It is time to put the New back in New Democrat. It is time to put new ideas
back at the heart of American politics. And it is time to make clear the mission
of our party and the purpose of America: to give everyone the opportunity to
get ahead, demand a new responsibility from every American, and have
America lead the world through the power of our example and our ideals.
The New Democratic movement's quest has been to find new means to advance
enduring values, and new ideas to advance the credo that a Tennessean, Andrew
Jackson, gave our party and our country: "equal opportunity for all, special privilege
for none."
From Andrew Jackson to FDR, from JFK to Bill Clinton, the great tradition of the
Democratic Party has been to recognize that new challenges demand new answers. In
the words of Franklin Roosevelt, "New conditions impose new requirements on government and those who conduct government."
Let me tell you what it means to be a New Democrat in the 21st century, and what
new conditions we must face together as Americans in the years to come.
The core values of the New Democrat movement are the same as in 1992 when
Clinton was elected president. We believe in equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
We believe in responsibilities as well as rights, and in every citizen's duty to give their
country something back. We believe
America must stand strong in a dangerous
world, and America cannot be
strong abroad unless opportunity and
responsibility are strong at home.
But today, we face a host of challenges
that seemed far off or unimaginable
15 years ago -- the spread of
Islamist fanaticism, the rise of India
and China, the acceleration of climate
change. We have different problems to
solve, and old problems that demand
different answers. And thanks to the
Bush administration, we face a political
culture in Washington that believes
the purpose of politics is to gain
power, rather than to help Americans
live better.
Today, our country desperately
needs a healthy, honest debate about
what we stand for, where we're going,
and what a good president can do.
This should be a proud time for that
debate. Democrats have an outstanding
group of candidates seeking the
presidency. With no incumbent president
or vice president running for the
first time since 1952, we should be
looking forward to an aggressive
debate about how to deal with the
challenges Bush's administration will
leave behind.
But as state after state moves up its
primary, candidates are more likely to
be judged by their war chests than by
their plans to solve our country's most
pressing problems. We risk having a
big money primary at the very time we
should be having an ideas primary
instead. That's wrong.
This isn't the fault of our candidates,
many of whom have begun to
put interesting proposals on the table.
When Sen. Hillary Clinton proposes
cutting unnecessary government contractors
to put our fiscal house in
order, or Sen. Barack Obama calls for
political reform, or former Sen. John
Edwards puts forward a plan to cut
carbon emissions, or Gov. Bill
Richardson announces an energy plan,
their campaigns are lucky to get any
national news coverage at all. By contrast,
fundraisers and attack ads are
treated as front-page news -- even
though they won't make any difference
in the lives of ordinary Americans, and
won't even make the difference in this
campaign.
In a political atmosphere that values
process over purpose, anyone who
cares about ideas has a responsibility
to remind everyone how much ideas
matter. In our democracy, presidential
elections are the best chance to set a
bold new course. The next eight
months could define America's future
for the next eight years. So today, we
say to campaigns in both parties and
to the press who cover them: The
horse race, the money chase, and the
in-your-face can wait. Let's turn the
next 12 months into the Ideas Primary
instead.
Over the next few months, I will
hold a series of idea forums around
the country with governors and other
leaders to shine a light on the major
challenges and new answers. The
message of these forums will be that
ideas matter most, and every voter in
every state has a right to know what
his or her next president will actually
do.
To advance this cause, the DLC
is also launching a new website,
IdeasPrimary.com, to serve as a clearinghouse
for new policy proposals
throughout the 2008 campaign. We'll
keep track of ideas the candidates put
forward, offer plenty of our own, and
invite elected officials and experts
from around the country to weigh in
on what does and does not work. The
Web is rife with advice on political
tactics, but we believe the Internet has
far greater potential: to be an online
laboratory of ideas.
To kick off this Ideas Primary, let
me offer a few. As DLC chair, I will
devote my efforts to six challenges:
keeping America safe; giving
Americans the tools to
compete; holding government
accountable for results;
creating a hybrid
economy; promoting family
and values; and ending poverty for
all who work.
Keep America Safe. To lead America
in a dangerous world, we must be more
than an "anti" party -- anti-Bush, anti-
Iraq, anti-war. Democrats have a
responsibility to offer what America
and the world will need to rebound
from the Bush years -- a positive plan to
combat Islamist fanaticism, prevent the
spread of weapons of mass destruction,
stabilize weak and failing states, and
protect people in places like Darfur
against mass murder. Where the Republican
administration has divided
our friends and united our enemies,
Democrats must renew our strategic
alliances and modernize old institutions
to fight the new battles against
terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation,
and genocide.
We must rebuild the oldest institution
on which our national security
rests -- America's Armed Forces. Iraq is
not the last war America may have to
fight. If we find ourselves at war again,
we must not abandon America's soldiers,
as the current administration
too often has done. We need a new
Army -- bigger, stronger, and certain
that it will always go to battle with the
armor it deserves and come home to
the heroes' welcome it has earned. We
should give the new Army the soldiers
it needs so guardsmen and reservists
aren't forced to serve endless tours they
didn't sign up for. We should ensure
that the ROTC can recruit on every
college campus, and pass a new GI Bill
of Rights to guarantee every soldier
and veteran the true thanks of a grateful
nation.
As the 2008 presidential debate
begins in earnest, it's time for
Democrats to look beyond Iraq and
offer their own positive plan for defeating
Islamist extremism. As Harry
Truman and John F. Kennedy understood,
and the Bush administration
does not, the only way to win a battle
of ideas is with better ideas. We need a
smarter strategy to discredit jihadist
extremism and strengthen Muslim
moderates and reformers. Our strategy
should draw on all of America's
might -- a dynamic economy, smart
diplomacy, and the moral example of a
thriving, multi-ethnic democracy.
America should lead the way in
launching a Greater Middle East prosperity
plan to spur investment and
growth in the world's most dangerous
region, and bring it into the world
trading system. We need to tap the talents
of Muslim-Americans to tell our
country's story and challenge fanatics
who murder innocents in the name of
Islam. And we need a patient, peaceful
plan to support Muslim aspirations for
greater individual liberty and democracy
-- even if that puts us at odds with
friendly autocrats.
As progressive internationalists, we
should push to reinvent collective
security for the 21st century. Every crisis
shouldn't come down to a choice
between unilateral U.S. action and a
United Nations that doesn't have the
strength or coherence to intervene. If
an expanded and reformed Security
Council can't or won't do the job, we'll
have to look for another forum, such
as a worldwide Democracy Coalition.
Finally, in recognition of the great
sacrifices our soldiers have made, and
to show the world what we're made of,
we should give all Americans the
chance to serve their country. Since
9/11, citizens of every age have
yearned to do more for America. We
should dramatically expand Americans'
opportunities to serve by
expanding AmeriCorps, the Peace
Corps, Experience Corps, and statebased
Civilian Defense Corps. And we
should make service universal by asking
every young American to perform
three months of civilian service by the
age of 25.
Give Americans the Tools to
Compete. To be strong in the world,
we must be strong at home. The U.S.
economy is growing, but working
Americans aren't getting their share of
the gains. At the same time, the safety
net of the industrial era is coming
apart as corporations shed health and
pension benefits. We can't stop
change, but we can write a new social
contract that gives Americans the tools
to compete and take charge of their
economic security.
We need a national strategy to
compete and win in the global economy.
To start with, we need to provide
universal health care, as well as universal
college and lifelong education. The
current president has ignored both
those needs, but the next president can
make both happen. We can cut the
cost of health care by modernizing the
system, reforming it to reward results
instead of procedures, holding down
chronic costs, and curing chronic disease.
With the money we save, we can
achieve universal health care built on
universal responsibility. Government
should be responsible for making sure
everyone can afford health care. Every
person should be responsible for making
sure his or her family is covered.
The health care system should be
responsible for delivering affordable
results.
We need a new sense of responsibility
in education as well. The United
States used to rank first in the world in
the percentage of young people with a
college degree. Now we've fallen to
seventh. We send more students to
college, but we lag behind in graduating
them. A college degree is more
than an economic imperative -- it is
the essence of the American Dream,
the test of whether we are living up to
our promise as a land where anyone
can rise as far as his determination and
God-given talents will take him.
When children grow up thinking college
is beyond their reach, we have not
lived up to that promise. When young
people can't afford to go, we have not
lived up to that promise. And when
students give up on themselves and
don't finish, they will not live up to
their promise.
Today, we need to scrap the old,
bloated system of subsidizing banks
to offer student loans and use the savings
to help states make college free
for any young person willing to work
or serve. We can reform and simplify
the tax code to give every college student
and worker a single, refundable,
$3,000 credit to pay for education
and training. We must ask responsibility
from colleges and students
alike, by making aid performance-based,
so that the best college system
on Earth once again produces the
most college graduates.
And for America to compete in the
world, we must put innovation first
here at home. We need to reform the
nation's tax, regulatory, and investment
policies to build on America's
advantages -- from skilled workers to
open, dynamic competition to the
world's most efficient capital markets.
Hold Government Accountable for
Results. To meet the challenges of the
21st century, we must first restore
responsibility to government and
accountability to Washington. Over
the past six years, the national debt
has more than doubled, the federal
bureaucracy has ballooned, and special
favors for special interests have
cost us dearly in resources and
results. By holding government
accountable again, we can cut the
deficit, make long-term investments,
and, most important, earn back
Americans' trust.
We must get rid of the Bush boondoggles.
We should cut the number
of federal contractors by 750,000, cut
the number of political appointees by
half, and break up the mammoth
Department of Homeland Security. It
is too bloated to manage, too open
for business to trust, and too big to
fix. Now that Congress has restored
"Paygo" rules, we should crack down
on wasteful corporate subsidies, so
that Washington is an example of fiscal
discipline, not a cash machine for
narrow interests. We must reform the
political system by creating a democracy
endowment to finance federal
campaigns and by ending the partisan
manipulation of congressional
districts.
After an administration that has
larded the tax system with special
breaks for those who need them least,
we must take the lead in passing tax
reform that rewards work, not just
wealth. We should give Americans a
progressive tax code again. And even
though the deep fiscal hole the Bush
administration has dug will make it
harder to strengthen Social Security
and Medicare for the long term, we
owe it to ourselves to be honest about
this debate. We owe it to our children
to be candid and frank about the real
choices before us, even if it means
making some in our own party
uncomfortable as we talk about it. We
owe it to children and to everything
we stand for as a party to talk about
this honestly and forthrightly.
Create the Hybrid Economy. A clean
energy future has become a new economic
and security imperative. For my
generation, this is our legacy issue.
America has to curb an oil appetite
that is helping pay for the spread of
Islamist extremism. We
need to usher in a new
"hybrid economy" that
will make new energy
technologies our greatest
source of new jobs in the
next decade.
First, we should set a goal that
every American household can own a
hybrid car or its equivalent by 2015,
and do whatever it takes to make sure
that those hybrids are made here in
America, not somewhere else. Second,
Al Gore is right: We need to cap carbon
now. We need to create a market
in clean energy with a cap-and-trade
system that raises the cost of burning
and emitting carbon, and establish a
new tailpipe trading system to increase
the fuel efficiency of American autos.
Third, we should use this year's farm
bill to phase out subsidies for wealthy
farmers, and create a new system of
energy subsidies that reward small
farmers for new, renewable energy
sources instead.
Make America the Most Pro-
Family Country on Earth. The
older our country gets, the more
dependent we will be on a thriving
new generation. In the decades to
come, we need to make America the
best place to raise children and the
most pro-family nation on Earth.
We should reward parents for choosing
to bet on America's future. Every
parent should have access to three
months of paid leave. Major employers
should promise parents who
leave work to raise a child that their
jobs will be waiting for them any
time over the next five years. And for
kids' sake, we should bring the same
enthusiasm we've shown in going
after corporate polluters to going
after companies responsible for
bombarding children with cultural
pollution.
End Poverty for All Who Work.
This will be the first presidential election
since the tragedy of Hurricane
Katrina, which reminded us that the
progress we've fought for isn't finished.
As New Democrats, we ended a
broken welfare system. Now we must
pledge to end poverty as we know it
by keeping a simple promise -- in
America, no one who works should
be poor. We need to ask as much
responsibility from poor fathers as
we've asked of poor mothers. Every
low-income father should have the
opportunity to work, but also the
responsibility to do so. We should
launch a national campaign to cut
teen pregnancy by half. Finally, we
should take a great step forward
toward a more equal society by passing
the America Saving for Personal
Investment, Retirement, and Education
Act. It will give low- and middle-income
couples Baby Bonds that will
close the asset gap and provide their
children the resources they need to
make the most of their lives when
they grow up.
We must not forget what sets
America apart as the greatest experiment
in human history. Here in
America, it shouldn't matter where
you're born or what you look like. All of
us have the same dreams, and every one
of us should have the chance to reach
them -- to make the most of what God
gave us, and give our children a better
future and a stronger country.
Those are just a few ideas to start
the debate. With the talent in our
party, around the country, and in this
presidential race, the fount of ideas
will be overflowing. I don't know
which candidate will win the Ideas
Primary, but I know the American
people will be the winners, and so
will the Democratic Party. If we think
anew, and get the ideas and the values
right, the country will be stronger for
it, and so will we.
When we do all these things, we
will see once again that the only sure
and lasting solutions are those that
tap the most enduring values of our
country. To realize the hope of this
new century, we must keep America's
great promise: to give every citizen
who is willing to make the most of it
the opportunity to get ahead. No
force on Earth can match the
strength of that common purpose.
