(I won’t be around to approve comments right away, but ask that my fellow contributors approve them for me or I’ll approve comments on Monday morning. Just don’t be discouraged if they are not appearing right away.)
To continue on the theme of political imagination:
What would your ideal presidential candidate be like?
What would their platform (not party) be?
And, do you have anyone in mind?
Please, try to think without the blinders of the Elephant and Donkey dualism. Try to answer from your hopes and dreams.
Someone from the outside of the corrupted morass we have now, i.e., not someone currently in Congress or someone who has long been hanging around as a wanna-be.
His/her clearly stated goals would be to re-negotiate NAFTA and all the other “free trade” arrangements that have been so disastrous for the American middle class and so beneficial to a tiny elite; to change existing financial benefits to companies that outsource; and in all other ways return real jobs and income to American workers lost in the numerous incentives given to factory owners & hedge funders over the last 20 years.
Haven’t got a candidate in mind but he/she would have to be really smart, really informed, really articulate and really brave.
My dream would be a candidate who does not come with any ideological baggage at all… completely unrealistic of course. But I think we would make the most progress with a president who was not already committed to a particular set of principles such as “government is best which governs least” or “large government is largely better.” Just focus on what works in various circumstances. For some things small government is absolutely the best, for other things you need government involvement.
I would love someone who would run on a pro-human platform. At last, a candidate I could vote for with a clean conscience! Someone who will reverse the tide of war, torture, nationalism and violence that has been washing up lately, who will also recognize that the fight for human rights for the unborn is the most important civil rights issue of our day. No waffling or sidelining it as “one issue among many” or vague commitments to “make it rare,” but recognizing what it is, calling it what it is, telling the truth about it, and addressing the issue accordingly. Someone whose platform will put the poor first and enact programs that treat the poor as people who need justice and love, and not as threats to economic stability or as lazy good-for-nothings. Someone who actually has a sane and humane immigration policy and the will to make it happen.
I am not aware that anyone exists who fits this bill, however I admit I do not pay attention to political personalities as I do not feel most of our problems can be solved politically.
I’ve been thinking about this all day, and then Mag came along and said it better than I could have. So I’m going to ditto her :)
I’m going to ditto MAB. I’d love someone who made his priority (or maybe, considered his constituency to be) the relatively powerless – from womb to tomb.
Perhaps I’m merely feeling contrary. . .
But I don’t think an “outsider” is what’s needed at all. I would be perfectly happy with a career politician who saw statecraft as a trade like any other. Someone who could balance what’s prudent with what’s possible, and who would avoid populist rabble rousing.
I’m afraid what we’re going to get, at least from the right, for the next few years is a bunch of “outsiders” who will refuse to “play by the rules”. . . and what this will mean will be that whoever makes the most noise will get the most votes.
I’m not looking forward to it.
1. Aragorn or someone like him.
2. A platform rooted in concern for the person and for the environment, nourished on the principle of solidarity, trimmed in accordance with the knowledge that power corrupts, and designed with the recognition that evil must never be done for a good end.
3. Not really. I imagine that there are potentials out there, but, unfortunately, I look upon anyone seeking the frightful power of the presidency with an eye of suspicion and skepticism.
experienced, intelligent, articulate, honest, bipartisan
federalist in domestic policy, open-eyed in foreign policy, pro-life in social policy
Dick Cheney (I know you don’t believe me, but seriously: Dick Cheney)
I don’t mean to be snarky, Pinky, but of the eight qualities you list, Cheney possesses maybe four.
“The only time I voted for a candidate I agreed with on everything was when I voted for myself. And by my third term, even that wasn’t true.”
— Representative Barney Frank
In case people want to keep posting:
Please, try to think without the blinders of the Elephant and Donkey dualism. Try to answer from your hopes and dreams.
Perhaps I’m looking at this wrong, but I can’t imagine anything more depressing than having one’s hopes and dreams deeply involved in who is president.
Sure government is often useful or perhaps even necessary — but I would think one’s hopes and dreams ought to center around real people and real relationships, real life — not around policies and presidents.
Sam, looking over the comments, and speaking for the thinking behind my own comment, I don’t detect any partisanship. The first two comments certainly set the tone for the thread so far, and I wouldn’t call either of them particularly partisan.
There are maybe a half-dozen sets of beliefs that account for 95% of all voters. Naturally, the two parties have lined up to capture as many of those people as possible, so those sets of beliefs tend to match certain parties. That doesn’t mean that there’s a partisan motivation behind the thinking. (BTW, there’s scant evidence that additional parties improve the ability of a voter to have his voice heard.)
It’s not surprising that a person’s principles would overlap with one of the main parties, but that he’d be hard-pressed to find an individual candidate who matches those principles exactly.
—
DC, “dreams” may be too sweeping a word, but surely a person can have hopes for a better society? We’re called to make our society better, on both the large and small scale.
DarwinCatholic,
I don’t have a very buttoned-up sense of the limits of hopes and dreams. In my estimation they are parts of the imagination. Imagination, in my view, has no limits. In fact, it is this feature that makes it what it is.
Certainly, one may hope for a better society. But at the same time, I think one needs to think about the limits of forming these hopes in terms of what an ideal presidential candidate would be like or what that candidate’s platform would be.
I hope for a better society, and I try to work for one, but it seems to me that one of the important elements in such an endevour is to understand the limits of what policies or presidents are likely to achieve are — and I suspect those limits are in fact very great. Politicians seem to have a great deal of ability to destroy, but very little actual ability to build and improve.
Perhaps an example would serve. I just finished having to spend a bunch of time picking out a health care plan for my family for the next year. The prices of the insurers that my company offers had changed, and I had to weigh risk against price, decide whether to switch insurance companies in order to seek lower rates, etc. I made my choice based on a number of factors, and if I was asked to design a better set of options I would have a number of ideas. But if someone asked me, “What is the ideal sort of health coverage for people to have,” I would tell him he was asking the wrong question. Health coverage is a pragmatic attempt to meet a human need, and while some solutions will be better than others, all will be necessarily imperfect. There is no ideal type of health coverage. And even when taking large strategic directions, there are massively different ways one could go which appear to show good resuls. For example, I tend to be enamoured of how Singapore does health coverage. Others are enamoured of Denmark’s model or France’s. Yet clearly, none of these are in fact ideal. None is an end state which one might yearn for and then find lasting peace upon reaching.
Since any particular solution to a problem in the pragmatic art of politics is at best an imperfect response to a set of circumstances encountered at the time and the available options as perceived by both political leaders and their constituents, I don’t really see the point of planning out an “ideal” set of platform positions or candidate characteristics.
Though I would suggest this, if one wants to play at ideals: Politicians are formed (or deformed) by voters. If you want to imagine an ideal, perhaps you should try to envision the ideal voting public and society.
After all, I’m sure that all of us, as soon as we imagine the sort of candidate we’d _like_ to vote for, think: But of course, the sort of person I like would never get elected.
Pinky: I never used the term “partisan.” For me, thinking beyond the dualism of Dems and Repubs doesn’t mean thinking things that don’t exist on either side, but just taking the liberty of pretending that they don’t exist to be accounted for. Which leads to…
DarwinCatholic: I hate to send you to other reading, but I have a very specific purpose to these questions which corresponds to what I have recently posted on the failure of imagination in politics. After those pieces (that began with an IM interview) I posted two pieces on (im)possible presidents. I wanted to follow-up those posts with our hopes and dreams. After all, a just world is a hope and a dream that is hardly practical or feasible, but it is still to be articulated lest we forget what we are called to: “Be perfect as my Father is perfect.”
Sam,
Well, for what it’s worth, I did indeed read those posts as they came out — I just chose not to comment on them at the time, in part because of the sort of concerns expressed above.
I think I can see what you’re trying to drive for (and why you’re finding the responses to these imaginative exercises generally unsatisfying) but I’m not sure that the exercise as you’re currently approaching it is going to get you to real knowledge, mainly because your readers are often confused by the distance between the thought process you’re trying to follow and the actual nature of politics.
Perhaps Sam there is a meta message for you in all those consistently (in our in your opinion at least) imperfect comments you get for your questions.
I am certainly a bit puzzled by your approach and in some ways do perceive your attitude as less than ideal. In my opinion your are just as solid part of a crowd that has been around from the beginning of times – sure if you wish claim to be somehow above the fray.
Lets just say our part shall we without secondary commentary to set the stage to ones own liking.
By the way in my view the current office holder serves this country very well. A realistic, smart, solid President – not perfect – but real.
You dream on – you can do that until the end of your days on this fine planet if you wish – but do not expect to ever see a major tilt towards your dreamed up perfection.
“Be perfect as my Father is perfect.”
Oh well- what can I say.
DarwinCatholic: “Real knowledge” is tough, to be sure. And you are right about the limits of asking questions here. But thanks for reading and I would be very interested to read your general critique of my political approach sometime.
grega: I am not in the least dissatisfied, I am just trying to moderate. Now, my political message right now is trying to see what happens when we allow ourselves to wonder and imagine about the political—when we give ourselves a little bit of a Peter Pan moment.
But you are quite right that there is nothing new about my stance. After all, I am something of a perennialist. The question of politics has always been fundamentally about the courage of a people to imagine what they would like and try to reconcile with that with what they have and lack, I think.
I think the best answere here is Aragorn, or someone like him. Indeed, he was though up as a model ruler by a man far more catholic, more intelligent and more imaginative than I am.
But, where do we find someone like Aragorn? Maybe we can look to politician saints?
How about a president like Bl. Charles of Austria. As far as I know he is the only political leader in the 20th century who has been raised to the altars.
If we are to learn from the Church, then it seems we must then look to him as a model of what the excellent and catholic christian politician is.
Ben, I wasn’t familiar with Charles. Very interesting – I’ll have to find out more about him.
My ideal candidate would first of all have to be pro-life, and seriously so. As in complete agreement with Church doctrine. From conception to natural death. No stem cells, no exceptions for the “hard cases”. Basically, they would have a respect for the dignity of the human person, so this would include being against torture, and following the doctrine of just war.
They would also be pro-family. Provide incentives to encourage couples to marry and have children. Fight against the redefinition of marriage.
They would encourage economic growth by focusing tax incentives in productive and beneficial industries. They would help to support the economic development of poverty-stricken areas by encouraging business to expand their operations and provide jobs.
They would expand domestic energy production, by opening up currently restricted oil reserves, expanding the use of nuclear power, and funding continual development of alternative energy sources as is practical.
They would recognize the fact that immigrants are human persons, not statistics. However, they would work to make sure that immigration is controlled and legal, and push for integration.
They would work towards universal coverage for health care, but do so carefully. It doesn’t need to be rushed, nor do we need to we need to radically change the entire system. Find out what works, find out what doesn’t. Keep what works, fix what doesn’t.
I suppose my ideas can pretty much be boiled down to pro-life, pro-family, pro-growth.
Just some ideas off the top of my head.