New York—We’re really in the homestretch now. After three years of campaigning — starting the day John Kerry stood up in Boston’s Faneuil Hall to concede to George Bush — there’s just one more year to go before the 2008 presidential election. To mark the occasion, here are my picks for the issues the candidates aren’t likely to talk about over the next twelve months, at least not in the sort of detail they deserve. And that’s all the more reason to keep bringing them up.

Climate Change. Everybody knows the Democrats are eager to tackle global warming. Or are they? For all the optimistic predictions that a Democratic Congress would push the Bush Administration to act on greenhouse gas emissions, the actual results have been disappointing. It turns out that passing smart laws to fight climate change is actually kind of hard. The Democratic presidential candidates know this, and will have a very clear interest in keeping their climate change pledges as abstract as possible. Once the party chooses its nominee, the pressure to fight the Republicans for centrist voters will make the candidate even more wary of promising specifics.

If a Democrat takes the White House without strong and specific commitments on fighting global warming, he or she will face the temptation to save political capital by simply being seen to do more than Bush. Climate activists should not simply support a Democratic candidate; rather, they should start pressuring both parties to take meaningful positions and stick to them.

Immigration. To say that the United States needs to reform its immigration policy is obvious to the point of absurdity. Yet none of the leading presidential candidates have pushed a comprehensive, specific, and meaningful set of proposals to deal with it. You can’t fault their logic: Elliot Spitzer tried something new on immigration, and Lou Dobbs ate his lunch. Then Spitzer backtracked, and the New York Times called him weak. If you were a presidential candidate, would you talk about immigration?

But the issue can’t stay out of the debate forever. With both parties courting the Latino vote, there’s an advantage to be had by the first candidate to propose some sort of amnesty for a portion of the country’s millions of illegal immigrants. Will a candidate take that chance? After Bush’s proposed reforms were torn to shreds, it seems unlikely. Democrats will probably try to hedge their bets, avoiding detailed immigration proposals during the campaign while privately promising to move the issue once in office. Whether people on either side of the debate let them get away with it is another question.

Early Childhood Development. Before Howard Dean was the anti-war candidate, he was the early childhood development candidate, trumpeting programs that helped kids under six get the best possible start in life. After Dean pulled out, none of the other candidates took up the banner, and the issue was largely forgotten. So far, none of the 2008 candidates has tried to bring it back to the public’s attention.

In Canada, Ken Dryden turned childhood development and childcare into a personal mission, one that the current government has no interest in pursuing. If a Democratic candidate were to start talking about this again, perhaps people on both sides of the border would remember that government is about more than just dealing with the immediate.

A year is a long time. Let’s make the most of it.

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Posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 4:39 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.