What’s ahead if the Republicans win? It’s all in the platform

By Ezra Klein, WashPost, Published: August 31

A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press included an unexpected result: Americans said they were more interested in the party platforms released during the conventions than the speeches. That is to say, forget the pageantry; voters want the cold, hard PDF documents.

That must be a letdown for the two campaigns — like discovering the guests at your wedding are really there to see your aunts and uncles. But it shows real wisdom on the part of the American people. Parties, and the platforms they produce, often matter more than candidates.

Take President Obama. He campaigned as a different kind of Democrat, one unleashed from the hoary controversies, stale ideas and bitter arguments of yesteryear. His central policy difference with rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards was that their health-care plans included an individual mandate and his didn’t. His great promise was that he would change Washington in ways the others couldn’t.

After becoming president, Obama governed from the center of his party, building an individual mandate into his health-care bill, backing cap-and-trade antipollution legislation developed by House Democrats, and supporting a slew of ideas that had been floating around Democratic Party circles for years — the Lilly Ledbetter Act on equal pay, new tobacco regulations, an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, green energy credits. If you had known only that a Democratic candidate had won the presidency in 2008 without knowing which candidate, you could’ve largely predicted the agenda just the same.

(More here.)