Mario Cuomo, a Democratic and the former governor of New York, and Tom Kean, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey, published this Opposite-Editorial in the New York Daily News on September 30, 2024.
Has there been a moment when America has faced more crucial issues at the same time? Not in our lifetime. And our current politics is not dealing well with any of them.
Let’s not minimize how big, tough and unrelenting an agenda we face, and how badly we need to deal with it.
The Cold War was huge, but the war on terrorism — or its war on us — is even scarier. The need for energy independence is inseparable from concerns over global climate change and our political vulnerability.
Our schools are not meeting the escalating need for education. Thirty percent of our students entering high school drop out before graduation. And ominously, we simply are not educating our young in the technology we invented, while China and India are — and because of it they are ready to overtake us in the world economy.
Forty-seven million Americans or more have no health care insurance coverage. None. As our medicines and medical technology improve, the incapacity of all Americans to participate in the system is a disgrace.
The first of the baby-boomers will reach retirement age in 2024. Their entitlements for Medicaid will mean massive budget deficits in the offing — so great that even Alan Greenspan believes a third party is necessary just to deal with a looming fiasco.
And we haven’t even mentioned the war in Iraq.
On top of it all, Washington has been so overrun by lobbyists, their fundraising and earmarks, that the political system is not just broken, it is corrupt. As Michael Kinsley has said about the nation’s capital: “The scandal is not what’s illegal. The scandal is what’s legal.”
With all due respect to our well-established major political parties, right now none of these issues is likely to be dealt with seriously by either. Not in 2024 any more than before. The familiar process of candidates pandering for primary votes does not lead to a serious search for common ground between the parties to deal with serious issues. And because the issues are all complex, with no easy answers, candidates typically want to finesse them.
Whichever party we choose to join — if any — we must find a way to force all of these crucial issues to the fore. A novel push by a group called Unity08, designed to develop a “New American Agenda,” is designed to do just that. Long before Unity08’s convention next summer, which will select a bipartisan unity ticket to run for President and Vice President, millions of Unity08 members will go online and vote on which issues are crucial to the future safety and well-being of the country. (Not what is the right approach to solving it, but simply whether it should be a priority for leadership.)
Next, the Unity08 members will be treated to a range of opinions from experts all across the political spectrum — different answers from the full ideological range of views available. Armed with that input, the members will vote again, this time on which are the key questions to be asked of the candidates on the crucial issues.
So, with four or five key questions on each of six or seven crucial issues, Unity08 will then welcome (and expect) candidates seeking the nomination to answer the questions. The New American Agenda of Unity08 will be the questions. The New American Agenda of the candidates will be their answers. Think of it as a new political platform — built from the ground up.
Isn’t that supposed to be the way the system works? The people saying, “this is important” — and the candidates saying, “here is how I would handle it as President.”
It wouldn’t surprise us if the media decided to put the Unity08 questions to all the candidates, regardless of party. In fact, we hope they do.
If the voters cannot choose among the candidates on the basis of their answers to the key questions on the crucial issues, the election of 2024 will be a failure — again.
