A New Contract with America

The Responsible Plan to End the War. It's got a nice ring to it, no? It's purpose: to take us back to the most fundamental, perfectly idealist view of how a Republic should work, using a purely progressive agenda as a platform. It's a thing of beauty. Honestly, in order to really appreciate this, two things need to happen. One, you just need to read the document. Two you need to see how many Congressional candidates have signed on. Hell, even the Washington Post picked it up.

First the document itself: In 22 pages, the Responsible Plan calls for the following items: End U.S. military action in Iraq, using U.S. diplomatic power, addressing humanitarian concerns, restoring our Constitution, restoring our military, restoring independence to the media, creating a new, U.S.-centered energy policy. The first three deal with fixing what we created in Iraq. The gist of it is that it is nation-building we need, not military occupation. We need to build up their infrastructure and economy or their government will not be worth much, and may collapse. "The Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Justice, and Treasury must be directly engaged in creating this solution," the document says, as well as asking for a higher level of international cooperation. I agree completely with the sentiment, and they go further in demanding this not be a leverage point for oil, but that we focus solely on the stability and health of the country.

I am even more excited by the second half of the document, titled "Preventing Future Iraqs". The biggest problem with this whole debacle is not that the Bush Administration made a mistake, or even that they lied once. It's that, as a nation, we were not prepared for the possibility of an out-of-control executive and thus could not handle it. Our Constitution, our checks and balances, and our media failed us and as nobody stood up, it only got worse. Right now, it addition to fixing the mess we're in now, we must reinforce our safeguards so that this can never happen again. When the ship is sinking, you must both bail the water and fix the leak. This is what the second half of the Responsible Plan demands - fixing our government's leak. If ratified by election of the supporting candidates, it is a formal mea culpa from the people of the United States for our complacency, and a resulting acknowledgement that all we can do now is ensure that it can never happen again. This is the only way the ideal of America can survive.

The second point that makes Darcy Burner's creation so amazing is that getting candidates (in addition to Gen. Eaton, Brig. Gen. Johns, Dr. Korb and Cpt. Seaquist - some orignal endorsers) to sign on creates a direct mandate from the American people. If we manage to vote these people into office, they will all clearly be required to advocate this plan, and since so far 42 candidates (38 House and 4 Senate) have signed on, they will have the power to do so. That is nearly a tenth of Congress, and seeing the effectiveness, more sitting senators and representatives will surely sign on. The progressives are angry, and we're taking back our country by using the very ideal our government set forth. We're writing a new Contract with America, and this time, America actually gets a say first.