I've been thinking a lot about Karl Rove's (don't hate me!) Newsweek article , "Dear Senator Obama" (Link), particularly his point #6:
- To answer growing questions about your inexperience, people need to know, in concrete and credible ways, what they can expect from you as president. That's missing now. And don't think those position papers written by academics and posted on the Web do the job. They have a check-the-box quality to them. Americans want to see your passion and commitment to things they care about, in ways that give them confidence you're up to the job....
and here is my proposal for an Obama BIG IDEA (in addition to ending the Iraq war) that would appeal to all Americans.
What is the big idea?
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY.
I know, all candidates have talking points about the need for alternative energy, but what we need is a BIG PLAN, discussed in the right way, to capture the imagination of the public.
Here is what I propose:
- Propose a top level position to be in charge of the project. Preferably a physical scientist (Bill Foster?) who understands the way scientific progress is made.
- Allocate an unprecedented level of funding to the project, and establish (through the NSF perhaps) a grant funding review board. Physical science funding greatly lags behind biological science funding currently.
- Recruit the brightest minds throughout the world to work on the project - physicists, mathematicians, biologists, chemists, engineers.
- Discuss it in the frame of "putting the man on the moon", that this is not just talking points, but something that WILL HAPPEN if he is elected president.
The advantages of having this big idea are as follows:
- Ending the dependence on Middle East oil
- Give the public an "end in sight" of rapidly escalating gas prices
- Goal that will appeal to all Americans, Republican or Democrat, and invite and emphasize bipartisan cooperation. George W. Bush's "man on Mars" goal just didn't do it, given the amount of problems we're dealing with here on Earth.
- Trickle-down effect on scientific progress in general, and motivation for students to focus on careers in the sciences (I'm a biological scientist, and the morale is abysmal due to lack of funding. I don't know hardly any PhD students who are excited about pursuing faculty level positions and fighting over diminishing levels of grant funding). Other scientific developments would likely come from this project, just like they did through NASA'S space program.
- Many compare Obama to JFK. JFK's "man on the moon" speech is legendary and if Obama proposed this idea with a brilliant speech, this would inspire Americans just like JFK did.
- Positive environmental outcome due to decreased CO2 emissions from fossil fuels
Thoughts? (and be easy on me because this is my first diary ever!)