Narrowing the Field

And then there were five…

In the past two weeks, we’ve seen a handful of competitive candidates and a few relatively minor ones hang up their spurs and call it quits. Last night, overt the course of an evening of “too close to call” primary races, the five remaining presidential hopefuls made it clear that it may still be some time yet until we have a definitive nominee in each party.

Now, I appreciate the democratic process, and while I enjoyed hearing the diversity of opinion we encountered in the early days of the campaigns, I look forward to a smaller pool of candidates. Why? For the simple reason that I’m ready for some substance.

A candidate trying to pitch themselves to the primary electorate needs to create a message, a brand, and the best way to do that is to deal in top-line abstractions. However this usually leaves very little room for the specifics of how they actually plan to govern.

Last week’s Democratic debate with the two remaining candidates proved a much more policy-rich discussion than we’ve seen thus far. Viewers got an in-depth look at the details of each of their plans on issues like health care and Iraq exit strategy, which helped to differentiate their positions and the contrasts in their plans. As voters’ decisions become more difficult, specifics like these can go along way to establishing presidential credibility and winning (or losing) votes.

I’m sure we’ll be seeing many more of these discussions over the next few weeks, and I hope that the candidates will take some of that time to get more specific on their plans for K-12 education reform. Everyone’s sound bytes have been pretty similar thus far – schools are important, we must value teachers, and so on – but since we’ve got the time, how about telling us exactly what you mean, and what you plan to do about it?