Republican convention ends with a jam-packed agenda

Amid the adoring cheers of "U.S.A." and "Four More Years," President Bush capped the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City Thursday night by opening a grab bag of initiatives offering something to please the political palate of virtually all party members.
The so-called Agenda for America that Bush outlined in his acceptance speech, however, comes long on projects, short on details and price tags.
Consider some of the major planks of his agenda:
UCreating opportunity for American students and workers by providing millions of dollars for job training, simplifying the tax code and creating new Opportunity Zones to offer federal aid to communities under economic hardship.
UHelping American families by proposing additional tax credits, establishing a health center in every poor county in the United States, promoting compensatory time and flex-time as an alternative to overtime pay and increasing funding for testing to help students resist peer pressure to experiment with illicit drugs.
UDefending American lives and liberty by continuing to build a worldwide coalition to fight terrorists, improving the quality of U.S. intelligence to prevent attacks on our homeland and restructuring American forces overseas.
Of course, such lofty platitudes and ambitious goal-setting are the stuff of which political conventions are made. The Democrats' lovefest in Boston two months ago was no different.
Over the next two months, however, it will be incumbent upon Bush and Kerry to enunicate more clearly and more fully the details of their plans.
Some gnatty particulars of Bush's agenda largely overlooked during the convention hoopla are how it will be financed and how his potpourri of priorities fits into the general GOP mindset of less intrusion by the federal government and more tax cuts for all Americans.
Take but one of the agenda items: construction and staffing of health clinics in counties throughout the nation. How many clinics will be built? How large will each be? How much staffing will they require? Where will the funding from come to keep them operating year-in, year-out?
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who tracks the accuracy of campaign rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, said she was not surprised to see missing dollar signs from Bush's speech.
"One expects acceptance speeches to make grand promises without specifying the ways that the money will be raised to pay for them," she said.
Even with cost questions aside, other initiatives in the Bush agenda could face difficulty garnering enough bipartisan support to become reality. The president's promotion of faith-based groups and his pledge to keep activist (read liberal) judges out of the federal judiciary are but two cases in point.
Visits, debates offer opportunity
Now that the two major nominating conventions are history, the candidates take to the trenches where they must clarify and solidify their respective agendas or wish lists.
Luckily for us in Ohio, we should have ample opportunities to hear them. Some close to President Bush say that Ohioans might confuse the commander in chief for a candidate for governor by the number of stops he's expected to make in the our critical battleground state in September and October.
We'll also await the presidential debates that begin next month as a means to get a more direct pulse on the details of the candidates' initiatives and the differences between them. For example, how does Bush's plan to restructure American forces overseas differ from Kerry's plan to do the same?
Such specifics on plans and costs will be needed before Americans can responsibly make the crucial decision on Nov. 2 that will affect the direction of their nation for the next four years and beyond. Above all, Americans must demand more than glittering generalities and convention-hall sound bytes.