DISPATCHES: Suggestions for a better year in 2005

DISPATCHES By Hank Kalet Resolutions for a better year in New Jersey.

   Say so long to 2004 and hello to 2005.
   And, hello to all those goals and resolutions that all of us plan to tackle to make ourselves better or give our lives a little more passion or fulfillment.
   There are the standard resolutions: How many people do we all know who resolve to quit smoking, lose weight or cut their spending? For years, I resolved to lose weight, but managed instead to watch the scale tick slowly upward. Two years ago, however, I ignored new year’s resolutions entirely, started running and lost 25 pounds.
   Go figure.
   Nearly everyone makes resolutions. One problem, however, is that most people make the wrong resolutions.
   For years, Mets management appeared resolved to cut corners in its effort to field what it thought would be a competitive baseball team. The mounting losses demonstrate how well that went.
   This year, however, the team seems ready to spare nothing. Will it work out better? I hope so. At least, there’s some hope.


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   Here are some suggested resolutions:
   • The Democratic National Committee should avoid any impulse it might have to heal the country and go along with President George W. Bush’s misbegotten agenda. That, as Theodora D. Goodson wrote recently in Salon, can only be a prescription for further disaster. Instead, the Democrats should act as the opposition party, remind the president that nearly half of the voters in this country backed his opponent and that a majority in nearly every poll have serious problems with much of his agenda.
   What the Democrats also need to do is develop a real backbone. The party needs to stand for something, needs to have a vision and express it in ways the majority can understand — sort of like what President Bush and the GOP have done since the mid-1970s.
   • New Jersey Democrats should convince U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine to hold off on tossing his hat into the gubernatorial race for a while. The senator is one of the few bright lights on the national scene and the current acting-governor, Richard Codey, has hit the ground running hard, offering an aggressive package of reforms that far exceeds anything that Gov. Jim McGreevey accomplished in his three years in office — or anything that Gov. Christie Whitman managed in her overrated seven years in the Statehouse.
   If Gov. Codey continues in this vein, he just might make a name for himself and earn the kind of respect from voters that no New Jersey governor has had since Tom Kean in the 1980s. That will allow Sen. Corzine to stay in the Senate and fight the good fight against the president’s agenda.
   • On a related note, New Jersey Republicans, if they are truly interested in making the gubernatorial election competitive in November, should bypass retreads like Bret Schundler and Doug Forrester, both of whom are too conservative for the state. Both were smoked badly the last time they ran and neither seem likely to run a competitive race against either Sen. Corzine or Gov. Codey.
   • Monroe Republicans need to find new blood. There will be three slots on the ballot this year — the three ward council seats — and the party, if it has any aspirations toward legitimacy, needs to rebuild itself and forgo the tired retreads it has been foisting on Monroe voters for the past few years.
   Like the national Democrats, the GOP needs to avoid building its campaigns on single issues that are not likely to have much resonance beyond a few. In 2003, for instance, it ran against a land-swap proposal designed to get a new high school built, a plan overwhelmingly supported by voters. It needs to offer a more compelling plan for the future.
   I do not mean to imply that the party’s candidates did not hold the township’s best interests at heart, only that they have proven incapable of offering an alternative to the vision presented by Mayor Richard Pucci and the Democrats.
   This obviously is difficult — Monroe has managed to keep taxes relatively stable over the years and keep development from exploding at the same rate as in neighboring communities. But new houses are being built and the impact — in the schools, on the roads and even in local tax bills — is being felt. It is imperative that the party become a presence in the community to ensure that there is a real discussion about how the township should move forward.
   The only way for that to happen is for it to start over.
   • Cranbury Democrats should resist the urge to revel in their soon-to-be 5-0 dominance on the Township Committee. They need to remember that the township has never been comfortable with partisanship for the sake of itself.
   The final resolution I will offer is my own. I resolve to replace the photo that accompanies this column. This, at least in theory, should be easy. My wife hates the photo and my staff here at the Press thinks it makes me look a bit shifty. I think I can pull this one off.
   I can’t speak for the rest of my suggestions.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].