Electoral opponent has deeper pockets… You need captivating ideas

Electoral opponent has deeper pockets… You need captivating ideas
Dwayne Hunn

Your opponent has deeper pockets. He/she buys the airwaves. He tops your poll.

You can spend your time taking others’ money to compete in the tried and tired politicians’ habit of competing to buy the eyes of the couch potatoes or…

In a timely manner, you can build an arsenal of thoughtful, visionary, and understandable proposals that address a myriad of needs and wins the public’s support.

To win couch potatoes to your side, you need a good garden.

Plant your ideas in many rows, water them often, and deftly remove the doubting weeds. Planted early and fertilized often with the sunshine of good discussion, your garden of fresh ideas will feed a citizenry hungry for a healthy bumper crop.

How does supporting the citizen-initiated World Service Corps (WSC) proposed congressional legislation wins votes for an office seeker?

Imagine you are running for Governor of California (or Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Congress, President, etc…) and trailing in early polls.

Why take a stand on citizen-initiated proposed federal legislation?
• As a Global Village, our governance is also interlocked, so good, bad, or indifferent laws and governing at each level affects every level of government.
• Improving America’s character and quality of life knows no local, state, or federal boundaries.
• The WSC appeals to voters even in state wide (Gubernatorial, etc.) races.
• Today’s contentious Congress is held in very low esteem. Understandable, common sense solutions initiated by citizens are attractive to a very high number of today’s voters.
• California sends more volunteers to the Peace Corps than any other state. Californians know needs exist here and around the world. They would like to see a cost effective, peaceful attack mounted on the world’s needs in a manner as robust as that which we use in mounting wars.
Americans value national and volunteer service. Several polls show a majority of Americans favor Americans doing national service. The Community Consensus survey by Mark J. Penn in 1999 (http://www.dlc.org/specials/blueprint_archives/spring99_penn.pdf ) had 74% of respondents supporting or strongly supporting this question: A universal system of national citizen service where young adults would be called on to serve their country either through military or community service.
• The WSC is even more attractive, since it is voluntary and involves a wider age range of literally all Americans.
• Fully 96% of respondents in Penn’s survey said they think they have responsibilities to the country as Americans.
• All peoples value their children and worry about their futures, especially in today’s world of escalating needs, complexities, and hatreds. The more quickly the WSC is implemented, the more quickly tomorrow becomes safer.

In some typical campaigning areas, how will the WSC win votes for a penny-pinched or battling candidate?

Every candidate swears his/her allegiance to “Education,” to “Leaving No Child Behind.” Funding educational mandates helps, but money is not a panacea. When enacted the WSC produces real education, because WSC volunteers:

1) Experience first hand their unforgettable education in the classroom of the world. Do you learn more about:
a) Building a house reading a carpentry book or by working with a Habitat, AmeriCorps, or Peace Corps team building homes, schools, and bridges?
b) Medical care underlining a medical text or working through Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Mercy Corps, or Peace Corps medical teams eradicating diseases, vaccinating, and improving sanitation and heath practices?
c) Policy needs by watching cable news or living amidst the needs and where the news is made?
d) Teaching taking college classes on education or helping teachers every day as a Head Start or Teacher Corps assistant?

Every candidate expresses concern about terrorism. Most now even worry about Global Climate change. Helping pass the WSC dramatically reduces today and tomorrow’s terror threats and prepares us to deal with natural or man-made disasters. When implemented, the WSC will reduce terrorist recruitment from the fields of needs, because:

2) Putting a million peaceful, productive Americans into the field of needs wins the hearts and minds needed to end the spreading hatred and its terror war. At the same time, it gives America a standing, working, productive army with which to recover from disasters.

What if a California gubernatorial candidate (or any state wide candidate) went to all of California’s quake prone cities and explained the benefits of the WSC. What if he said?

“We all pray that a life taking quake avoids us. But if it comes, having a WSC better prepares us. Imagine if the World Service Corps were up and running for years before a quake struck… or levies burst…. or terrorists attacked the Bay Area.

“If disaster struck years from now in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Mateo, Orange, Sonoma, Contra Costa, Marin Counties, etc., thousands of WSC members would already be working in a rejuvenated AmeriCorps, strengthened Red Cross, muscled Habitat, expanded Head Start, rejuvenated Teachers Corps, etc. They:
 Would immediately be out helping people and the area recover.
 Wouldn’t wait for orders from some bureaucracy on high.
 Would know from first hand experience how to ratchet-up what they were already doing.

“They’d be ready, willing, able…and just do it.”

If the WSC were in the candidate’s policy arsenal, would Joe Sixpacks, couch potatoes, as well as involved voters understand these benefits? Would they vote for the candidate (s) calling for more?
• Volunteer national service?
• Americans helping to reduce terrorist recruitment, ending the terror war more quickly, and preparing more Americans for any kind of disaster?
• “Earned” tuition payments and “experienced” world knowledge that will dramatically improve our public policy making?

For the visionary candidate lacking the bulging war chest, the WSC enriches his/her vote count via educating and capturing voters’ imagination on an idea whose time has long come. It is an idea that citizens realize the need for. Those candidates who recognize the righteousness of the people lobbying them on introducing, passing, and implementing the WSC proposals will be seen as leaders.

Win or lose, pushing good public policy into the public’s consciousness helps us all. All candidates ought to act on that alone. Since we all sail through the galaxy sharing an increasingly shrinking orb, planting and harvesting ideas that serve the world makes the ride healthier.