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As I said about Obama last week, I will measure a McCain presidency against his own words. Rather than trying to analyze what McCain said last night I will simply quote those portions which I would hope he is held accountable for while adding only those clarifications of how I interpret those words.
. . . after we’ve won, we’re going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace.
This had better not be the Rovian definition of "patriot" (anyone who agrees with us). And there had better be as much emphasis on "peace" as there is on "prosperity."
I don’t work for a party. I don’t work for a special interest. I don’t work for myself. I work for you.
I hope McCain understands what that means. Americans must take the responsibilities of liberty along with the rights. I may work for my children, but that does not mean that I spoon feed my five-year-old.
I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people . . . when we valued our power over our principles.
We’re going to change that. We’re going to recover the people’s trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire.
We believe in low taxes; spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.
We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.
I hope for an emphasis on "spending discipline" and I hope that open markets is broadly interpreted so that it includes more than financial markets. I hope that there is an emphasis on personal responsibility and I hope they recognize that "the values of families, neighborhoods and communities" are going to vary between families, neighborhoods and communities. The values of San Francisco should not shape, or be shaped by, the values of Tipton, MO (for example).
We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.
Any education reform that runs through the NEA is guaranteed to fail as far as I can see. The monopoly must be broken. I like the line about helping poor teachers find another line of work.
I will draw on all my experience with the world and its leaders, and all the tools at our disposal – diplomatic, economic, military and the power of our ideals – to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace.
We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War.
One of my biggest beefs with McCain is that he honestly believes that these things shouldbe functions of government. Many of them should not be functions of government (fueling transportation, training workers).
I will ask Democrats and Independents to serve with me. And my administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability.
I’d love to see that, but I won’t be holding my breath.
2 replies on “McCain’s Words”
I would be interested to see a post on other recent Presidents. How did Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush live up to their most prominent campaign or acceptance speeches? What about locally, are our Senators and Governor doing what they promised?
Somehow we have to find a way to make broken (and kept!) promises more transparent and more accessible to us regular folks. Unfortunately we are bombarded with irrelevant political news that the media thinks will entertain us, and when we do hear relevant info we are never sure whether we can trust it. Guess that is why a Republic really would work better than a democracy, but that ship has long since sailed.
Frustrating!
Without taking the time to go research the campaign promises of previous presidents I can say that Bush kept his promise to cut taxes, but failed to keep his promise to avoid nation-building. Of course that simple statement hardly tells the whole story, but the point is that, as you said, we must find a way to make promises (broken and kept) more transparent and hold our leaders at all levels accountable for their promises and their performance.