The Courage Primary

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Two years ago, in his second Inaugural Address, George W. Bush called the nation to greatness with some of the most stirring rhetoric ever attempted by an American President. "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world," he said. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

These days Bush's inaugural oratory seems, at the very least, a tragic overreach. It was foolishly messianic. It didn't reflect the reality on the ground, or even the reality of U.S. policy, which still supports oppressive regimes around the world. It came after years of grandiloquent sloganeering: "the war on terror," "the axis of evil," wanton talk of crusades and evildoers and an ill-conceived war with Iraq. Furthermore, the President's speech was based on a simplistic vision of America's role in the world, one firmly rooted in American infallibility. And finally, there was a fundamental mismatch between the grandness of Bush's oratory and his unwillingness to summon the nation to an actual war footing, in which real sacrifice was required. "I think the American people are sacrificing now," the President said. "I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before."

Still, if Bush's sense of national greatness has been misguided, his impulse is perfectly American: the U.S. has always thought of itself as something special, has always sought new national challenges in order to "form a more perfect union." It is a frontier impulse firmly rooted in the American DNA, subtly essential to the nation's growth. The mere "pursuit of happiness" can never be enough; we must also go to the moon. Ten years ago, the political writer David Brooks decided that there was a need for "national greatness," for larger national goals, but as a conservative, he had trouble responding to a very basic question: What are those goals? "It almost doesn't matter what great task government sets for itself," he wrote, "as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness."

But it does matter. And a Presidential election would seem a perfect moment for laying out an ambitious new goal or two, especially at a moment when 70% of the public thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction. The problem is, politicians hate having to talk about anything remotely adventurous in the midst of an campaign. They prefer safe recitations of conventional wisdom: We need to do something about government waste... the tax code... the health-care system. If you actually make a bold promise—health care for all, for example—you will be asked for specifics. If you give specifics, as Bill Bradley did when he proposed universal care in 1999, your opponents and the press will tear your proposal to shreds. That's because there is no such thing as a perfect policy idea; even great ones, like Social Security, have obvious flaws, and it's tough to deal with complexity on the stump. There's another problem: governing is vastly different from campaigning. Any big new program has to be negotiated with the Congress. There's no guarantee a President won't change his priorities or be forced by events into a whole new way of looking at things. Bush promised a humble foreign policy, but after Sept. 11, his "war on terror" was anything but.

So why even bother to bother candidates about substance? Because it is, nominally, what elections are all about. The candidates owe us answers, whether they want to give them or not. At the very least, you can learn a lot from the character of their evasions—how their minds work, how much they know, what their basic principles are. Occasionally, they might even say something courageous. And very occasionally, there comes an election where the ability to be courageous, to tell the public things it may not want to hear, is the most important quality we need in a leader. I suspect 2008 will be that sort of election. The public has come to understand what market-tested political blather sounds like, and it may be ready to reward a politician who tells some inconvenient truths, to coin a phrase, who asks for the sort of sacrifices, in pursuit of specific goals, that President Bush refused to do. But which sacrifices, which goals?

What follows is my dream agenda, the issues I will use, as a voter and as a journalist, to judge how seriously the various presidential hopefuls should be taken in the election to come. There is only one issue area—foreign policy and national security—that I considered to be an absolute, drop-dead threshold test. The next President will have to be far more knowledgeable about the rest of the world than the current one was when he came to office. He (or she) will also have to recognize that the most important global threats we're facing—terrorism, for example—require American leadership but that they can't be solved by unilateral American action. After the past six years, that should be an easy test to pass.

My four other tests—energy independence, universal health insurance, education reform and mandatory national service—are more difficult. Solutions are possible, but they will require drastic changes in the way we go to school, get our health care, serve our country, live our lives. No politician with any sense would attempt to join all these battles, all at once, in the midst of a presidential campaign. But in 2008 a candidate who refuses to show some courage on at least one of these issues probably lacks the character to be President. I should emphasize that these are my priorities, not those of TIME magazine. You and I can argue about my choices over at TIME.com's political blog Swampland. You can find out more about the issues I did choose, and read the studies and documents that I read, over at the website as well.