jims musings

The Pres­i­den­tial race has begun in earnest. The can­di­dates are doing their best (for love and money) to sway vot­ers. Pun­dits are weigh­ing in. The nation, and the world, await the out­come of the con­test.
Largely, they’re the same. Sure, dif­fer­ences will be high­lighted, but the dif­fer­ences are usu­ally minor. For the most part, you choose a polit­i­cal party based on a very few issues impor­tant to you; abor­tion, taxes for the ‘wealthy’, gay rights, ille­gal immi­gra­tion, Iraq. There are a few oth­ers, but I make my point. How many vot­ers (or even politi­cians) have read the party plat­forms?
After you choose a polit­i­cal party affil­i­a­tion, you choose a can­di­date. It seems this is largely done on either (A) how good the per­son looks and speaks, or (B) they are more smarter/less stupider/less dirty than the oth­ers. And then we vote.
Rarely do we hear solu­tions, or any will­ing­ness to change. I under­stand the rea­sons for this, but still… lead­er­ship? Has any­one heard of it?
I’d like to hear a can­di­date give a speech like the following:

“My fel­low Amer­i­cans, it is time to fix prob­lems in this coun­try. We are past sim­ple fixes, and it is time for us to go to work. It is time for our gov­ern­ment to do its job– and get out of the way where it does not belong.
In the past, this coun­try has embarked on mon­u­men­tal projects, with equally mon­u­men­tal results.
The Panama Canal linked oceans and rev­o­lu­tion­ized inter­na­tional com­merce and travel.
The Man­hat­tan project, which built the first atomic bomb, also made pos­si­ble nuclear power and led to a much deeper under­stand­ing of the uni­verse around us.
The Moon project, Apollo, put men on the moon, spurred tremen­dous tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment, gar­nered immense national pres­tige and inter­na­tional good­will.
The Inter­net has enabled and spurred incred­i­ble advances in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­ogy in every­day lives. We have yet to see what its ulti­mate effects will be, but it can be seen that Amer­ica is a nation of progress, tri­umphs over adver­sity and suc­cess. We have changed the world in pro­found ways. Amer­ica has given the world much more than cheese­burg­ers.
It is time for our Nation to under­take yet another task. This task is may be farther-reaching and more pro­found than any­thing that has gone before. We have the oppor­tu­nity to change the world and make it a bet­ter place– not just for us, but for our friends and allies, for the peo­ple of the world.
It is time to move beyond oil.
We live in a high-energy soci­ety, a civ­i­liza­tion which requires immense amounts of elec­tric­ity and power to run. We light our nights, warm our homes, build our cities, power our hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ties and busi­nesses with oil. Our world is also suf­fer­ing from this aston­ish­ing appetite for energy. We drill and mine and chop, build­ing roads and pipelines and immense strands of wire, try­ing to fill the need for power around the world. We involve our mil­i­tary in dis­tant lands because our civ­i­liza­tion requires energy. Our rela­tions with for­eign coun­tries become strained and con­vo­luted because of our needs.
It is time to move beyond oil. Not just for the good of Amer­i­cans, but for the good of all mankind.
I pro­pose this coun­try com­mit itself to the task of mov­ing beyond oil for energy. I believe this can be accom­plished in 20 years. Here is a rough out­line of my plan.
First, I chal­lenge con­gress to pass leg­is­la­tion which will encour­age power com­pa­nies to build more nuclear power plants. Cur­rently, about 20 per­cent of our elec­tric­ity is nuclear. In Japan it is 30 per­cent. In France, it is 80 per­cent. I under­stand there are con­cerns about nuclear power. I also under­stand that the safety record for nuclear plants is unpar­al­leled. We must take greater advan­tage of nuclear power. I issue the chal­lenge that we build enough new capa­bil­ity that 35 per­cent of our power comes from nuclear energy within twenty years.
Sec­ond, we must ulti­mately move to solar power. There is no energy source as abun­dant, avail­able or as reli­able as the sun. I issue the chal­lenge that in twenty years’ time, we get 25 per­cent of our elec­tric­ity from solar power. This will require new tech­nolo­gies, mate­ri­als and capa­bil­i­ties we can­not yet imag­ine. Fur­ther, I believe we need both earth– and space-based solar sta­tions. The abil­ity to gen­er­ate elec­tric­ity and send it to earth would enable us to help peo­ple and nations, any where and at any time.
Meet­ing these chal­lenges will greatly ease the foot­print of mankind on the earth. It will enable the United States to con­tinue its lead­er­ship role in tech­nol­ogy. It will give our coun­try greater lat­i­tude in diplo­matic issues around the world. We spend bil­lions to fight poverty and dis­ease. We spend bil­lions to repair envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems. Cer­tainly we can see the value in a quest such as this, to move mankind beyond its absolute reliance on things we rip from the dirt and rocks of this beau­ti­ful planet.
To our friends around the world who pro­vide our oil, you are still our friends. We tackle these chal­lenges not out of spite but out of the need for the greater good. We will work with you so that your economies are not wrecked, nor your peo­ple impov­er­ished. We under­take this project for the pros­per­ity and peace of all mankind.
Pay­ing for this endeavor will be expen­sive. I invite involve­ment from the nations of the world. I will work with con­gress to reduce the scope and spend­ing of the gov­ern­ment. We have many oblig­a­tions, and these must be met, but con­gress must stop using ear­marks and con­trol spend­ing. The mil­i­tary and the pri­vate com­pa­nies they work with must find ways to be more effi­cient. Our health care sys­tem must work to reduce costs. We must stop the flood of ille­gal immi­gra­tion into our coun­try. These prob­lems and more drain our resources and have no easy solu­tions. The ulti­mate choices will make some unhappy, yet they must be done. As I said when I began, it is time to fix prob­lems.
The mil­i­tary and other branches of gov­ern­ment must stop using “cost plus” con­tracts, which allow the scope and cost of projects to grow unbounded. New meth­ods of pro­cure­ment must be found.
I call upon Con­gress and the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion to sim­plify and stream­line the way phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals are devel­oped and brought to mar­ket. Our obses­sion with mak­ing things totally safe dri­ves the cost of drugs sky-high and excludes oth­er­wise effec­tive drugs from use because of minor increases in health risk and other side effects. We must trust doc­tors and patients and allow them the abil­ity to dis­cuss options openly and with­out ter­ri­ble legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions.
We must reduce the cost of Social Secu­rity, which was not orig­i­nally intended to be a retire­ment plan. Per­haps the pro­gram should be abol­ished. What­ever the deci­sion, it must no longer be a polit­i­cal third rail and we cit­i­zens must demand that con­gress actu­ally fix Social Secu­rity. I would pro­pose that the retire­ment age be increased, per­haps to 72, and that we raise the level of income on which the social secu­rity tax is levied, per­haps dou­bling to the first $170,000 of income.
We must secure our bor­ders. By allow­ing porous bor­ders, we are over­whelm­ing the melt­ing pot, push­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens out of jobs and grossly dis­tort­ing wages in this coun­try. If we want wages to increase, we must stop the flood of cheap, under­val­ued labor. The bedrock of our coun­try is cit­i­zen­ship, which our found­ing fathers fought and died for. It is pre­cious and must be treated as such. Wages will rise as we shut the bor­ders and require proof of cit­i­zen­ship for jobs. Ris­ing wages will help social secu­rity and the bud­get as a whole.
The fed­eral gov­ern­ment must get out of edu­ca­tion. Teach­ers every­where hate the No Child Left Behind Act, a well-intentioned but poor piece of leg­is­la­tion. I would call for its repeal in my first 100 days as pres­i­dent. Get­ting rid of the costs of this law, and shrink­ing the Edu­ca­tion Department’s bud­get to year 2000 lev­els would save $30 bil­lion and per­haps more. Schools belong to neigh­bor­hoods, where par­ents and con­cerned cit­i­zens may be involved, not some bureau­crat in Wash­ing­ton. We must demand the high per­for­mance each stu­dent is capa­ble of, not a mediocre stan­dard of com­pli­ance.
I am sure my crit­ics and detrac­tors will have plenty to say, and I wel­come it. I would be happy to have these items on the table, and the ideas and thoughts I’ve dis­cussed are far from final. Debate and dis­cus­sion are the first step to action. Elect me as your pres­i­dent, and you will get that action.
Thank you and good night.”