Decius wrote:
flynn23 wrote:
That's what you would put at the top of your list? What about reversing the Constitutional damage caused over the last 6 years? Bolstering our resolve on torture, wire tapping the populace, detaining 'illegal combatants', and reforming the Patriot Act to make some sense would be at the top of my list.
What do you expect to see here? I think things will be more reserved, and I'm very happy about that, but the President will veto anything substantial. The debate over the Surveillance bill ought to be very different. They might even let the court challenge proceed. The President cannot force them to stop it. But they won't impeach him for violating FISA. More process around National Security Letters would be nice, but they might let the court challenge complete. If the President has to come back to Congress they'll be more likely to be able to do what they want than if they pass a modification he doesn't need and doesn't want. I don't think they will reverse the recent suspension of haebus for green card holders, as much as I think they should. The President would veto that.
Basically, I think they'll now begin serving their Constitutional role as a check upon the President. But I don't think they're in a position to do much more, and worse, I don't think a Democratic President would do more. Politicians only advocate civil liberties when they aren't in power.
Follow that with a reasonable exit plan for Iraq and a strategy for North Korea and Iran. It would also be helpful if we could work out a deal with Pakistan. How about 'unilateral trade' in exchange for one dead 6'4" diabetic?
I think these are things that the administration mostly does. They will start asking hard questions about Iraq, and thats good, because the administration will have less room to ignore smart advice. Again, a check, but no more.
Next on the list would be massive educational reform to give our society the tools and training necessary to be competitive for the next 40 years. Closely followed with a rebuilt health care system that is outcomes and quality aligned, rather than pockets lined. A new resolve around alternative energy, with a 10 year mandate of reducing dependance on foreign petroleum by 50% seems like a reasonable goal. Probably not as hard as putting a man on the moon in 10 years.
All of these things would be nice, but my pessimism says that I don't think they'll get any further with heathcare than the Republican's got with social security. You're asking for real leadership on domestic issues!
To cap it off, campaign finance and voting procedure reform - call it the Democracy for the 21st Century Bill - would be in order. Open source and peer reviewed tools and processes for elections as well as stricter campaign finance laws closing the loop holes and getting the corporations and lobbyists out of the process.
We just had a round of cf reform. I'm not convinced it did well. I don't think I should be able to go on the Internet and figure out which political party my coworkers donated money to, and I'm not convinced the restrictions on speech aren't, well, restrictions on speech. I think we need to find a way to get people to stop voting on partisan lines and start objectively evaluating candidates based on voter guides. The marketing dollars are only going to replaced with substantive dialog to the degree that people stop responding to marketing and start looking for substantive dialog. Basically, I think we are as much the problem as they are. The culture of politics needs to change. But how do you do that?
My wish list was exactly that, not what I would've considered to be a real endeavor by the new House and Senate. While I'm glad that the balance has shifted, if only because it seems to foster actually getting something done when there's a split between administration and Congressional control, the Dems haven't formulated a strategy for any single issue. I'm longing for another party to start up that actually puts these issues into a process of evaluation and recommendation. The Dems won purely on the fact that everyone is fed up with nothing happening with the current regime. I think that was the case in 2004, but Kerry was such a lame duck candidate that he couldn't carry the ball over the goal line, despite the fact that at least 49% of the populace was sick of the Bush regime.
As regards campaign reform, I completely agree with you. Our society has to change in order for the process to be optimal. But that can't happen without educational reform - in which drill & repeat is replaced by critical analysis skills - and some guard rails on how campaigns are financed to try and cut down on the corporate control of the government. But before any of that can happen, we need to get the basic process vetted. We can't have private corporations providing for the tools and process of getting people elected in a closed and secretly held system. If the most simple and very first step of our democracy is rotting, then we need to fix it. That foundation can then be used to rebuild the remaining parts. If the votes are fraudulent, then it doesn't matter whether it was an educated and informed vote or not. The system needs to be corrected first, and then the content within it can improve.
