, the party that wishes to ride them to power must satisfy voters of three things: that you'll do it; that it won't bust the budget; and that there is some good to be achieved that is commensurate to the risk.

The first remains the most intractable obstacle. The Ontario Conservative party's 1995 electoral victory provides the template for success in this regard; Bob Dole's crashing defeat in the U.S. presidential election the following year offers the opposite lesson.

The Mike Harris Tories went to quite extraordinary lengths to convince the electorate they meant what they said. The very size of the proposed cut, 30 per cent, suggested this was not the usual political fodder. The party released its platform a year in advance, and campaigned on it with single-minded focus. Harris even promised to resign if he did not follow through. By election day, party strategists estimate the voters assigned perhaps a 50 per cent probability to the tax cut. As it turned out, that was just enough.

By contrast, Dole seized on the promise of a 15 per cent tax cut comparatively late in the day, after a career built on putting balanced budgets ahead of cutting taxes. It was a transparently opportunistic, not to say desperate move: even if he genuinely thought it was a good idea, voters were unlikely to be persuaded he would stick with it in the face of determined political opposition.

How do the federal parties rate in this regard? Whether it is wise policy or not, it is easiest to believe Reform would carry out its proposed $12-billion tax cut. The party's whole history has been devoted to the proposition that smaller government is better. The platform's credibility is buttressed by measures that would allow the voters to keep MPs on a short leash: recall, referendums and the like.

Jean Charest, on the other hand, had shown no interest in the subject of tax cuts before the last six months. There is a peculiarly cunning feel to the Tory platform, not least in its inclusion of cuts that would not take place until a second term. As for the Liberals, their commitment to cutting taxes may be measured by the single passing reference, buried deep in a 102-page manifesto, to which the subject is assigned: an unelaborated and obviously reluctant pledge to devote part of one-half of any eventual fiscal surplus to tax reduction.

Not that that gives the Grits the leg up on the second test, fiscal responsibility. Frankly there isn't a great deal to choose between the parties on this score. Whether the deficit is eliminated in 1998-99, as Reform proposes, or a year later, as the other two parties prefer, is not terribly meaningful, especially since in all likelihood it will come within spitting distance of zero in the current fiscal year. It's the debt that matters, not the deficit. In essence, all three parties propose broadly similar debt-reduction schedules: Reform and the Tories would only pursue theirs at much lower levels of spending and taxes than the Liberals.

The biggest problem facing the opposition remains the lack of a convincing rationale for cutting taxes now, rather than later, when the debt is under better control. The rhetoric remains mired in notions of "putting more money in consumers' pockets," the better to "stimulate" the economy: a policy that is neither necessary, given the consumer boom currently under way, nor effective, given offsetting cuts in program spending.

There are reasons to reduce Canada's punishingly high marginal tax rates.

But they are long-term, rather than short-term, and not amenable to quick political gains. Which, to a politician, is hell on earth.