KERRY'S PLATFORM
I was looking over the proposals on a page of John Kerry's website-- "100 Days to Change America." A few remarks.

Education: not bad
Bush's education reform, passed in collaboration with Kerry's fellow Massachusetts senator, is working. Teachers' unions hate it because it hands power to parents, where it should be. The act is creating accountability in inner cities, where it is neede most. Teachers' unions are one of the massive special interests that has the Democrats in thrall (though I've heard some Republicans are also culpable). Kerry wants to put more money into schools. Well, money won't fix it when the problem is a lack of accountability, but I give Kerry thumbs up because... he does not say he will repeal the No Child Left Behind Act.

Kerry will draft you!
Really. I'm serious! It's right there on the web page. Get this:

John Kerry will call on Americans of all ages – from students to America’s seniors - to serve in our classrooms, after school programs, nursing homes and nursery schools... His plan will require mandatory national service for high school kids and enlist a million Americans in service a year.

Service? Doing what? "Mandatory" national service for (apparently, all) high school kids? The funny thing is, the idea of "service" appeals to me in an abstract way. But to draft an entire crop of high school students? What would they even do? This is nuts.

Here's a shocker:

John Kerry will name a new Attorney General whose name is not John Ashcroft.

Really? I assumed he would keep the Bush Cabinet in office! No, seriously, civil liberties are important, and I respect people who are suspicious of the Patriot Act. On the other hand, it strikes me as silly to think that the Patriot Act has not made us safer from terrorists. We were all very afraid after 9/11. What would the terrorists do next?! The answer has turned out to be: nothing, and as a result, we have started to feel a lot safer. We don't beg our relatives to move out of Manhattan anymore. Why has nothing happened? Surely an organization sophisticated enough to do what was done on 9/11 could blow up a few more buildings here and there. Indeed, they have been, but in Riyadh and Istanbul, not here. It's dumb to think the Patriot Act is not part of the reason for this. Now there's a trade-off here: a more intrusive government for more safety.

Personally, I just might vote for a candidate who said "I will make America less safe from terrorism, but more free," not because I think civil liberties are seriously threatened, but because I like living dangerously. But candidates owe it to the American people to say where they stand on the trade-off between security and civil liberties, and not to pretend that we can have our cake and eat it too.

Here's Kerry on the environment:

We will rollback the George W. Bush assault on clean air and clean water and work to strengthen our nation’s environmental laws. Kerry will also put forward a plan to make the U.S. energy independent of Middle East oil in ten years—and create 500,000 jobs by investing in energy renewable sources, such as ethanol, solar, and wind.

Hare-brained, hare-brained, hare-brained. I am sensitive about the pollution issue because several of my friends have dropped dead because of breathing urban air. Don't you know people who have? Of course you don't. Nobody does. But fifty years ago the smog in London was bad enough to kill people regularly! See how things are getting better? But enviro-fanatics won't abandon the belief that things are going to pot any more than Muslims will give up the Koran, and the rest of us are too easily scared into believing in monsters under the bed.

Bush's Clear Skies initiative has actually been vindicated by recent studies. Take my word for it: we've all been rendered incapable of clear thinking on this issue, and the less we think and talk about it, the better.

I'm all for shaking dependence on Mideast oil, by the way, for geopolitical rather than environmental reasons-- but 500,000 jobs?! Obviously-- obviously!-- this will raise costs and reduce jobs, just as the environmentalist 1970s saw large unemployment, and jobs started appearing again in the 1980s when Reagan started loosening environmental regulations. (Not just because of that, of course, but it was part of it.)

This is the eternal conundrum about Democratic economics: do they make absurd statements because they're dumb, or because they assume that we're dumb? Are they fools, or condescending tricksters?

Kerry goes on to "declare the Bush policy of unilateralism over and work to rebuild our shattered alliances all across the globe." Bush crushed this phony critique into the ground in his SOTU. We're cooperating with like thirty nations in Iraq, and even the UN is involved now. What are Democrats thinking-- that if they say "unilateral" enough times it will become true? Stated more moderately, this critique might be all right, by the way. Imagine Kerry saying, "The Bush Administration has not done a very good job of making its case to the world. I think the polls indicating declining esteem for America are a valid reason to change presidents." Fine. But don't become the voice of French propaganda. Leave Le Monde in Paris, where it belongs.

Fuzzy math
Kerry will not repeal the Bush tax cuts for the middle class (though he will on the wealthiest) and he proposes all sorts of increased spending, including more for health care, more for education, manufacturing tax credits (note, tax credit, not tax deduction-- that's basically a subsidy), and bringing back three million jobs. Yet he claims that he will halve the deficit. Ironically, Kerry might actually halve the deficit in four years, but only because Congress will stay in Republican hands and all his other programs will fail to pass through.

Of course, there's some stuff that sounds good here, but if you try to imagine how it would all fit together, it's a pretty wretched plan. You can see why Kerry was a mediocre, underperforming senator. I'm not claiming, by the way, that Bush's platform is any better; I haven't read it, so I don't know, but I suspect it's got a lot of baloney in it too. However, just to end on a positive note, there was one plank in this platform that I really liked.

We will fight to allow students to earn four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of national service.

I'm not quite sure what he means by this, but I think something similar to this would be a great idea. I don't think it's a good thing that everybody goes to college straight out of high school. You don't appreciate education as much when it's all you've experienced all your life. You go into huge amounts of debt without understanding what it's like in the real world earning the money to pay them off. This holds down our national savings rate. Now I don't know what Kerry means by "national service." Can the federal government really create that many worthwhile jobs? Should it? Instead, I propose that the government revoke a lot of the student loan subsidies it provides, but then create a savings fund that matches dollar for dollar any money that a student saves for college by working.

Meanwhile, prohibit price discrimination ("need-based financial aid," to use the popular euphemism) by universities. Make Harvard and Yale quit sucking the middle classes dry; and if poor people want to attend, fine, but let them work for a couple years and earn their way rather than on funds siphoned off of middle-class students. I think this would transform the way America's young people lead their lives, greatly for the better. I don't know if that is exactly what Kerry meant, but if it is, I congratulate him on at least one brilliant idea.