We are two college friends, class of ‘71. Our communication was limited during our careers (one in industry, one in academia), but since our retirement we have reconnected. One of us is a right of center, long-time Republican, former Fortune 20 executive; the other is a left of center, long time Democrat, former college professor. Neither of us is on the fringe side of our politics.
Our conversations for the past several years have been heavily political, as we love bashing and teasing each other. We will go through periods of silence, then one of us will nudge the other with “What do you think of this?” and a week of back-and-forthing will take place. We have noticed that in this process, we each parrot our side’s standard talking points, and each of us is suffering from what the other thinks is misperceptions of reality. Nevertheless, we have thoughtful discussions and occasional victories.
During a recent such bout, one of us suggested that we concentrate on some issues we agree on rather than those we don’t, and we began to develop a list. Each of us has contributed items to this list, and the description of each item has undergone editing from both sides. There were, of course, some items we did not agree on, so they are not included here; and there are surely more items that we do agree on but have not thought about recently.
A focus from both of us was on the current conduct of politics which we both strongly believe damages our democracy and overall government policy making.
Here, then is a list of items that we believe centrist Democrats and Republicans, i.e., most Americans, could agree on, and that might form the basis of a platform for a centrist candidate to run on.
Conduct of Politics
- Ethics reform. Politicians and bureaucrats can be bought by the industries they are supposed to be regulating. One common approach is to offer them jobs after they retire from government. There should be a multi-year ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and their staffs. The definition of “lobbyist” should be expanded so that all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisers are closed. Issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. This would include Congress passing campaign finance reform legislation that prevents registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in American elections. Congress should pass legislation imposing term limits on themselves. Nepotism laws need to be expanded and enforced.
- Legislators should not be able to draw districts for the purpose of getting elected. Districts should be drawn in a non-partisan way and the people in the district should choose whom they want to represent them. In California, after voters took redistricting decisions out of the hands of partisans in the state legislature, a number of veteran members of Congress, suddenly faced with truly competitive districts, announced their retirement. In most states, the public is excluded from redistricting deliberations, even though “this secret election can determine the outcome of most congressional elections for the next ten years, possibly for generations.” [Mickey Edwards, The Parties Versus the People, p58]
- Citizens who want to vote should be able to do so easily. One obvious way to do this is to move elections to Sunday, so people do not have to miss work to vote. (Less obvious, but even more effective, is vote-by-mail.) Passing voter ID laws may have some justification, but only if it is easy for legitimate voters to get the needed ID. Passing the laws, and simultaneously shutting down most of the places where one might obtain ID’s, is a clear effort to prevent certain people from voting.
- Yes, there are lots of people on voting lists who have died or moved away and it makes sense to discover them and remove them by an agreed upon bipartisan process. But simply having the same name and birthday as someone in another state is not that process. The incidence of someone voting in one state, then travelling to another state to vote again, is extremely small and does not threaten our voting system. Turnout is what wins elections.
- Closed partisan primaries are fundamentally unrepresentative. They’re too easily hijacked by ideological activists and party hacks beholden to special interests. And because these local primaries are the gauntlet that candidates have to run, they lead directly to the culture of hyper-partisanship that now threatens to paralyze our capacity for effective self-government. The parties have forgotten that they are not the purpose of our politics. Solution: All voters should be able to vote for any candidate. Further, they should be able to indicate whether other candidates besides their first choice might also be acceptable. There are many voting methods that do this, all have some flaws but all are vastly superior to our current one-vote system.
- Money is a corrupting influence in politics, and we should try to make it less so.
Therefore, overturn Citizens United. Get rid of or limit dark money. No individual or organization should be able to donate so much money that their voice drowns out all others. Large political contributions from unions, corporations, lobbying groups, etc., should be banned, and there should be limits on what individuals can contribute also.
- Government science advisors should be, at a bare minimum, scientists. Heads of science-based agencies (the CDC, the FDA, the EPA, etc.), if they are not themselves scientists, should accept the scientific facts as determined by the agency’s scientists. Government scientists should not be prevented from relaying their findings to the public simply because the politicians in power disagree with them.
Domestic Issues
- People should not shoot policemen just because they are policemen. Most are dedicated public servants doing a difficult job. Conversely, policemen should not shoot unarmed citizens just because they are black. It is possible for sane people to accept both these statements. Indeed, it is incredible that there are people who only accept one of them.
- No one should be discriminated against because of who they are: color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Ability, yes, of course. Identity, no.
- It is unfortunate when people are subjected to speech they find offensive, but no one has a right to avoid hearing such things. This is especially true of universities, the very purpose of which is to challenge, not reinforce and protect, prior beliefs.
- Public defenders should be able to devote the same time and resources to cases as the opposing public prosecutors. Otherwise, the system is rigged, and when people’s lives, freedom, and livelihood are at stake, it should not be. Consider funding this via a tax on court awarded dollars in civil and criminal cases.
Economy
- The main cause of job loss in the United States is outsourcing, not to foreign countries but to robots. Protectionism will not bring those jobs back. Workers need to be trained for the new economy.
- Affirmative Action, that is, actively seeking underrepresented candidates for jobs, and, if equally qualified, giving them priority, is an appropriate way to remedy past and present inequities in the system. Quotas are not.
- Infrastructure funding should be a high priority. This is non-partisan, everyone agrees on this, it is a travesty that Congress cannot get this done. In addition to replacing old, worn-out infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, sewer systems, water systems (Flint), we need to be creating new infrastructure. For example, water availability is a problem worldwide and becoming one here. We should fund multiple water desalination research projects in the hopes of dramatically reducing the cost of producing a gallon of fresh water.
- Women who do the same work as men, equally well, should make the same amount.
- Something is wrong with the tax code when rich people can pay less than poor people. Consider a flat tax with different flat tax brackets. This will be difficult, because there are too many vested interests that want to keep the current tax code.
- People working 40 hours a week should make enough money to support a family of three in their location. The minimum wage should be raised in an orderly manner to enable this, giving businesses time to adjust.
- As the devastation of Houston demonstrates, pure free-market development, unrestrained by regulations based on long-range planning, can lead to disastrous consequences. Enlightened regulation is a necessity. Finding the line between over-regulation and under-regulation is worthy of debate; whether to regulate or not should not be on the table.
Education
- Our children are our future, nothing should stop us from doing the best we can to educate them. But we must admit, despite many years of trying, reforms have not resulted in an educational system that works well for all (or even most) students. Universal testing has not helped; lack of testing has not helped. More money has been lavished on education than almost any other sector (except defense), but the results are not noticeably improved. Different people point to different reasons for our failure, but it is clear that except in a relatively few exceptional districts, our children lag behind those of many other countries. We must recognize that all our school districts are not the same, and policies that treat them the same are doomed to fail.
Suggestions: No classroom should have more than 30 students. Teachers should be paid a livable professional salary. Part of reasonable teacher pay should be affordable housing within the school district. Property taxes as a means of funding schools automatically leads to rich districts and poor districts; a more equitable distribution of funding, at the state level, must be found that gives schools equal access to resources. Barriers to the firing of poor teachers should be eliminated. Seniority should not be the only criterion for filling new and desirable positions. All school choice alternatives to public education should be non-profit and subject to state inspection.
Environment
- Public policy should be informed by science.
- Climate change is real and we are partially responsible for it. We should do what we can to slow or even reverse the trend.
- The EPA should have a strong focus on clean water and clean air. (Find and fix the Flints across the country).
- The United States has had a series of devastating floods. People know how to reduce damage from floods. We just don’t do it. (“Sharing the Challenge,” 1993) Remember, there is nothing more contaminating on a wide scale than flood waters. We can learn a lot from what the Dutch do to handle water.
- Jobs in renewable energy are growing at a much faster rate than those in fossil fuels. It will be good for America to invest in renewable energy. This does not mean that we should abandon fossil fuels; America cannot yet run on renewable energy alone. We should also investigate ways to make fossil fuels more efficient and environmentally compatible.
Foreign Policy
- We should not condone discriminatory policies in other governments just because they happen to possess a resource we want. If it is wrong, it is wrong. This does not mean we should break off relations with people we disagree with, but at the same time, we should not ignore it. We should challenge other countries on the things they do that are just plain wrong. Like genital mutilation, or raping women and then killing them because they have dishonored the family. By the same token, we should be able to criticize actions taken by friends without jeopardizing the friendship.
- Diplomacy with countries we disagree with may or may not result in any agreements, but failure to talk is guaranteed to result in none.
- The only places we should ban travel is where the travelers are in potential danger, like North Korea. Banning travel to punish a country is counterproductive.
- A bad deal that postpones another nation from going nuclear, for some defined period of time, is better than no deal at all, which frees them to continue developing nuclear weapons right away.
- Not all Muslims are Islamists, let alone violent, though all Islamists—including those who use violence—are Muslims. The religion of Islam itself is indeed capable of reformation, if only to distinguish it more clearly from the political ideology of Islamism. But that task of reform can only be carried out by Muslims. Happily, there is a growing number of reformist Muslims. US foreign policy should encourage moderate Islam wherever possible, and it is hard to see how a government that subsidizes the teaching of radical Islamism can be our friend, regardless of how much oil they sell to us, and how many weapons they buy from us.
Guns
- Violent people should not have guns. It violates no one’s rights to make people wait before they can buy a gun, to make sure they are not someone who should not have one. Remember, the Mexican drug cartels get many of their weapons by purchasing them in the US. People who want to conceal and carry must take a conceal-and-carry course. Ban bump stocks and silencers.
Health Care
- Our health care system should be designed to cover everyone. Almost all other developed countries do this, at lower cost and with better outcomes than our system. We should study what they do and imitate the methods that work. In particular, we should take immediate steps to lower the cost of prescription drugs, which are much more expensive here than elsewhere. Several possible steps (taken from suggestions by AARP): 1) Let Medicare negotiate drug prices; 2) Allow more drugs to be imported; 3) Create transparency in drug pricing; and 4) Provide for easier drug comparisons.
Immigration
- People who were brought to this country as children, have completed high school and have not committed any major crimes should be able to become citizens.
- Obviously we cannot accept everybody who wants to come to the US. There needs to be some sensible screening process to decide who gets in, and how many. Simply being related to someone who is already here may not be the best criterion for determining who gets in. It might make sense to consider their ability to contribute to American society.
- The US should also accept their fair share of refugees fleeing from trouble spots around the world, and while we should screen out refugees with potential to be terrorists, the “ability to contribute” factor should be waived.
Moral Issues
- Moral issues are best kept personal. If you think being LGBT is immoral, that is your prerogative. But you may not force others to accept your moral views. The workplace should have zero tolerance for any kind of discrimination.
Terrorism
- People who attack innocent bystanders on purpose to make political points are terrorists, regardless of their religion. There are very few religions without terrorists among their believers.
- Radical Islamic terrorism is real. However, it is a minor fraction of Muslims who want to commit terrorist acts, just as there is a minor fraction of Christians who want to do bad things. Muslims in general should not be blamed for the acts of the terrorists among them. However, it is also true, as Tom Friedman has said, “The Muslim world does have a problem with pluralism — gender pluralism, religious pluralism and intellectual pluralism — and suggesting that terrorism has nothing to do with that fact is naïve; countering violent extremism means constructively engaging with Muslim leaders on this issue.”