Clark the anti-poverty president February 20, 2007
Posted by faithinwes in poverty.trackback
People who know me intimately know that I’m pretty passionate about ending poverty. I’ll get teary-eyed when I spit out sad statistics, curse efforts that increase poverty, curse when common sense solutions are ignored, and ask most politicians I meet pointed questions on poverty. It occasionally makes me callous to other people’s problems, sometimes even my own. Given that, one would imagine that I’d run to sign up for John Edwards campaign. But I didn’t. And I won’t.
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I’ve never met or talked to Edwards so he may very well possess a deep understanding of what it takes to combat poverty. But I have yet to see that in anything he has said or has done.
But I have met Wes Clark. And, yes, I asked him one of my impassioned and pointed questions on poverty. What really surprised me was that he skipped the talk about what poverty is like–sparing me details that I’m quite aware of–and jumped right into the meat of possible solutions. I’m not one to be overly impressed with famous politicians–after all, I am a couple minute walk from more than one Nobel Laureate–but I was struck by his candor and his depth of knowledge on practical solutions. We talked about community and neighborhood based financial planning programs, microcredit, fair trade policy and national cultural impediments. A far cry from “we can do better”. That he was willing to discuss some of the hurdles in addressing this issue demonstrated that he knows what he’s talking about.
I won’t enumerate or elaborate the solutions discussed right now–I’ll save that for after he announces–but I just want to mention that as a person who cares very deeply about reducing poverty, Wes Clark is my clear choice as the anti-poverty candidate. Not platitudes, but practical solutions. Not just hope, but tangible solutions.
