Last week, I wrote about an upcoming gathering of Bloomberg and several moderate D’s and R’s to discuss the need for more centrism… or at least less hostile partisanship… in American politics, perhaps embodied by a centrist/independent/third party candidacy for President.
Real Clear Politics has offered a top 10 wishlist for causes attendees of that shindig to consider as a platform, as opined by Mort Kondracke.
I mostly like the list, and therefore I’ll share it here:
- [P]rovide American children with world-class public education[...]
- Provide universal early-childhood education.[...]
- Double federal support for basic scientific research.[...]
- Make Social Security solvent[...]
- Means-test Medicare benefits and use the soon-to-be-insolvent Medicare system to prod the U.S. health care industry toward rewarding providers for keeping people healthy, not simply treating illness.
- Reform the U.S. health care system by making private insurance coverage mandatory, with tax credits available for people and small businesses that can’t afford premiums.[...]
- Control America’s borders once and for all—with fences, where needed. Provide legal opportunities for guest workers and avenues for illegal immigrants to earn legal status.[...]
- Advance the twin causes of energy independence and reducing greenhouse emissions by enacting an escalating carbon tax. Encourage all forms of available alternative energy, including nuclear power.[...]
- Rebuild America’s infrastructure—highways, bridges, railroads, airports and air traffic control, waterways and urban utilities[...]
- Reform America’s tax laws to make them fairer and simpler and encourage savings and investment, rather than consumption.
See the original article at RCP for a few more details around those points.
Now, that is a list I could mostly get into. It’s a bit more spendy than I’d like, and the call for mandatory health insurance fails to address the need to bring medical cost inflation under control prior to or in conjunction with such a move, but for the most part they are worthy goals, and they do a decent job of addressing the major domestic concerns that many (most?) of us have (or should have).
I’d like to see some emphasis put on fiscal responsibility, improving efficiency in the delivery of government services, etc., and the author notes that it completely ignores foreign policy…but frankly, once you step outside some core considerations, you’ll run into political differences of opinion that would likely fracture any attempt at achieving consensus.
In this day and age of political bickering and polarization, finding a few common political interests and focusing on them is probably an admirable, perhaps almost realistic, goal to start with.