This evening Vanderbilt kicked off their IMPACT Symposium with Lou Dobbs. It was an interesting lecture. He didn’t have a lot of kind words for partisanship, and that’s refreshing to hear in a lecture as full of critiques and ideas as Mr. Dobbs’s. According to him, he is an “independent populist”.

According to Dobbs, none of the presidential candidates from either party has crafted an appropriate vision of the future of our country. Dobbs is specifically unimpressed with presidential attitudes toward education. I’m not sure I could articulate it coherently at this point, but from the speeches I’ve seen over the past 3 years (from as many candidates as I’ve tracked), I would say that Barack Obama is winning the vision campaign. But now I’m interested to revisit his ouevre of policy addresses to see how strong he is on public education.

In a nutshell, here were some of my takeaways:

• Public Education Mr. Dobbs, as with me and Mary, sees public education as the silver bullet. He called for increased teacher pay alongside improved teacher accountability (specifically, requiring that teachers of a given subject have a major in that subject, especially in mathetmatics and the life sciences).
• Equality One of the reasons Dobbs is so big on education is because he sees it as the great equalizer (of opportunity, presumably). To him, equality is one of our first freedoms. I.e., in the constitutional sense.
• America First If he and I explored this particular item over dinner and drinks, I imagine it would be the liveliest point of discussion. His views here encompass everything from the responsibility of government to civic pride in a time of war to strong opposition to illegal immigration to protectionist trade policy (specifically, condemnation of the North American Union). It’s difficult not to find his pro-America positions stirring, but it’s similarly difficult not to be persuaded by Toby from The West Wing (”Free trade saves lives!”) or the plight of the individuals who are coming here precisely because America is the land of opportunity or because they’re fleeing horrific conditions elsewhere but haven’t had the opportunity to learn the language or apply for citizenship. One of Dobbs’s other points during the Q&A was that all of these issues are complicated, and we should be prepared to understand the issues deeply if we are to discuss them appropriately.

Almost sounds like a platform, doesn’t it? If it weren’t about to be the most expensive presidential history (to the point where even Ross Perot might consider it a bad investment), and if he weren’t comfortably running a small media empire, I would swear that we might expect to hear a surprising announcement from Mr. Dobbs. Why is it always the people who aren’t running for office (or those who don’t have a chance) who are the most interesting and inspiring to listen to? I came away from this lecture more impressed by Mr. Dobbs and his command of contemporary political and economic issues than I was from the handful of times I’ve caught him on CNN. Lou Dobbs, an engaging (and persusasive) speaker to be sure, is first and foremost a patriot.

This post was written by Freddie