Well, my part of the presentation got done this morning at 3:00, and I’m up and don’t have much to do until this afternoon, so a bit of blogging and then back to reading documents.
Kevin Drum and I have agreed to do a cross-blog discussion, which I hope will widen, starting on the policy positions I took in my piece chastening the Democrats. We’ll work out some structure for it over the next day or so and maybe start it next week (if that works for him).
Tristero and I have also been having a damn civil email dialog, and have cooked up something which I then proposed to Kevin, and which he reasonably shot down as impossibly burdensome. But…I’m thinking we might try to make it into a collective project, and so a feasible one. And if nothing else if it fails, it will fail spectacularly.
Here’s what I’m thinking about as a start.
An encyclopedia of information on the policies of each of the major candidates in a specific set of areas. Pulling together position papers, speeches, news clips, etc., in one place so that people can step up to meet Tristero’s Challenge and actually read primary sources.
Now, I’ll point out that position papers do not policy make, and policy does not action determine. But it’s a start…
What I’d like to do is invite partisan supporters of each candidate to email me, and we’ll pick one person who will in essence be a ‘librarian’ for each of the major candidates (Clark, Dean, Gephart, Kerry, and Bush) who will receive information from reader or other sources, and then will forward links to Joe & me. We’ll then create an updated-weekly post around several areas that we think are interesting so that readers can link directly to all the current position papers and speeches of each candidate around a topic.
Call it ‘open source’ journalism.
Let’s start with the basic question: Stupid or Useful? Answer below in the comments.
League of Women voters style useful.
Useful.
It would be a very good idea to use naming conventions, and maybe even experiment with a new common MT category plus auto-trackback.
Like “Shabbat Shalom,” we’d just “time shift” that central index forward every week.
I don’t know…couldn’t everyone just go to each candidate’s website? We’re big boys.
Good idea. How will anyone have time to do it, though?
And as for going to the candidates’ website, I think an archive documenting how their views “evolve” over time might be wickedly useful.
I think it would be more useful to focus on issues, by having librarians responsible for organizing the positions the different candidates have on particular issues. After all, if we just want to see what an individual candidate says overall, we can just go to their web site (although an independent library is also a good idea… hmm…).
I’m thinking something like five categories:
*Iraq
*WoT (I know that’s meaningless, but it’s become the label for something wider)
*Privacy/IP issues
*The Economy
*Alliances
Which are kind of jumbled now, but we could clarify. We’d find one person who was a certifiable supporter of each candidate, and ask people to send news clips, speeches, position papers, and other links that related to that candidate’s comments and positions on a topic, and then we’d collect them.
So in reality, we’d need five people to do something which shouldn’t be too cumbersome…
Volunteers?
Talk to Command Post – they now have a 2004 election section. Maybe you could fold this into their structure rather than duplicating some of what they are doing.
Useful but with caviates that need to be taken into account;
position papers and the like can often consist of banal platitudes meant to deflect all possible criticisms, but which don’t really reflect anyone’s sincere positions, which are insterad reflected in the sort of things they do and say on the stump with a wink and a nod – their is, after all, a reason why all those people with “Peace” bumper-stickers, bumkerstickers that “war is terrorism” and the like, know which candidate to support, regardless of the fact that such people will be the first ones to argue against anyone who suggests, as a criticism, that such-and-such candidate isn’t serious on the war and wouldn’t prosecute it agressively.
The candidate(s) attract them like a magnite attracts iron shavings, and they’ll talk about how such and such is the man to support because he’ll pursue more peace-oriented, negotiation-based policies among themselves, and that all the other stuff is just meant to deflect criticism; some position papers serve the same purpose for the anti-war crowd as Clark’s uniform does: it’s not that they’re for a more agressive prosecution of the war, as say Armed Liberal is, they just see such things as a shield, armor against criticism of what their real position is.
You won’t find a lot of – you won’t find *ANYONE* – at the rallies of some of these candidates carrying a “Fight a Smarter War” sign or “Increase Defense Spending” sign, but you’ll see a lot of people with peace symbols on their cars, bumper stickers saying they wish for the day when the defense budget is starved for funds because the money’s all been transfered to social programs (the bake sale bumper-sticker being the most popular of these), bumper-stickers equating our defense of ourselves with terrorism, and the like.
The point being, sure, examine policy papers. But don’t let it fool you. It doesn’t fool their supporters. They are able to recognize the candidates who reflect their views. They only object when those of us who don’t share those views recognize them too, and are critical of it (it’s practically Neo-McCarthyite!)
Position papers and the like are useful, but not the whole picture, and perhaps not even the most accurate picture.
Porphy-
You’re absolutely right. That’s why we need news clips and links to speeches as well.
A.L.