What the GOP can learn from Chile
Young workers putting up Piñera stars
I love being in a foreign country during a major election. Every democratic country handles elections differently. On one island in the Carribean, each candidate had a number, and the signs said things like “Vote for 8!” with the candidate’s picture. In rural Peru, roadside houses were painted with pictures of brooms (for clean government) or pick-axes (to show support for labor).
Chile is currently spangled with multicolored stars promoting Sebastian Piñera, who on January 17th will likely become their next president. He is a center-right candidate who grew up in America and was educated at Harvard. He is a billionaire — made his fortune from introducing credit cards to Chile as well as buying large shares in LAN Airlines and other successful Chilean companies.
Walking around Santiago, you get a sense that you are in an earlier version of America, one that’s in ascent, full of opportunity. Piñera is the candidate of hope, change and opportunity — those are the words you see on his posters. His number one priority is educating and taking care of the children. One large Piñera banner in Viña del Mar says, “Professional children. Proud parents.”
I was gobsmacked — Republicans in Chile are owning domestic issues like the economy and education. Their current term-limited president is a leftist, and is popular, but Chileans apparently want more. More growth. More competition. They want their kids to go to universities and compete in the global economy. Everywhere you look in Chile, there are billboards and ads and TV commercials promoting university education. My impression is that, as in America of the past, Chileans see education (especially higher education) as the key to prosperity, not a socialist brainwashing scheme or a playground for the elite.
If the GOP wants to regain its footing in the US, it needs to let go of Reagan and his mentality of starving the beast and start re-investing in the domestic sector. And being damned unapologetic about it. Why not be the party that promises professional children and proud parents?
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Center-right? I guess that means we’d need some of those center-right Republicans first. For all of the talk about values, it’s amazing that today’s GOP utterly refuses to invest seriously in our future. Instead, we waste money on paperwork-driven medicine instead of keeping our families healthy to begin with, put young adults in jail instead of giving them positive opportunities earlier in life, and allow the constant economic drain of inadequate infrastructure, damaged ecosystems, and starved social services to limit our nation’s growth and potential – and our ability to continue to lead the world in the coming decades. It’s not like the Democrats have done much better, but at least they aren’t openly hostile to it.