The Chaff

Saturday, December 10th, 2005

A Modest Proposal

A neighbor of mine wants to start a third political party, and that’s got me thinking about “If I were in charge” scenarios. There’s also a lot of talk about “getting the Democrats to stay on message” and “unified thinking is what we need.”

I think a large part of the problem is that we try to be homogenous. To me, it would be much more effective if all the disparite groups within the progressive sphere maintained their separate identities but cooperated on important issues. Right now, the Right paints the progressives, liberal, and Democrats a single, fringe entity: “The Move-on crowd” or “Michael Moore” or “Goerge Soros” (pick your demon du jour).

At the same time, you hear the Right-wing spokespeople say things like, “I’m an independent, but George Bush is god!” or “I’m a jewish libertarian, but I can see how the liberals are persecuting Christians.” This give their message an third-party objectivity halo that they strip from Democrats by reducing the disparate voice of the party to “You just hate Bush and love Gays (pun intended)! Note how Republicans tout themselves as the “big tent” party and bristle when anyone points out the white-straight-rich-Christian-male hegemony that controls the party. They see our “big tent” strength, claim it for themselvess, and berate us for not having it. Standard Rovian psychology.

So if I were in charge (scary thought!), I would encourage unity of message on only a single issue: unions against the war, veterans against the war, parents against the war, students against the war, Christians against the war, etc. Pick two or three issues at a time and encourage all our disparate groups to come together on those issues only. In a perfect world, we can pick issues that clearly benefit all groups even if they don’t address a group’s “top issue”. We pledge to support other issues where possible, and most importantly, to NOT BETRAY the other groups’ issues, even if we can’t actively promote them right now. (e.g., I will block any attempt to restrict women’s rights if you help me get out of Iraq. Once we’re out of Iraq, then we’ll turn our attention to women’s rights.)

What issues? There are three obvious ones, to me:

1) Iraq. It’s a money pit, a blood pit, and a reputation pit. The message should be, to me, something like:
- We must make it clear to the Iraqis and the other nations in the area that we are not staying, perhaps by setting a series of conditions that trigger our departure when met;
- We must stop construction on the 14 permanent bases; we must reign in out of control contractors and hold all US personnel accountable for their actions;
- We should ask the UN to help stabilize the country–ideally, we should try to replace contractors with UN troops;
- We must demand close accounting of the corruption and fraud in Iraqi reconstruction;
- We must turn over the majority of reconstruction projects to Iraqis.
- Make it clear that these are our best suggestions considering that we are not in possession of all the “classified” information. Exact details on how best to implement these plans cannot be provided under those circumstances, and anyone who gives you hard and fast answers without knowing the full story is either an idealogue, an idiot, or both–not to be trusted.

2) Corruption, cronyism, and incompetance. Why do we not have have job descriptions and minimum requirements for every appointee in the government? What kind of “CEO president” is this, that runs the largest organization in the world without a Human Resources department? The realtionship between lawmakers and lobbyists needs to be reviewed, particularly Delay’s entire K Street Project. The GAO should be expanded and strengthened. There should be a law that Congress must address all reports of illegal or unethical activity that comes out of the GAO.

3) National health care. This helps businesses, labor unions, and average workers who are all struggling with rising health care costs. It increases productivity and reduces lost wages due to unpaid sick leave. It helps doctors, pharmacies, and hospitals by reducing administrative overhead. It helps the very old and the very young. It empowers women (in my personal experience, gynocological procedures have the least support from insurance companies), and it will enable many women who feel economically forced to choose abortion to have more options open to them.

Progressivism is about the most good for the most people. That should be the unified message.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 10th, 2005 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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