There's No Excuse This Time

May-June 1996

WASHINGTON, D.C.—No excuse for what? For the Dole and Clinton campaigns not to produce the highest level of debate in decades about the future of the United States both domestically and internationally.

Why not? Because here we have two long-term politicians, each with a substantial record and each now clearly leading his party, who together face a public that may not trust any politician much longer. Neither man can be ignorant of the fact that politics as usual no longer attracts a majority of citizens. Neither can be unaware that most voters either will not vote or will prefer a third-party candidate. If, over the next six months, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole do not engage in serious and substantial arguments on a wide range of issues, including the nature of presidential leadership itself, then we will know that the country really is in political trouble.

It actually helps that Clinton and Dole share a number of goals: to balance the federal budget, to reform the welfare and health-care systems, to maintain free trade, to support Israel and the Middle East peace process, and to maintain a strong economy. They also share a similar approach: neither is a radical in his own party; both are given to working out compromises. So we should expect them to explain how they plan to achieve their similar goals, each in his own way, and to tell us why their remaining differences are so important—the differences on abortion, education reform, tax policies, military spending, foreign policy, and more.

What we desperately need at this juncture in American politics is a comprehensive public debate about how government, and not just one policy or another, should change. The past decade has witnessed the collapse of the Communist bloc and produced a growing consensus in the U.S. that the federal government must cut back or reorient many of its policies. The American people want a new vision for the future.

Dole starts out looking much like George Bush with respect to the "vision thing," and he may have little to offer beyond his confidence in the art of deal making. Clinton looked like a new Democrat four years ago, but now it's hard to know what he is. One commentator described this year's presidential contest as "wishy vs. washy."

Nevertheless, we citizens must not take cynicism as our starting point.

We must try to push the candidates to do much more than they might be inclined to do. If at this crucial juncture of American history we cannot get these two leaders to show us where they want to take the country, then we—and not only they—will have failed. By means of call-in radio shows, letters to the editors of our newspapers, and direct appeals to party leaders and the candidates themselves, we must demand that they tell us:

1. Who will make up your administrative team and how will you hold them together and direct them toward the ends you espouse?

2. How ought government to change its ways of dealing with families and schools, churches and hospitals, businesses and service organizations?

3. How should the federal government reform Social Security and Medicare as well as other big-spending programs so that budget-balancing will benefit the poor and the country as a whole, not just those who are well off.

4. What is the best way to reform the tax system, if it needs to be reformed?

5. What are your five most important foreign-policy principles and how do they hold together in your vision for reshaping America's role in the world?

—The Editor