When I first interviewed as executive editor of the Prospect over a year ago, I was asked what kind of projects I might like to put together. Two things came to mind, and they both launch today.
I have been consistently frustrated by the sorry state of coverage of presidential politics. Briefly put, we don’t press candidates about almost anything that’s within their power to accomplish. Candidate policy platforms matter, of course, as they provide insight into the direction a future president might take the country. But a candidate’s promise to execute already passed laws to realize a robust agenda—well, that’s a promise that can be kept, and something voters can hold that candidate to keeping.
Somehow, this plays no role in modern politics. That ends today. The Prospect has identified 30 meaningful executive actions, all derived from authority granted in specific statutes, which could be implemented on Day One by a new president, without signing a single new law from Congress. For our Fall issue, we compiled a series of 11 essays explaining precisely how, and under what authority, this would all work.
We begin rolling them out today in a series we’re calling “Using Presidential Power for Good.” You can read the entire series, which we will be publishing online throughout the week, at prospect.org/day-one-agenda. Today, we have an introductory essay on why executive action is so important, from yours truly; Prospect writing fellow Marcia Brown on how the next president can cancel virtually all student debt; and former Sherrod Brown banking aide Graham Steele on how to completely transform the financial system. We also sent questionnaires about these executive actions to every presidential candidate, and after each article we included a roundup of how they responded.
You can read it at the new prospect.org, with a website design that’s more eye-catching, more readable, and more versatile than anything the Prospect has put out before. It’s easier to navigate to the topics and stories you want to read from our prodigious archive, as well as our latest and most valuable work. I’d put the site up against any other outlet in journalism.
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