Joe Klein has a great piece in Time outlining what’s wrong with the Democrats right now and what they need to do. The latter is particularly appreciated, as everyone seems to offer their criticisms, but little imaginative as a solution. Here’s Klein’s:
They will have to convince the public that they are as committed to national defense, and to the judicious use of military force, as the Republicans are. They will have to shed their congenital pessimism. They can’t just rant against the Administration and hope for bad news to confirm their prejudices. They will have to propose firm, reasonable policy alternatives that are easy to understand and defend. If they oppose the Bush tax cuts, they will have to lay out, in some detail, what they would do instead.
Finally, they will have to change the mingy, defensive, consultant-driven style of recent campaigns. They will need a candidate who is easy in his skin, who sounds different from other politiciansÂ-freer, perhaps; funnier, certainlyÂ-and who is confident enough to risk broad, bold themes that capture the national imagination rather than parsing the special yearnings of enough demographic slivers to win the election. Camouflage will not be enough this time.
The specific policy positions that Klein recommends - tax credits, environmenal gadgets like the hydrogen car - strike me as extremely misguided and precisely the kind of micro-policy stands that got Gore in trouble. So might I suggest my own counter-intuitive policy stands:
1) Pollution vouchers and other incentive-based environmental policy: the Republicans have been arguing for this for years. Not only could they coopt the right’s gambit at environmental posture, they could find out that the economists are right.
2) National, socialized health care. Only they can’t call it “single payer system” because no one who’s not a policy wonk knows exactly what that means. It can’t be insurance based or revolve around employer tax credits or tricky accounting of Medical budgets. It needs simply to address rising costs and lack of coverage. Of course there will be resistance to this, but given that consumers are frustrated with HMOs and employers with rising costs, a bold solution may be in order.
3) Tax code simplification: again, coopting the Republicans on this one can help us address a real desire for tax code simplicity (and any economic benefits) while maintaining tax progressivity and ultimate fairness. Clintonian tax credits may have sounded warm and fuzzy at the time, but in the long run they have obfuscated the issue of whether taxes are a fair burden for services received. The Democrats have an uphill battle in convincing people that government is necessary and can do good, we don’t need to make that battle harder.
Looking at these, I suppose my dream candidate is not out there right now. But that’s not really my concern - my concern is how to take the necessary adoption of the political center and use it to the advantage of helping the poor, protecting the environment and generally serving the citizenry.
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