There’s been a quiet, behind-the-scenes debate over the point for most of the year, but I’m very much inclined to agree with Mark Schmitt’s analysis: presidential candidates probably shouldn’t bother offering detailed plans and white papers for major policy issues during a campaign.
The explanation for these plans is that voters deserve to know what a candidate would do if elected president. But highly detailed plans don’t tell us that. Nor does the ability to assign some staffers to produce a plan indicate the skills necessary to serve as president. The plans put forward in the primaries are long forgotten by Inauguration Day. […]
We don’t give our presidents total power to enact policy. They have to work with a Congress made up of people with their own views and constituencies. Does anyone really think that a plan cooked up by a bunch of smart 20-somethings after a couple of all-nighters amid the empty pizza boxes and pressures of a campaign is superior to what could be developed with the full resources of the federal government and open Congressional hearings and debate?
I’m not sure whether it’s superior or not, but I’m fairly certain the plan cooked up by smart 20-somethings has a much worse chance of actually passing than a policy developed through the traditional legislative process.
The point isn’t that candidates should be evasive about what they want to do if elected. Obviously, voters should have a sense of a would-be president’s priorities and goals. But the utility of producing a bunch of detailed policy analyses is questionable. As Schmidt put it, “Democrats should just state their principles, explain their reasoning, and describe their basic goals for health care or poverty.”
There is, of course, a flip side to all of this. I just don’t find it persuasive.
The most credible argument on the other side is that candidates can claim a mandate for specific ideas if they present detailed proposals and then win. “I campaigned on this,” the newly-elected president can say, “and the people have sent me to get this done.”
Except lawmakers, historically, rarely care. Presidents use the bully pulpit to raise the profile of the issue, and keep a policy matter on the front burner, but Congress is going to do what Congress is going to do. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee will yawn quite loudly when the White House complains, “But I offered the public a detailed white paper on this before the convention!” It might serve as a starting point for negotiations or a congressional hearing, but despite rumors to the contrary, the president is not really The Decider, and he or she cannot overhaul the healthcare system, or alleviate poverty, or tackle global warming by himself or herself.
There’s also a partisan imbalance here. Schmidt noted, “Look at the ‘issues’ section of a Republican presidential candidate’s Web site and you’ll typically find only the most basic statements: ‘cut taxes,’ ‘defeat the terrorists’ and not much more. Republicans speak in terms of principle, not programs.”
Indeed, it’s been this way for a while; Republicans generally tell the public, “Vote for me — and I’ll work out the details later.” There are rarely adverse consequences. In 2000, Bush’s vague and ambiguous tax plan didn’t make any sense. Al Gore tried to make it a campaign issue, but the media ignored it, voters didn’t care, and it passed in 2001. A few years later, during the 2004 campaign, Bush said more than once that he could revitalize Social Security without raising taxes, cutting benefits, or raising the retirement age. How did he propose to pull that off? He didn’t — he just mentioned ideas and goals without any details. Sure, the proposal was a debacle, but it failed on the merits, not because Bush wasn’t specific enough during the campaign.
Why should there be a higher burden on Democratic candidates? When a vague Republican takes pot shots at a detail-oriented Dem, the “where’s your plan?” question doesn’t serve as much of a defense.
In fact, American voters don’t seem to care all that much about the details in advance. A candidate talks about what he or she finds important, and how he or she would approach the issue if elected. Voters either agree or disagree. If a candidate were to make some kind of outlandish campaign promise — free ice cream for everyone, every day, for four years — there would probably be a higher expectation to explain how that might work, but a more general policy prescription needs a lot fewer support materials.
What do you guys think?