A Political Blueprint With Room to Build On

By Jonathan Weisman
Tuesday, September 5, 2006

THE PLAN

Big Ideas for America

By Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed

Public Affairs Books. 205 pp. $20

In Washington these days, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) is making a name for himself as the architect of his party's spirited campaign to retake control of the House. In the new book he has co-written with Bruce Reed, Emanuel sets out to prove he is not the dog about to catch the car he has chased his whole life.

He knows what to do with it once it is his.

That may be surprising enough. Democrats have received their share of grief from those who say they are bereft of ideas and unable to present an alternative vision of governance after more than a decade as the House's minority party.

What is surprising is the "The Plan" itself. Modest in scope, perhaps even timid, "The Plan" is subtitled "Big Ideas for America," but it is not the product of Newt Gingrich-type visionaries from the political left. It is the creation of Emanuel and Reed, two top aides from Bill Clinton's White House who learned the power of small ball and the perils of swinging for the fences. Both were key figures in Clinton's effort -- which achieved mixed success -- to play down traditional liberalism and reorient his party around centrist "New Democrat" themes.

Reed served all eight years in the Clinton White House as chief domestic policy adviser. He watched the president's effort to create universal health care coverage collapse in a policy debacle, but helped his boss get back on his feet with smaller initiatives and compromises with the Republican Congress. Reed is now president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Emanuel, a former party fundraiser, stuck with the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1998 as a senior adviser. He boasts of his role in securing passage of the children's health insurance program, the second-term overhaul of welfare, the ban on assault weapons and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Clinton's ghost haunts virtually every page of this compact, quick read -- overtly as a master of domestic policy, more subtly as the model for waging political warfare. The authors take pains to assure readers that they are not writing as Democrats with political motives but as patriots with the greater good of the country in mind. Clinton was a master at taking partisan jabs with such good-natured, rational bonhomie that he somehow seemed above the fray. Emanuel and Reed try to take much the same tack.

By dividing Washington into high-minded-but-naive policy wonks and political hacks, they set up Republicans for the kill even before they bring in party affiliation. Then they pull out the hatchet.

For instance, the GOP's prescription drug benefit was the product of pure hackery, the authors say. The bill covers most of the initial cost of medicines for a year to lull seniors into quietude, then drops them into a "doughnut hole" with no coverage, before kicking back in after out-of-pocket expenses reach $3,600. To make matters worse, the authors say, the drug legislation prohibits the federal government from using its buying power to negotiate prices with the drug companies.

True enough, but anyone who knows House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) would have a difficult time seeing one of the smartest and most experienced men in Congress as simply a political hack. For better or for worse, Thomas thought pitting private insurance companies against one another would inject competition into the drug market for seniors and keep the price of drugs down, without the heavy hand of government.

You may hate the prescription drug bill, as many Democrats -- and many Republicans -- do, but was it really the product of political expedience?

The better case Emanuel and Reed make is this: The United States faces problems of immense magnitude: global warming; nearly 47 million people without health insurance; a retiring generation of baby boomers without enough savings -- and with enough numbers to bankrupt the Medicare and Social Security systems. A party that does not believe in government intervention may be philosophically incapable of confronting such ills.

So what does the party that does want to do? Three months of mandatory basic civil defense training and community service, for starters.

Compared with the congressional inactivity of the past few years, Emanuel and Reed's Eight-Point Plan may seem ambitious, but it does not measure up to the tasks at hand, as identified by the authors themselves.

Save Social Security for generations to come? Well, no, but employers should be required to offer 401(k) plans, and employees should be automatically enrolled, unless they choose to opt out. Revive Clinton's first-term dream of universal health care? Well, no, but would you settle for making sure his second-term achievement, the children's health insurance program, truly does cover all children?

A detailed plan to balance the budget? How about the reinstitution of lapsed budget rules that mandate any future tax cuts or spending increases be offset by equal tax hikes and/or spending cuts? Global warming? How about lots of hybrid cars?

One of "The Plan's" loftiest ideas -- universal college access, financed by a $3,000-a-year refundable tax credit and tuition grants -- leaves readers wondering what taxes will be raised or programs will be cut to pay for it. Another idea, a simplified tax system more favorable to the wage-earning middle class, is a wonk's dream, but it may leave a hack cold, and hacks are useful for getting the wonks elected.

To those who agree that government is a necessary part of society, none of these ideas are bad. They certainly cannot be dismissed as political pie in the sky. But "The Plan" reads more like a blueprint for a narrow Democratic majority looking for legislative beachheads before the 2008 election than what the book says it is: "A map to the challenges of a new era."

Then again, as Clinton might have said, first things first. Midterm elections are two months away, and hackery does have its purposes.

Weisman covers Congress for The Washington Post.