Ass on a plate
Rahm Emmanuel, like Barak Obama, John Edwards, and indeed, Wes Clark, represent the best hope for the future of the Democratic Party, and today, one of them, Mr. Emmanuel, showed how and why the future will be Democratic, and thus a benefit to health and humanity.
On today's "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, Emmanuel was paired with a boring old man named Reynolds, who will doubtless have any impact on the history of our great nation. And yet he had to sit there beside a gentleman whose equals rank among the pantheon of truly great presidents.
Without raising his voice, without losing repose or composure, Mister Emmanuel layed out the future, while all the boring old man could do was ululate and hyperventilate apothegms so barren of meaning as to render its bearer foolish and obsolescent.
He was handed his arse on a plarte, to be polite, passive and neologistic about it.
The five-point plan layed out by Mr. Emmanuel deserve serious consideration. These are bold ideas. They will get us out of the hole which the other guys would have you keep digging.
Here is where Rahm lays out the future:
REP. EMMANUEL: Let me address, though, the future of this country. I'll give you five quick ideas. One, we make college education as universal for the 21st century that a high school education was in the 20th.
MR. RUSSERT: And who pays for that?
REP. EMMANUEL: The American people, because it offers--Let me get to it. Second, we get a summit on the budget to deal with the $3 trillion of debt that's been added up in five years and structural deficits of $400 billion a year. Third, an energy policy that says in 10 years, we cut our dependence on foreign oil in half and make this a hybrid economy. Four, we create an institute on science and technology that builds for America like, the National Institutes has done for health care, we maintain our edge. And five, we have a universal health-care system over the next 10 years where if you work, you have health care. That says fiscal discipline and investing in the American people by reputting people first. The policies that the Republicans have offered have gotten us in the ditch we have today.
Ideas. Good ones. If the Republicans had ideas, they didn't bear fruit. And they've had five years. Staying the course is only digging the hole deeper. And we've already hit Hell.
They carry on:
MR. RUSSERT: (To Reynolds) What do you think of that program?
REP. REYNOLDS (as if to say "O come now, Emmanuel!"): Sounds to me like a liberal agenda: bigger government, raise more taxes to pay for it. That's the failed liberal policies. The last 40 years, the Democrats were in control of the Congress.
REP. EMMANUEL: Tom, in the last five years the government's gotten bigger...
REP. REYNOLDS: And when we look at this...
REP. EMMANUEL: ...under Republican rule...
REP. REYNOLDS: I have not heard...
REP. EMMANUEL: ...than anytime in the history.
REP. REYNOLDS: ...any agenda coming out of the Democrats in Congress. It has been all slash and burn, nay. There has been no debate, Tim. This is not the debate of Dole and Moynihan. This is slash and burn, have no new ideas, and attack.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
