All that ‘bold’ is getting pretty old
Whether they’re pitching an end to poverty, access to excellent education, first-rate, affordable housing, free college, free health care, free fill-in-theblank, progressives have a plan.
And no matter what each plan addresses, they all have one thing in common: They will be bold.
Bold is the new black — it dresses up every pitch to voters, potential donors and photo op crowds.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s climate czar John Kerry said that unless the world’s top 20 worst emitters do not take “bold action” to tackle the climate crisis, the global environment will reach a point of no return, The Hill reported.
Bold action — as in not taking a private plane?
Also Wednesday, the White House posted a statement saying it was taking “bold action to enforce the antitrust laws, boost competition in meat-processing, and push back on pandemic profiteering that is hurting consumers, farmers, and ranchers across the country.”
The administration was writing about the rising price of food, and pointed fingers at a lack of competition among meat processing plants. That’s true — but there are also labor shortages, a rise in grain prices and transportation costs having an impact on what we pay for meat. But that’s the beauty of “bold” — it distracts from missing details.
As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi praised the big-bucks spending bill last month, she added, “We have a president with a big, bold vision for our country.”
When Congressional Squad members Alexandria OcasioCortez (D-N.Y.) Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) joined Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) and Jesus García (D-Ill.) in calling for Biden to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at the end of his term, they said, “We need a leader at the helm that will take bold and decisive action to eliminate climate risk.”
And state Sen. Sonia ChangDiaz has a school blueprint that is, you guessed it: “an extremely bold plan to go up now to a system that offers quality, debt-free universal public education from birth into adulthood,” ChangDiaz said.
Bold sounds great, we will admit. It’s a top-notch word for the elevator pitch, which is what press opportunities are. But does all this boldness promise more than it can deliver?
“What we need is a commonsense plan that lets us stand on our feet today and won’t bankrupt our children’s future” won’t get a lot of woo-hoos from the crowd, but it speaks to more than just winning the moment.
Case in point: forgiving college tuition. Back in the day, students chose colleges based on what they could afford, the kind of student aid they could get, scholarships they could win, and chose majors where they could land well-paying jobs.
Boring, perhaps. But higher education was an investment, and it was supposed to pay off. Majoring in subjects that couldn’t possibly lead to reallife careers, or choosing fields with infamously low salaries after attending Ivy League colleges — none of this was thrust upon them.
The “bold” move is to borrow money like mad and pay for everyone’s college education; the common-sense move is to find out just why college is so expensive and what can be done to lower the costs, why schools don’t prepare students for viable careers, why trade and technical schools aren’t equally promoted, and how to help students make sensible decisions about their future both academically and fiscally.
That won’t wow anyone, but the next generation will likely give it a woo-hoo.