Points of light
I’m not sure anyone is ready for another John Kerry presidential campaign. Apparently the senator is pondering one, but he had a clean shot two years ago, and we’re still paying the price for his inability to exploit it.
Still, Kerry apparently has a new, terse and catchy ten-point plan, and before you snicker, hear him out (from today’s Times):
| “Tell the truth. Fire the incompetents. Find Osama bin Laden and secure our ports and our homeland. Bring our troops home from Iraq. Obey the law and protect our civil rights,” Mr. Kerry said in ticking off his list, which also included supporting health care, education, lobbying reform and alternatives to oil, as well as reducing the deficit. |
Sounds like a plan to me. I wish the 10 points were out there on Kerry’s web site, but I couldn’t find them anywhere.
If the Democrats are rooting around for a 2006 equivalent to the Republicans’ 1994 “Contract with America,” they could adopt these points, which have the virtues of directness and good sense — and which neatly underscore the Bush administration’s abject failures to be honest, competent, to defeat our enemies, to bring an ill-considered war to an end, and on down the list. It’s good rhetoric, and that’s something Democrats could use.
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September 18th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Kerry’s is a list of platitudinous objectives — not a plan. Find Bin Laden, bring the troops home? Who would disagree? But tell us how.
As badly as Democrats need good rhetoric, they need much more than that.
With a few exceptions, they offer no well-defined alternatives, no straight talk and discussion of the very real trade-offs that will be required to achieve these goals — just platitudes like “We can do better” and “We need to involve our allies.”
Even Barak Obama, in his remarks in Iowa the other day, descended into the all-too-common combination of Bush-bashing and platitudes, as if he were reading from the party talking points.
If these guys (and gal) ever expect to lead again, they need to be honest about the difficulty of achieving any of the objectives in Kerry’s list — and show us why we should believe they have the experience, will, and leadership to do what the Bush Administration cannot. Bush-hating and stating the obvious problems are not enough.