February 11, 2009 6:08 PM
- Text
It's The Ideas, Stupid!
(CBS)
Dotty Lynch is CBSNews.com's Political Points columnist. E-mail your questions and comments to Political Points
In September 1994, a week or so before the Gingrich Contract with America was unveiled on the Capitol steps, a group of Clinton White House officials led by Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin asked to come for a meeting at the CBS News Washington bureau. They wanted to talk about the program the Republicans were about to unveil and emphasize how irresponsible it was, just a list of "goodies" with no way to pay for them.
Mainly because of the presence of Secretary Rubin, the meeting produced a full complement of CBS News correspondents and producers and did more to advertise the upcoming event, which most of us had considered mainly a PR stunt.
Twelve years later, two Clintonistas – former domestic policy chief Bruce Reed, who now heads the centrist Democratic Leadership Council; and political/communications aide Rahm Emmanuel, now a Democratic member of the House from Chicago and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – have written a book called "The Plan: Big Ideas for America." Published on the eve of another midterm election, one which looks good for the Democrats, it is a set of ideas which the authors believe will reshape the policy debate. No word yet on whether this White House will request a similar meeting, and Democrats who have had a hard time agreeing on an agenda are unlikely to stand on the Capitol steps with this book. But it is likely to cause some ripples.
The book, "The Plan," is actually a two-parter. The first part is a very readable discussion of what the authors think went wrong with policy in America. They believe it was bad politics that led the country astray. They divide Washington into Political Hacks and Policy Wonks and conclude mainly that too many Hacks have had too much power. The Bush White House, they claim (citing former Bush aide John DiIulio), was devoid of a policy apparatus and everything was run by the political arm. They contend that the Bush administration was all about getting reelected rather than solving the country's problems.
Reed and Emmanuel also take a shot at a Democratic Wonk (who titillates the Hacks), George Lakofff, who put forward the idea that what politics is all about is framing the issues and that what Democrats need to do to regain power is to get better at finding the right words. (By the way, Lakoff is also a guru of Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, with whom Emmanuel has been feuding. But that tidbit is left out of The Highminded Plan and would only matter to Hacks who are more interested in dividing than governing.) The problem for Democrats, they believe, is not a failure to communicate but a failure to know what to communicate.
The chapter on the Wonk/Hack divide is hilarious and insightful. Reed, the Wonk, and Emmanuel, the Hack, made a deal in the Clinton years to trade the "secrets, quirks and idioms" of each group and try to "rescue issues which had been stuck in the crossroads of politics and policy for years." They write that most journalists are Hacks, while columnists are Wonks. Lobbyists are Hacks who make money pretending to be Wonks, while The New Republic and Washington Monthly and most political bloggers are Wonks pretending to be Hacks. "Hacks come to Washington because anywhere else they'd be bored to death. Wonks come here because nowhere else could they bore so many to death."
But Reed and Emmanuel's larger argument is that the Hacks have "gone wild" and turned politics into a world of tactics rather than a means to achieve what Americans really want: solutions to their problems.
In the second part of the book, they present their list of Big Ideas for America. Many are DLC staples like universal Public Service. Others are virtually identical to those laid out by the wife of their former White House boss in her American Dream speech at the DLC meeting in July: universal college, retirement accounts for all, hybrid cars, universal children's health insurance, expanding the home mortgage deduction. The specifics of how to pay for the "goodies of '06" are lacking and the chapter on building a "muscular" national security is a bit perfunctory. But many of the ideas are fresh and robust and sure to be part of the political conversation for the next few years.
Like The Contract of 1994, The Plan of 2006 is filled with positive proposals that test well in polls. The authors say that Americans are tired of politics which is about "oppose, oppose and oppose," and are looking for solutions to their problems and a positive agenda.
But in many ways, The Plan is less like the Contract and more reminiscent of Putting People First, which helped Bill Clinton capture the White House in 1992. Democrats have an opportunity to road-test The Plan in '06 but it may really be the blueprint for the candidates of '08.
Stay tuned.
By Dotty Lynch
In September 1994, a week or so before the Gingrich Contract with America was unveiled on the Capitol steps, a group of Clinton White House officials led by Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin asked to come for a meeting at the CBS News Washington bureau. They wanted to talk about the program the Republicans were about to unveil and emphasize how irresponsible it was, just a list of "goodies" with no way to pay for them.
Mainly because of the presence of Secretary Rubin, the meeting produced a full complement of CBS News correspondents and producers and did more to advertise the upcoming event, which most of us had considered mainly a PR stunt.
Twelve years later, two Clintonistas – former domestic policy chief Bruce Reed, who now heads the centrist Democratic Leadership Council; and political/communications aide Rahm Emmanuel, now a Democratic member of the House from Chicago and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – have written a book called "The Plan: Big Ideas for America." Published on the eve of another midterm election, one which looks good for the Democrats, it is a set of ideas which the authors believe will reshape the policy debate. No word yet on whether this White House will request a similar meeting, and Democrats who have had a hard time agreeing on an agenda are unlikely to stand on the Capitol steps with this book. But it is likely to cause some ripples.
The book, "The Plan," is actually a two-parter. The first part is a very readable discussion of what the authors think went wrong with policy in America. They believe it was bad politics that led the country astray. They divide Washington into Political Hacks and Policy Wonks and conclude mainly that too many Hacks have had too much power. The Bush White House, they claim (citing former Bush aide John DiIulio), was devoid of a policy apparatus and everything was run by the political arm. They contend that the Bush administration was all about getting reelected rather than solving the country's problems.
Reed and Emmanuel also take a shot at a Democratic Wonk (who titillates the Hacks), George Lakofff, who put forward the idea that what politics is all about is framing the issues and that what Democrats need to do to regain power is to get better at finding the right words. (By the way, Lakoff is also a guru of Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, with whom Emmanuel has been feuding. But that tidbit is left out of The Highminded Plan and would only matter to Hacks who are more interested in dividing than governing.) The problem for Democrats, they believe, is not a failure to communicate but a failure to know what to communicate.
The chapter on the Wonk/Hack divide is hilarious and insightful. Reed, the Wonk, and Emmanuel, the Hack, made a deal in the Clinton years to trade the "secrets, quirks and idioms" of each group and try to "rescue issues which had been stuck in the crossroads of politics and policy for years." They write that most journalists are Hacks, while columnists are Wonks. Lobbyists are Hacks who make money pretending to be Wonks, while The New Republic and Washington Monthly and most political bloggers are Wonks pretending to be Hacks. "Hacks come to Washington because anywhere else they'd be bored to death. Wonks come here because nowhere else could they bore so many to death."
But Reed and Emmanuel's larger argument is that the Hacks have "gone wild" and turned politics into a world of tactics rather than a means to achieve what Americans really want: solutions to their problems.
In the second part of the book, they present their list of Big Ideas for America. Many are DLC staples like universal Public Service. Others are virtually identical to those laid out by the wife of their former White House boss in her American Dream speech at the DLC meeting in July: universal college, retirement accounts for all, hybrid cars, universal children's health insurance, expanding the home mortgage deduction. The specifics of how to pay for the "goodies of '06" are lacking and the chapter on building a "muscular" national security is a bit perfunctory. But many of the ideas are fresh and robust and sure to be part of the political conversation for the next few years.
Like The Contract of 1994, The Plan of 2006 is filled with positive proposals that test well in polls. The authors say that Americans are tired of politics which is about "oppose, oppose and oppose," and are looking for solutions to their problems and a positive agenda.
But in many ways, The Plan is less like the Contract and more reminiscent of Putting People First, which helped Bill Clinton capture the White House in 1992. Democrats have an opportunity to road-test The Plan in '06 but it may really be the blueprint for the candidates of '08.
Stay tuned.
By Dotty Lynch
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