Now that the GOP has become the party of reckless tax cuts and “what, me worry?” deficits, the Democrats have a chance to recast themselves as the party of fiscal discipline. But to judge by the Democratic presidential candidates, fiscal discipline has its limits: It stops at the edge of tackling the real dangers to the country’s solvency, Social Security and Medicare. The candidates call for repealing President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; they even venture to endorse doing away with middle-class breaks.

But while undoing the tax cuts might be necessary to restore the nation’s fiscal health, it won’t be sufficient, and all the candidates know that.

None of them, however, dares to whisper about a possible trimming of entitlement benefits, say, raising the retirement age for Social Security eligibility or means-testing Medicare. Indeed, to the extent they’ve hinted at anything so responsible in the past, they are flaying each other for past crimes of common sense – and backpedaling as rapidly as possible.

Last week’s Democratic debate in New York – in particular an exchange between Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt and former Vermont governor Howard Dean – offered a sorry illustration of this allergy to honest discussion. First Gephardt rejected any notion of raising the retirement age, noting that he had voted for an increase to 67 back in 1983 and was sticking with that number. He was quickly matched in that pledge by Dean, who had once suggested – gasp! – raising the retirement age as high as 70. Then, in case anyone was troubled by that departure from Democratic orthodoxy, Dean noted that Gephardt had strayed even further by entertaining the notion of means-testing Social Security and Medicare, “something,” Dean hastened to say, “that I have never considered.” Whereupon Gephardt lit into Dean for supporting “at our darkest hour … the very plan that Newt Gingrich wanted to pass” on Medicare. Dean’s Medicare heresy? He wanted to slow the growth rate of the program.