kerry: run the cabinet
as super tuesday winds down, we find kerry in a strong position, and set up to begin the general election campaign in march. that means months of hardcore campaign ahead. it’s an unprecedented situation, and maybe calls for an unprecedented strategy. i’m going to suggest one: run the cabinet.
bush has more than $150 million on hand, and is reportedly planning a quarter-billion-dollar campaign. that’s more than $1.3 million dollars per day. personally, i think that is obscene, but i’m not talking about campaign finance today. this is strategy.
the democratic field represented an amazing array of committed, involved people, many of which campaigned on particular issues. now that the race is [essentially] over, it’s time to demostrate diversity as a strength and contrast it sharply with the binary-thinking bush approach to politics (with us or against us).
the cabinet comes with these jobs: vice president, attorney general and the secretaries of agriculture, commerce, defense, education, energy, health and human services, homeland security, housing and urban development, interior, labor, state, transportation, treasury and veterans affairs.
we also have nine current and former presidential candidates from the democratic party, many of which made significant contributions to the political debate: john kerry, john edwards, howard dean, wesley clark, al sharpton, dennis kucinich, dick gephardt, joe lieberman, carol moseley braun.
i suggest that kerry approach the candidates – his former competitors – and ask them if they would commit to serve in the new administration. there’s some wiggle room about who should be in which office, and some won’t do it at all, but if the kerry campaign can establish a good chunk of the cabinet now, they could run several people on particular issues with a unified vision of a new administration. build some or all of a cabinet now, and create multiple issue-focused fronts that the republicans have to address.
if kerry picks a vice president (perhaps edwards), a secretary of defense (perhaps clark), a secretary of education (perhaps sharpton), a secretary of labor (perhaps gephardt), a secretary of housing and urban development (perhaps braun), health and human services (perhaps dean), then each of these committed individuals can engage particular points of the bush administration record. if the democrats can find a few more non-candidates that are willing to commit to the cabinet, i think it would go very far in changing the nature of the campaign and, even more important, give the voters a person that speaks to some issue they consider important.
maybe a former clark supporter with a particular interest in isn’t convinced that kerry is the best man for the job, but if it’s on the record that clark has a place in the new administration and will play a significant role in both the campaign and the future government… well, that might be enough.
do that six more times, and the kerry campaign can give most voters someone to pay attention to (even if they disagree). if the republicans decide to go negative, the assault is greatly diluted.
what i don’t know is how well these people get along – if they can move past competitors and pull a unified campaign together – but if even a few people (beyond the president/vice president positions) are willing to continue to focus on some of the issues they brought to the primary campaign, i think it becomes a whole new kind of election.
a uniting, not dividing, election (to borrow a phrase)…
just a thought…