If you’ve been paying the primary race even the remotest attention, you’ve undoubtedly heard that it’s about this thing called “change.” America is tired of an unwinnable war, tired of a government that favors tax cuts for the wealthy few over health care and economic support for the many, and tired, most of all, of the Republican party.
But the change we desire won’t come by simply hoping for it.
To get real change, we need someone to force it. The belief that the “old politics,” as Ted Kennedy recently called the state of affairs in Washington, can be dissolved by one fresh face is naive. Our republic was designed such that divisiveness will be forever ingrained where policy is made. Partisanship exists independently of whoever sits in the Oval Office. The most we can hope from that person is that she is adept enough to wind her ideas through the maelstrom and bring them out as law. Sen. Hillary Clinton is the candidate that can do that.
To understand Clinton’s qualifications, one need only look back to 1993, when she lead her husband’s naive and ill-fated attempt to bring universal health care to the country. She suffered the worst of Washington’s political attacks. Republicans hurled at the plan every pejorative they could, saying it would cause red tape, bureaucracy and the restriction of individual choice. They insinuated that the Clintons were involved in drug smuggling and murder. Because of mistakes Bill Clinton made before she took charge, the attacks brought the plan crashing down. 15 years later, the Republicans haven’t changed.
When a Democrat enters the White House in 2009, the attacks will come again.
During her time in the White House and in the Senate, however, Clinton learned how to withstand them. She learned how to make change. She helped raise the minimum wage and has worked on a variety of bills to improve the country’s health care. When she said it took a president to realize Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream, she was right. Idealism can only make it as far as a president’s political ability can take it.
With Clinton, her political acumen supports a pragmatic idealism. The ideals at the heart of progressivism, equality of opportunity and rights, all guide her policy proposals. She’ll create universal prekindergarten, invest in internship programs for high schoolers, and increase the maximum size of Pell Grants to help American youth going to college. She’s got a plan to create a Manhattan project for alternative energy. She’ll double down our diplomatic efforts in the world and end the war as soon as she’s in office. Unlike other candidates, she’s got the proven ability to make these plans a reality.
America is ready for change. We need somebody as president who’s just as ready to make that change happen.
E-mail Reed at treed@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.