Show Some Courage
During a recent CNN Town Hall, Anderson Cooper asked Pete Buttigieg why he had no policies on his website. It was a fair question. Sadly, it is a fair question for most of the current candidates for president as well. Is it too much to ask those who want be be our leader to be clear about where they stand on the issues and have the courage to lead? We don’t think so. Let’s try to be fact-based and rational and see what we find.
We recently surveyed the websites of ten of the highest polling candidates. Only three of them (Sanders, Warren and Gillibrand) address the issues. The rest, (Biden, Buttigieg, Booker, Klobuchar, Harris, O’Rourke, and Gabbard) are all more or less silent.
How do we explain this? The conventional wisdom is that it is smart to be “deliberately vague” until they see where the primary voters are leaning on the issues. While we understand this strategy, it is not the strategy of a leader and we deserve better. We deserve candidates who have the courage to tell us where they want to take America and why - candidates who have the courage to lead, not follow the polls.
Returning to the CNN Town Hall marathon on Monday, it seemed to us that the most impressive performance belonged to the students who asked the questions. Without exception, they were direct, appropriate, articulate and relevant. They were also quite specific, in sharp contrast to most of the answers. With the frequent exception of Elizabeth Warren, and the occasional exception of Buttigieg, the candidates often used the questions to pivot to the comfort zone of their personal anecdotes and rehearsed general talking points.
Two of the most glaring examples of this were provided by Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders. Asked what countries with universal health care provide the best example for the US to follow, Klobuchar explicitly declined to name one, saying instead that the US needs to do it in our own way. Really? With so many countries providing such great examples of universal healthcare with better outcomes at lower cost (see Healthcare Research), couldn’t she at least refer to one or more of them? What was the risk in that? Or is it possible that she is uninformed of what the rest of the world is doing? We are left to wonder.
Another was provided by Bernie Sanders. When asked exactly how he would transition away from for-profit insurance companies to a Medicare For All single payer, he pivoted to describing the healthcare problem in the US. Please, we know what is wrong with the US healthcare system. We also know that most candidates think the end game is Medicare For All. But the potential for success of the entire aspiration rests in the details of the execution. So, we must know how candidates intend to guide the transition. This is a signature issue for Sanders, so why did he pivot?
Taking advantage of our proximity to New Hampshire, I have had the opportunity to see many of the Democratic candidates (Booker, Gabbard, Harris, O'Rourke and Klobuchar so far) up close and personal. I am sorry to report that small crowds don’t result in greater candor or directness. On March 22nd, I joined a meet and greet in Peterborough, NH to get a sense of Tulsi Gabbard. Touting her National Guard credentials, Gabbard’s signature issue is ending the perpetual state of war and nation building that the US has engaged in for the last 20 years. She often says that “trillions” of dollars wasted on endless wars can be saved and invested in programs here at home. So far I am with her. (see Defense Policy Research) But, when I asked how much she believed could be saved in the defense budget over the next few years without jeopardizing our security, she pivoted to criticism of President Trump and declined to answer. In fact, she doubled down on her nonanswer by saying “I don’t think it makes sense to just throw a number out there.” She wasn’t being asked to “just throw a number out there.” She was simply being asking to provide a straightforward answer relating to her signature issue. Again, why no response?
Given all this, it is no wonder that Americans are frustrated with the absence of fact-based discussion and debate in this country. As Kamala Harris likes to say, “we are better than this.” Or at least, we would like to be.