Barack Obama's platform plan and a suggested new name

The prospect of a freewheeling approach to cobbling together the Republican Party platform this summer looms as a possible headache for John McCain, given a plan by conservatives, reported this week by the Washington Post, "to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined" in the document.

Barack Obama, for his part, apparently is unworried that some liberals, restive in thinking that he is tacking toward the political middle a bit too much these days (a concern detailed most vividly in this New York Times column by Bob Herbert), will make for a chaotic platform-making process.

Indeed, today his campaign unveiled a plan that envisions "everyday people all across America" holding mini-platform meetings later this month.

How better to deal with summer doldrums?

A release on Obama's website asserts: "Traditionally, the platform is written by paid professionals and then presented to the American people. This year, that’s going to change."

Maybe, maybe not. But we'd like to offer a tweak to the name the Obama folks have attached to the initiative.

They're calling it "Listening to America: the Democratic Platform for Change."

We much prefer the moniker coined by our Times colleague Bill Loving: Wiki-platform.

Perhaps "paid professionals" won't be writing the platform, but a party pro will be in charge of the committee that drafts it -- Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (pictured above), the Obama campaign announced. (She gets mentions as a potential vice presidential nominee, though that isn't a particularly exclusive club at the moment.)

With the convention due to start in less than seven weeks, the real challenge for Obama doesn't involve a manifesto that virtually no one will read. Rather, as the Wall Street Journal reminded today (in a piece requiring a signup to read fully online), it is "whether and how" Hillary Clinton's name is placed in nomination at the gathering in Denver.

--Don Frederick

Photo credit: Associated Press

Comments

[melissa]

I think it's great to listen to people's concerns--

But the people who are listened to should be democratic voters and activists.

The republicans have destroyed the democrats these past 20 - 30 years because they had a clear vision and kept hammering us with it until people believed in it. Democratic leadership needs its own vision-- it should be devised by democratic activists.

[Miriam]

While you seem to make light of this, it's the difference between Obama & soso. He's not proposing to "fight for us" or protect us like a big daddy.
He's telling the American people the truth. We have to work for it. We have to think about it.
I know it shocking to the elitists who stopped listening to us decades ago but Yes we can.

[Buddesatva]

Obama is not moving to the center of any political sphere that I am aware of. He has confounded my attempts to support him with ridiculous ideas, one after another. If so called activists want to define the Democrat party with hair-brained schemes like pulling out of Iraq in 90 days, repealing the federal gas tax, repeating the idiotic tax kick-back, and on and on and on there will once again be a Republican in the White House. We already have an idiot running the country I don't think we need another version of the same thing.

[Terryeo]

Don Frederick has posted a real concern. How can you create a platform reflecting the people's will. When your organizer and scribe is a well known politician?

What you do, Mr. Frederick, you listen to the people. Then you organize that information and put it down on paper. Your implied alternative -- a document created with no organization, with no clear leader, with none of the language Capitol Hill understands, is plainly dumb.

[MyopicViewofWorld]

I just love the naive view of Obama. I like to see optimism but it will soon depart due to reality. You were warned.

[Bob B]

Oilman T. Boone Pickens has made a fool of both McCain and Obama. It is continued insanity to assume the Federal government and idiots like McCain and Obama can solve our problems.

[Verona Tuten]

"Whether and how Clinton's name is on the nomination ballot in Denver?? "
She had BETTER be on it, just like ALL potential nominees before her or there will be hell to pay. The American people are fed up with "rules", changed to suit the party officials rather than the PEOPLE. Don't believe it? Hide and watch.
The mainstream news outlets continue to skim over the peoples discontent over the way the democratic primary was run and as a consequence will be totally surprised at the smack down the public will provide in November. It isn't just about Hillary, it's about the last two corrupt election cycles added to this one. We don't really forget, it just takes adding insult to injury for us to draw our line in the sand. The corrupt Democratic party has stepped over the line this time and there is a tsunami coming. The people WILL be heard loud and clear. This is OUR democracy.