My ideal presidential candidate, who doesn't exist, has the following attributes:
- Is a non-theological free-trader with a "parallel agenda" of investment in technology, job retraining, and a social safety net
- Favors an aggressive but smart, comprehensive, and multilateral approach to our national security threats; does not support missile defense and other Pentagon boondoggles
- Is willing to bust up some trusts to protect a competitive marketplace
- Does not support agricultural subsidies that help consign millions in the Third World to poverty
- Is a market-oriented environmentalist willing to confront climate change
- Favors a single risk pool for health insurance, but is willing to reign in excessive costs, proceed incrementally and experiment rather than promote a monolithic solution that will scare everybody
- Is comfortable talking about his personal religion convictions and how they guide his political philosophy, but ardently supports free speech and believes that religion has no place in government
- Will not pander to the pampered middle class at the expense of the poor
- Favors payroll tax reform yet is willing to deal with Social Security
- Supports the elimination of sprawl-inducing subsidies
- Understands that due to the underlying economic realities, some areas of the country, sadly, may never revitalize
- Will crack down on Congressional pork, tax loopholes, and conflicts of interest
- Rejects a vouchers and standards-based approach to education reform for a property-tax reform, anti-poverty, teacher incentive-based approach
- Supports a staunchly "hands-off" approach to social issues, but in a way that doesn't offend people
- Generally favors state-level policies on gun control, but supports the assualt weapons ban
- Can beat Bush on charisma
This generally sounds like a combination of Johns Kerry and Edwards, but the last condition may be electoral killer for Kerry, and the first condition is a problem for Edwards on sheer policy grounds. There are a few other problems in there as well--Kerry's a middle-class panderer, and Edwards, who does have a pretty good
education and
poverty agenda, is no Amory Lovins.
As for Dean and Clark, their chances look grim in the wake of the Iowa caucuses and Dean's infamous yelp, although I suppose that anything can happen at this point.