Brain Fertilizer

Many Democrats aren't happy with Kerry other than that he's not-Bush. But the Democrat platform includes pro-union and pro-abortion sections whether you like it or not. Many Republicans aren't happy with spending policies under the Bush Administration. I maintain that we will see a far more fiscally-conservative second term, but I admit I have no real evidence to point to other than a gut feeling. As such, many Republicans and conservatives are "holding their nose" and voting for President Bush as they feel the War on Terror is too important to hand over to Kerry, a man they feel will falter badly. The seriousness of the issues confronting our nation today makes the cost of a "protest" vote much more costly than usual.

But the simple fact is, rarely will a Party's platform match exactly with any one voter's preferences. The platforms, being established by the respective National Committees, also often depart significantly from the candidates' platform.

So if you were running for office, or if you could craft your own platform, what would it be? What are the issues most important to you? Most of mine aren't even being debated much today, incidentally. They remain important to me nonetheless.

If you're interested, write down your own platform planks, then link back to this post. Spread the word, and let people know what you stand for.

My Platform:
1) Repeal 17th Amendment.
Simply put, the federal government has a little too much power, and the Senate has lost its ability to be much of a check/balance on the House of Representatives. Repealing the 17th Amendment would give states more power and effectively make State Legislature elections much more important and interesting. (Honestly: can anyone name their state legislature representative? I can't. Granted, I haven't lived longer than 5 years in any location since 1985...)
2) Most laws/programs passed by Congress will have a 5 or 10 year sunset clause.
Simply put, it takes political capital to get a law or program passed. The closest humans have ever come to a perpetual motion machine is a US Congress-enacted program, because it normally actually takes a vote to stop it. Untold billions of dollars are wasted in pork-barrel programs that are no longer needed, but no one wants to go on record for voting down.
3) Flat tax to elimate bulk of IRS and eliminate progressive taxation.
4) Including a Line-Item referendum on party platforms of candidates for President.
Explanation: Right now we lack an ability to express what we meant by a vote. If you are irritated with President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" policy, and so vote for John Kerry, or vote for another candidate so that Kerry wins by a significant margin, he will take that as a sign that a majority of Americans support his platform and will attempt to push his agenda on that basis. Or if you do not like John Kerry's stance on the Iraq war, and so vote for Bush or Nader, President Bush will intepret his win as validation of his entire platform and push his agenda accordingly. As has been said, there is no "Yes, but..." lever in the voting booth. And so in addition to voting for a candidate, you should be able to indicate your preferences in a separate and non-binding referendum. This would never preclude a President from attempting to fulfill even unpopular campaign promises, it would merely make it slightly more difficult to gather the necessary political capital.
For example, during the Clinton administration, the sound defeat of Hillary's Universal, Single-Payer Health Care program indicated Americans don't really want government to be much bigger. On the other hand, the failure of the GOP shutdown of the federal government to protest the Clinton budget seemed to indicate that Americans don't really want government to be much smaller, either. But what if those messages were misunderstood? The idea of a referendum gives that much more power to the people to make their wishes known to politicians.

Considering feasibility/advisability:
1) Reduce burden of regressive taxes (sales taxes, licenses, fees, etc). Options include making all remittances to any level of government be based on a sliding scale according to income, or by allowing "baseline" models of any product to be sales-tax-free. At the very least, I would introduce legislation to begin tracking the tax burden created by fees and licenses as well as what the money was used to fund. For instance, gasoline taxes should not be hidden in the advertised price; people should know how much of the price of a gallon goes directly to the government, and thus how low gas prices could be without government taking a substantial portion.
2) All legislation written should include a "Spirit of the Law" describing the actual intent of the law/program. For example: a company developed a cost-effective and safe/clean way to eliminate (incinerate?) some forms of toxic waste. But they were stopped from doing so by the EPA, who cited a law that "toxic waste must be stored in 50-gallon drums and buried in concrete" or some such crap. In that case, the law was written before it was known that the waste could be taken care of, and the safest thing to do with it was store it in containers to prevent spills. A clear case of the "Letter of the Law" getting in the way of the "Spirit of the Law". I admit it's entirely possible that trying to fix the problem could make it worse. I'd look into it.