What would I expect from a Democrat

Joel asked a very good question in response to my earlier post, "Playing Political Games":

I would like to see more discussion of actual policy. The conservatives are right: our disgust of George Bush does dominate our political talk these days.

And this progressive asks "So, if the Democrats come into power, what's going to change?" No dumb monkey stares. I've been getting enough of that from the conservatives and you folks claim to be better.

This is a partial response - basically a quick list off the top of my head of the kinds of things I'd expect to see if a Democrat were to be elected. I'm working from a "generic" Democrat and not any particular candidate at this point, and this isn't a complete list by any means. But it's a start.

• I'd expect to continue paying at least as much in taxes as I do now, if not a bit more - but I'd also expect that everyone else in the country would do likewise, including the rich. I'd also expect that we'd start reducing the size of the budget deficit each year, and, hopefully, be able to return to having budget surpluses.
  
  
• I wouldn't be nearly as worried that we were going to go invading other countries as a matter of course unless there was 1) obvious need, 2) a request for help from the people and/or 3) general support for the action from our allies. I would also expect that - even if it means I have to pay more in taxes - we'd start to uphold our commitments to rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq (hopefully with the assistance of our allies and/or the United Nations) and help them establish strong, stable, democratic governments.
  
  
• I would expect that the sunset provisions of the USA PATRIOT act would be allowed to run their course, and (hoping here) maybe we'd see the PATRIOT act as a whole repealed. More generally, I'd expect to see and end to the assault on our civil rights that we've been experiencing recently.
  
  
• I'd expect an end to the government's attempts to give public funds to religious organizations for charitable work, unless those specific programs do not prostylize to the participants and do conform to federal non-discrmination hiring laws (as has been done in the past). I'd also expect that the government would stop trying to find ways to fund church-building and the publication of religious materials.
  
  
• I'd expect "Big Business" to still have more influence over the governement than I like, but not nearly as much as it has right now.
  
  
• I'd expect there to be more concern for environmental issues and for businesses to be held to a better (though probably not good enough) level of responsiblity for environmental damage that they do.
  
  
• I certainly wouldn't expect the US to become a utopia - it wasn't before Bush and it won't ever be - but I think a Democrat could at least start leading us back to being the country we were before Bush took office. I do expect that there will continue to be more restrictions on my civil liberties than I'd like because of security concerns, and recognize that a Democrat will also have to find a way to help people feel safer. I think that a Democrat, however, would find a better way to distribute the federal money available to help states with providing their own security, rather than having the "red" states get disproportionally more per-capita than the "blue" states - especially since many of the "blue" states have large population centers that are more likely to be targeted (such as, say, New York City or Los Angelas) than, for example, Casper, Wyoming.
  
  
• I'd expect some attempts at better health care being made available to more people, but I don't know how successful they'd be - universal health care, in any form, especially given the current state of our health care system, is going to be very tricky.
  
  
• I'd also expect there to still be scandals, favouritism, influence peddling, lies told, opportunistic photo-ops, decisions that boggle the mind, wasteful spending and the other problems that seem to go with any politician. And I realize that the changes I mentioned above will also take the cooperation of Congress, and that as long as the Republicans have control, some of that may be very difficult to achieve.

No President will ever be perfect. While I certainly liked Clinton a lot better than I do Bush, I wouldn't call him the "perfect" president, or, necessarily, even a "great" one. But he did a decent job, and I was certainly better off at the end of his term than I was at the beginning and far better off than I am right now.

I'd also like to hear what other readers think they might see from a Democrat President. Please take a minute and post your own lists - or, as Rayne has done, a link to a post in your own blog on this topic. I think Joel's question is a good one, and am curious what others think as well.

Posted by thorswitch at May 18, 2003 06:10 PM | TrackBack