To follow up on the brave speech on race, here's the speech Obama should give next. Let's try to get past the minutia and keep an eye on the big picture. There is a real opportunity for change in tone here, even if the powers that be want to keep us mired in the past. Let's ask less "Where's the Beef?" and look more at the "Bun."
The lines are drawn in the presidential campaigns: experience vs. excitement, policy vs. passion, wisdom vs. words, substance vs. style. Candidate websites with limitless bandwidth offer the opportunity to detail policy proposals for pundits to analyze and debate, as if these define the direction of our country. With all this attention to "the beef," it may help to remind voters that in real life, it may be more important to pay attention to "the bun."
As we all should know, or at least learned in school at some time, the President doesn’t make policy. Anybody running for president can tell you whatever they want about policies when they are campaigningand they often do. They can say they will improve all schools, provide health care for all, fix social security...and in fact, we have heard all this before in past elections. Sure, the president can set priorities and focus resources on particular issues. But as we know, what happens in Washington depends on not just the president, but on Congress and the courts and state and local government and, yes, what we do as citizens.
And we can’t know what will happen in coming years. 9-11 was something no Presidential candidate had a policy for in the 2000 election. Yet, 9-11 happened and the President had to respond.
It doesn’t matter so much what Presidential candidates say is their specific plan for this issue or that--if Barack’s health care plan says it covers as many people as Hillary’s, if McCain’s education policy specifies every possible classroom activity, if one’s policy proposals on Tajikistan fully articulates every potential impact if a meteor lands there or if their athletes fail to win any medals at the Olympics in Beijing.
Policy is made in concert (and compromise) with Congress. Policy is applied by the hundreds of thousands working in the executive branch. Policies are interpreted by the courts and the justices the President appoints. Whether or not a candidate tells us they will create 22,857 jobs in Michigan or raise average car mileage to 38.324 gallons, the details will be worked out in the messy world of Washington. And the real big policies are the ones we can’t predict the once in a century hurricane, the unexpected coup in a far off country, the invention of a technology that raises new moral questions.
What we really need to know about the candidates are three things:
- What are the principles that guide your actions? What do you believe in? What is your vision for the future? What are the values that underlie everything you do?
- Who are your closest advisors? Who will you work with on these policy priorities? What are their qualifications and values? How will you work with these advisors and how will you make decisions as President? Who will you be listening to and how will you represent all of our citizens and the best interests of the United States?
- How will you make decisions on issues that we know already and, even more importantly, how will you approach problems that we cannot now predict?
If we learned nothing else from the current Presidency, what is said on the campaign trail does not always define what a President does in office. No matter what your opinion of the President, it is clear that George Bush the President was very different from George Bush the Campaigner. Between the sweep of events and the dynamics of his administration, Bush’s policies and actions drifted far from the "compassionate conservative," "stay away from nation building" rhetoric of his campaigns.
So as this historic Presidential campaign unfolds, let’s not get too caught up on tiny differences between one policy proposal and another. What ultimately matters in our complex world is a candidate’s values and vision, the advice the President receives and responds to, and, most importantly, how we believe he or she will respond to situations we have no way of predicting.