About two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that the public could expect to see something at the Republican convention that was absent from the Dems’: details.
President Bush will present what aides say will be a detailed second-term agenda when he is nominated in New York in 10 days, part of an ambitious convention program built on invocations of Sept. 11 and efforts to paint Senator John Kerry as untrustworthy and out of the mainstream.
[…]
Ed Gillespie, the national Republican chairman and a senior Bush campaign adviser, argued that Mr. Kerry had missed an opportunity at his convention by spending too much time talking about his biography and Mr. Bush, reflecting Mr. Kerry’s effort to use his convention to present himself as strong enough to carry the nation through a time of war.
“They left people feeling hungry for substance,” Mr. Gillespie said. “We will not make that mistake in New York. We will come out of there with specific proposals for the future for a new term.”
I foolishly thought this was a great idea. What better way to have a serious discussion about public policy and the future of the country than to have George W. Bush — for perhaps the first time in his adult life — actually talk in detail about specific proposals.
The foolish part, in retrospect, was thinking this might actually happen.
From the outset, let me say that I don’t much agree with the GOP analysis that Kerry made a “mistake” by ignoring specific details. Kerry’s speech may have dealt with broad themes, but he’s offered detailed proposals for nearly all of his policy ideas.
Second, and far more importantly, if Bush intended to one-up Kerry by offering “specific proposals for the future for a new term,” he did a great job in keeping them secret.
“To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation and making the tax relief permanent.”
Detailed? I don’t think so. Bush says he has a “plan” — which no one has seen — to create jobs. Aside from the fact that we’ve heard this before, and his previous plans have failed dramatically, there’s no substance or specifics to back any of this up.
“[W]e will make our country less dependent on foreign sources of energy.”
Glad to hear it, but how will we do this? Who knows? Bush certainly isn’t saying.
“In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code.”
How simple? What kind of reform? Bush won’t tell us, but we should take his word for it, because…he says so. Feel better?
Of course, I was looking for specific details from the president and his platform because that’s where the Republicans told me to look. Perhaps there was another source for information.
“Anyone who wants more details on my agenda can find them online. The web address is not very imaginative, but it’s easy to remember: georgewbush.com.”
Oh right, Bush’s website. That’s where I can find the “details” on Bush’s agenda, right? Wrong. Indeed, as an American who wants more details, I took the president’s advice and swung by the ol’ website to see all of the specific policy proposals Bush didn’t have time to talk about in New York. Not surprisingly, I found the same vague platitudes I heard from the convention floor.
For example, while Bush said he’d “reform and simplify” the tax code at the convention, his “detailed” website says, “President Bush will work to make the tax code simpler for taxpayers, encourage saving and investment, and improve the economy’s ability to create jobs and raise wages.” That’s it; those are the details.
I’m left wondering if Bush knows what “detailed” even means.
Or as the Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin put it last week:
“Tonight,” President Bush said at the top of his hour-long convention speech last night, “I will tell you where I stand, what I believe and where I will lead this country in the next four years.”
Not much luck on that last part.