Looking for Ideas in all the wrong places

Alan Murray thinks [sorry, there's that damned subscription thing again] that all George W. Bush has to do is to communicate his Big Idea.

George W. Bush has a big challenge at the Republican convention in New York. But he also has an opportunity.

The challenge is to change the dynamics of a presidential race that is running against him. Polls show voters are, at best, evenly divided between the two candidates. And the relatively few "undecided" voters are decidedly down on the president. Charlie Cook, one of the few truly independent analysts out there, says only a quarter of undecided voters approve of the job the president is doing. "Ugly numbers for an incumbent," Mr. Cook says. Pollster John Zogby thinks the numbers are even uglier, with just 16% of undecided voters approving of the president's performance.

The opportunity is to present a compelling agenda that establishes him as the candidate of ideas. His Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, passed up that chance in Boston, focusing instead on his biography. That leaves the field clear for the president. If he can give voters a strong sense of what he wants to do with a second term, he just might get one.

Right. Of course, if the Bushies hadn't spent $80 million trying to convince voters that Kerry was a lying spawn of the devil, than maybe he could have spent less time on his biography.

But I digress; what is that idea that young George is nurturing?

The president's call last week for a new era of ownership needs work from the marketing mavens. ("We want more people owning things in this country" isn't much of a rallying cry.) Still, it strikes me as a step in the right direction. The U.S. triumphed in the great struggle of the 20th century because it demonstrated a market-oriented economy with limited government could do more for the "masses" than either communism or the mixed and managed economies of Europe and Asia. For the U.S. to triumph in the great struggle of the 21st century, it needs to prove the point again. And the movement toward a kind of mass capitalism hinted at by President Bush last week could help do that.

Yes. Let's move the nation forward by venturing...back...to when only men of property were considered sufficiently worthwhile to vote or hold office.

...He will need to show his vision is truly capitalism for the masses, not just capitalism for his cronies. Americans don't like class warfare. But increasingly, they suspect President Bush may be waging it. There is a fine line between eliminating policies that penalize success and embracing policies that unduly benefit the successful. The president is listing over that line.

He will need to show he is willing to make the tough calls necessary to implement his vision. Telling people they can keep some of their payroll taxes in private accounts is easy; telling them the Social Security retirement age is going to rise and cost-of-living adjustments are going to be cut is harder. In his handling of Medicare during his first term, George Bush showed he was happy to give away the candy but had little stomach for administering the medicine. That approach will doom his ownership agenda.

George Bush likes to consider himself the candidate of big ideas. And the ownership agenda he has outlined is very big indeed. The New York convention gives him an opportunity to try and sell it [emphasis added].

Keep looking, Alan, I'm sure that Big Idea is somewhere around here.

But, wait a sec. I've reread Murray's column three times and I've yet to find the so-called "agenda" or even the "outline," other than the idea of "mass capitalism" Murray mentions, whatever that is. Now, if he means there will be an end to the "elite socialism" practiced in this country today, in the form of corporate welfare and the redistribution of wealth upward that we're seeing now, than I'm all for it, but I don't think that's what Murray has in mind. And Bush has no mind, so no fear there.

And, I am no political scientist, but I feel certain that Bush is not going to use the convention to explain to Americans the short-term pain they'll suffer in order to reach the promised land of private retirement accounts.

Inept + feckless x inarticulate and stooopid = Big Idea.

That doesnt add for me. To come up with a Big Idea (or even an "interesting" one), let alone communicate it, you need Intelligence. And that is something, as Matthew Yglesias lucidly explains in The American Prospect, Bush lacks.