I agree with the first five promises, but there is a critical one missing, and that is the reform of public education. NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND is a joke. As a former high school teacher in a low-income neighborhood of Los Angeles, I witnessed the failure of the public education system first-hand. As long as education is not equal for all Americans, the American dream of anyone succeeding is a myth. The first part of the promise? Every American student should have a laptop computer and Internet access. Those items are the equivalent to previous generations' text books, and we did not expect students to supply those. That's my opinion.

That makes a lot of sense. OK. let's make it six promises. I think we can expand the list without necessarily losing promotional focus. The key talking point isn't to try to cover all 6 promises in every sound bite - rather, what needs to always be repeated is the simple existence of the list. That's how Contract With America worked - it had all sorts of stuff in it (including term limits, something they'd rather we forget now that many of the class of '94 have overstayed their promised limits). What made it work wasn't so much specific policy proposals as the rhetoric of offering a set of promises - a contract to the voters. It was a sign of seriousness and ideological coherence, and voters jumped at the alternative to the status quo. Newt Gingrich may be a crackpot and a jerk, but he's also a very savvy political innovator. There's no reason the Dems can't borrow from his bag of tricks, and run on a heavily-hyped set of promises in 2006. (Actually, they should also be emulating Karl Rove, who knows that you always keep the base happy and motivated. Where are the next generation of Demoratic grand strategists? Who will save us from Bob Shrum?)

The line to use is, "The Bush Admistration has no plan for the future other to than stay the course, as if that's working. We'll turn this country around with these six promises to you."

You play up the integrity angle, like Carter did in '76 when he promised to never lie to the American people. In fact, that's a great line to revive, given how much of the current backlash against Bush is based on the realization that he's lied about Iraq, lied about Katrina, and perhaps lied about aspects of 9/11.

Huzzah! If there was such a contract, the Democrats would FINALLY, FINALLY at long last actually STAND for something other than getting elected.

And that's honestly the Dems' biggest problem, speaking as an outsider. It seems like since 2000, it's been all about "well, vote for us: we're not Bush" and no definitive campaign statements about anything. In the presidential campaign, this led to endless vaguities from Kerry promising to fight a "stronger war on terror" without having the guts to articulate what that meant exactly.

I agree: add the committment to education and make it a solid, designed policy not some vaguity. Raise minimum wage = yes. Reform political system = yes and again- BE SPECIFIC and definitely go with the Manhattan Project.

Withdrawal from Iraq is complicated. Though I favour it, I should point out that if the U.S. chooses to do this w/o proper ally consultation, it runs the risk of becoming a 'pot-kettle-black' situation because the Dems have hammered the Republicans' for tarnishing the U.S.' reputation with its non-warring allies. Also, by addressing this, what do you then say about the situation in Afghanistan?

The creation of universal health care......that's even stickier. Does that or does that not preclude two-tier health care? You're going to have to be clear before making such a promise.

I definitely agree, Ted; it's time for such a contract to be established.

BMN

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: