The question of what a presidential candidate would do in his or her first [blank] days in the White House is always instructive, because it reveals the candidate’s top priorities. The [blank] can be any time period, because candidates treat one day and one hundred days the same in this context.
In the CNN-sponsored debate in New Hampshire last night, the Democrats were asked what they would do in their first hundred days as president. The responses:
John Edwards: “To travel the world — re-establish America’s moral authority in the world — which I think is absolutely crucial… the single greatest responsibility of the next president is to travel the world, speak to the world about what real American values are — equality, diversity — and to lead an effort by America to re-establish our alliances around the world.”
Hillary Clinton: “Well, if President Bush has not ended the war in Iraq, to bring our troops home. That would be the very first thing that I would do.”
Barack Obama: “That would be the number one priority, assuming nothing has changed. The second priority is getting moving on health care because that’s something that we can get done, I think, very quickly.”
Bill Richardson: “I would upgrade our schools. I would have preschool for every American, full-day kindergarten. I would pay our teachers what they deserve. I’d have a minimum wage for our teachers, $40,000.”
Joseph Biden: “I would end the war in Iraq and immediately move to defuse the possible war in Iran and immediately defuse what’s going on on the Korean Peninsula.”
Dennis Kucinich: “What I intend to do is to be a president who helps to reshape the world for peace — to work with all the leaders of the world in getting rid of all nuclear weapons, rejecting policies that create war as an instrument of diplomacy, making sure that we cause the nations of the world to come together for fair trade, cancel NAFTA, cancel the WTO, go back to bilateral trade conditioned on workers’ rights and human rights, create a not-for-profit health care system and send the bill to Congress.”
Chris Dodd: “I’d try to restore the constitutional rights in our country. This administration has done great damage to them. I would do that on the first day. I wouldn’t wait 100 days on those issues.”
Mike Gravel: “Top priority is to turn to these people and say they are part of the leadership right now in the Congress. They could end the war if they want to. All they’ve got to do is show the leadership.” [Ed. Note: What?]
Of course, a million things will change between now and any new president’s first 100 days, forcing a shift in priorities, but it’s nice to see that Edwards sees beyond the Iraq War to America’s place in the world more generally, and that Richardson hasn’t forgotten about domestic issues, specifically education, and that at least one candidate is aware of the damage the war on terror has done to our civil liberties.
