By Neal Peirce

Barack Obama’s history in grassroots organizing got its first real blast of national attention from the Republicans. Rudy Giuliani, keynoting the GOP’s convention in St. Paul, provoked a wave of snickers and catcalls by sneeringly asking, “What’s a community organizer?” Sarah Palin followed with a dig of her own.

On Nov. 4, they (and we) learned that Obama’s three years on the streets of Chicago, helping the unemployed find jobs and helping neighborhoods press the city for critical services, was a first step in building the impressive organizational skills to win the presidency of the United States.

As my academic-activist friend Peter Dreier notes, “The Obama campaign hired hundreds of organizers from labor unions, community and environmental organizations and religious groups. They, in turn, recruited tens of thousands of volunteers and trained them in the skills of community organizing. They used doorknocking, small house meetings, cell phones and the Internet to motivate and energize supporters. They used the Internet and social networks to raise funds, in small and large amounts, from the largest-ever donor base. They opened more local offices than any other presidential campaign.”

So now comes the question: How will the vast Obama campaign database of 3.1 million donors, 10 million supporters, be used?

For legal and privacy reasons, the overtly political part–prompting pressure on members of Congress to support Obama proposals, supporting Democratic candidates in 2010 and 2012–will have to operate independently of White House operations.

But the Obama team has already set up a new site, www.change.gov, which is reporting on transition developments, relaying the president-elect’s messages and inviting subscribers to register their own opinions and ideas. A parallel White House effort is to follow.

Now comes the thorny question: Where is all this activity headed? David Bollier, editor of the onthecommons.org website, poses the critical question: “Will the people on these lists be treated as a claque of loyalists who will be fed Pavlovian directives of the sort Rush Limbaugh issues to his ‘dittoheads’? Or will Obama allow his millions of supporters to mature into a community of citizens who, while obviously sympathetic, will be allowed to deliberate among themselves, disagree with the administration and even disagree publicly with the president?”

My strong hunch is that Obama, true to his community organizer roots, will opt for open discussion–part of an exciting change in national direction in which grassroots citizens are both honored and relied upon.

But it may be challenging to keep an open-dialogue national network up and running: in the midst of hard-fought battles for administration bills, the president’s own political operatives will be tempted to use the big national network for constant support, few questions asked.

Plus, while people in the network might be polled to determine their opinions on set questions, the logistics of harvesting tens of thousands of “best” ideas, evaluating all with fairness, and then translating them into clear options, might prove daunting.

The task, though, could be made more manageable by channeling many communications to the appropriate Cabinet departments, and asking them to respond. Indeed, the Democratic Platform, composed in large part by the Obama team, clearly promises:

“We will enhance the flow of information between citizens and government–in both directions–by involving the public in the work of government agencies. We will not simply solicit opinions, we will also use new technology to tap the vast expertise of the American citizenry.”

It couldn’t be said more clearly!

The opportunities for increased transparency and accountability to the public, at the cabinet and agency level, represent exciting possible breakthroughs. The process may require a lot of guidance and encouragement of Washington’s long-maligned bureaucracies. Though many of the “faceless” but dedicated officials in the agencies, frustrated by the inattention and neglect of the Bush years, will likely welcome the fresh winds of direct contact with a concerned public.

What’s fascinating about all this is the two-way communications potential on ranges of issues critical to the country’s future, building ideas of mutual responsibility.

A top example: the global climate and energy crisis. It will require, notes Seth Fearey of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, dramatic behavioral change on the part of Americans–to cut back on our voracious energy consumption, drive less, use transit and bikes more, recycle and conserve in more ways than official Washington could ever imagine.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt succeeded, in his fireside chats, to convince Americans to conserve in World War II. Without a war, motivating a nation may be far more difficult. Which is precisely why Obama’s weekly addresses (being carried on YouTube), combined and strengthened by “social networking” through his motivated Internet-linked network, might be the right combination for the times–presidential leadership combined with community organizing, mobilizing us to act on the most pressing 21st century challenges.

For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195. For newspaper syndication sales, Washington Post Writers Group, 202-334-5375, wpwgsales@washpost.com.

By Rick Cole

In his first press conference as president-elect, Barack Obama acknowledged, “Some of the choices that we make are going to be difficult…it is not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole that we are in.”

In this crisis, the “change we need” is to invest in a sustainable economy for our future, rather than borrowing to sustain our current economy. Here’s how the new Administration can help us dig out of the hole we’re in:

• Green business. In his new global survey of America’s peril and potential, Hot, Flat and Crowded, Thomas Friedman calls “green” the “new red white and blue.” Obama has pledged to create “green jobs” through alternative energy. But in the decade ahead, every single job in the American economy will need to go “green,” by ruthless pursuit of less waste and more sustainable and productive business practices. For the private sector to succeed, federal policies on taxes, regulations, research, purchasing and grant-making must all be reformed to promote green practices, rather than stifle them.

• Smart Growth. The suburban, auto-dominated landscape of the past 50 years won’t work for a post-peak oil, post-carbon America. Alternate fuels aren’t enough, nor is transit compatible with sprawl. The Congress for the New Urbanism, headed by former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, has revived traditional town and city building to emphasize mixed-use, transit-oriented design at every scale of development from neighborhood to metropolis. Rep. Earl Blumenauer from Portland, Oregon has emerged as the leading national leader for this movement, rapidly being adopted by cities and states across America.

• Regionalism. In a June speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Obama identified metro regions as the engines of global growth. Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Portland, Chattanooga and St. Louis have emerged as models for metro/suburban collaboration. Obama also embraced the social equity dimension of regionalism, to ensure inner cities will benefit from collaborative efforts to improve education, reinvest in older communities and create globally competitive high-wage, high-value jobs.

• Transportation. In 1991, Senator Pat Moynihan spearheaded the landmark ISTEA transportation law. But instead of matching the investment by other advanced economies in high-speed rail and public transit, the Clinton administration let highway expansion continue to dominate federal spending. The Bush Administration failed to even keep up on infrastructure maintenance, so that sprawl continues to fuel oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The new administration will need to start where ISTEA left off to rebuild our goods–and people-moving capacity on an environmentally and economically sustainable model.

• Human capital. Education is the key to restoring American competitiveness. Mayors around the country have emulated Chicago’s Richard Daley’s drive to rebuild inner city schools to restore America’s great cities as engines of new wealth creation, rather than gentrified havens for young professionals amongst crime-ridden slums. We need a national commitment to human capital to reduce the underclass, assimilate immigrants, and provide the workforce that can outperform the hard-working offshore workforce in the economy of the future.

• Innovation. Obama’s popularity in Silicon Valley mirrors his embrace of venture capital investment in American jobs. The Japanese failed to shake off their decade-long slump because they remained tied to “pork barrel” public works stimulation of their economy. Harnessing private investment and entrepreneurship to rebuild America’s cities, older suburbs and essential infrastructure is essential not only to economic success, but to political success as well. Let’s take the huge brainpower and speculative investment that’s been devoted to financing consumer debt and redeploy it to rebuild America’s cities and productive economy.

• New Orleans. Of all George Bush’s failures, the cruelest was his empty promise to rebuild New Orleans. The most hopeful counter-point to those wasted years would be to use the New Orleans region as a model for a green economy that puts people back to work in jobs that create wealth instead of consuming it. Instead of the default choice of tourism, gambling, and decay, New Orleans should rebuild around enterprise and trade, with first-class schools and a sustainable infrastructure.

Reshaping of the American landscape and economy won’t be easy. “Change we can believe in” must look beyond Washington and its stale wedge issues. It must harness local movements, as well as mayors, council members, governors and state legislators, advancing innovative new models throughout our federalist system. Obama carries the unique advantage of having been a community organizer and a state legislator. He can be the model and the inspiration for a broad-based movement for change.

The new administration will be a time of harsh testing, for Washington and for the country. Our nation is too geographically diverse, our economy too gargantuan, for Washington to chart a single course. But investing in sustainability instead of spending on consumption could have a profound impact on the shape of American metropolitan regions and the communities they contain. That’s “the change we need.”

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By Neal Peirce

Is there a chance that election of Barack Obama, combined with financial meltdown, will start turning us away from the hyper-individualism of recent years?

What’s hyper-individualism? Like pornography, you can recognize it when you see it. Lifestyle choices such as picking a gas-guzzling SUV to reach a suburban McMansion so big you rarely visit all the rooms. Headphones and solo video games in place of group activities. Disdaining civic life or responsibilities. Chronically shopping ’til you drop. Needlessly running up credit card balances. And economically, consistently wanting more, more, more.

It’s true, technology has set us up for this. Our encapsulated private lives–automobiles, television, air conditioning, the Internet, or shopping for cheap foreign goods in vast, impersonal big box stores–they’re all the antithesis of life around an historic town square or Grange hall.

But after John Kennedy’s plea to do more for our country, what other politician–until Obama–urged “a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice?” Remember President Bush after 9/11? He announced a global war on terror and simultaneously advised us: “Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life.”

Now in the face of our mortgage excesses, our incredibly shortsighted investment and credit rating houses, our near doubling of the national debt in eight years, we face a grim awakening.

Today’s crisis will sorely test Obama, his governing team and Congress, indeed the American people. Yet if we have a chance, the decision of Nov. 4 may prove critical. The racial factor–the first black president in a nation that once tolerated slavery–turned election night into a powerful national catharsis.

But beyond race, Obama’s belief in a common good, a shared American enterprise, comes at the moment we most need to climb out of our hyper-individualism.

An e-mail from my friend Bert Wakeley, who spent 20 years in public service including stints for five governors (two Democrats and three Republicans), says it well:

“Obama- a child of America and Africa. A person committed to public service. I believe he is smart, savvy, calm, spiritual, tough, brave and inspiring. And he is not afraid of tough public policy discussions. He is not afraid of other smart people. He seems to understand politics from the ‘better angels’ side.”

Which makes me wonder–can Obama also help restore our faith in our government, our institutions, our neighbors?

A first issue has to be giving all Americans a fair chance to succeed. Rich households (the richest 1 percent now receiving their biggest income share since 1928) are leaving both middle and lower income groups in the dust. The purchasing power of the top 10 percent households is highest among the 30 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations. But incomes of the poorest 10 percent of Americans are 20 percent lower than the OECD average.

High inequality means children have less chance to do better than their parents. The American Dream is deeply threatened–personally, collectively. So President Obama will be challenged: if banks, insurers, even auto firms can be rescued, how about poor and jobless American families?

And while families are critical, how about physical infrastructure–repairing roads and bridges, fixing dilapidated schools and building new “green” ones, expanding public transit and building world-standard rapid rail systems? Like FDR’s New Deal, such projects put people to work and make for a stronger nation to come.

Notably, voters Nov. 4 passed the vast majority of ballot measures for transportation, conservation and water quality improvements, according to a survey by Phyllis Myers of State Resource Strategies. Among the approvals: $9.95 billion for high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a project supporters claim will create a half million jobs.

But it’s also true that the economic downturn is ravaging state and local budgets–800 jobs in Philadelphia, 4,000 in New York City, for example. Each state and local cutback deepens the recession. Shouldn’t Washington help out?

And there’s the lurking, mega-issue of our time: climate change. Carbon levels in the atmosphere are rising even more rapidly than the Nobel Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change’s already alarming projections of 2007. Per capita, we Americans are world leaders in throwing tons of waste into the fragile ecosystem of earth. The only conceivable cures include rapid energy savings, radically reduced driving, regional and home-grown foods, more compact communities. Climate dictates we get “back together again,” purposefully recovering from the Bush administration’s shameful dereliction.

So is there any alternative to purposeful change, relinquishing our profligate lifestyles, abandoning our hyper-individualism, learning to pull together as we’ve not done since World War II? Economist Paul Romer famously declared: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” My bet is that Obama will agree–and move accordingly.

For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195. For newspaper syndication sales, Washington Post Writers Group, 202-334-5375, wpwgsales@washpost.com.

By Anthony Flint

Timing is everything.

As architects, planners, journalists, and city and nonprofit leaders gathered at the University of Philadelphia last week for the conference “Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design after the Age of Oil,” the staggering challenges of our time prompted a subdued mood.

The gathering marked the 50th anniversary of the same conference attended by Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford and many others to chart a course of the urban future; this time around, Elizabeth Kolbert, Robert Socolow, Andrew Revkin, Alex Steffen, William J. Mitchell, David Orr, Harrison Fraker and many others, including Neal Peirce, sought to piece together what was needed to get us out of climate-change, peak-oil, financial-meltdown mess.

They could take comfort in the fact that a leader is about to take office who says he is serious about all these issues. President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to act on climate change, bringing the U.S. in from the sidelines after eight long years. He has promised to end dependence on oil and support renewable energy. And he seems to recognize that cities and metropolitan regions will play a crucial role, in these challenges but also as centers of innovation, economic activity, and housing opportunities, and that they deserve support.

But everyone at this conference and all environmentalists and urbanists everywhere have the same question shared by so many Americans: how in the world is he going to do it all?

The crisis in the financial markets, big business tailspins, the downturn in the economy and rising unemployment are all clearly the first priority. He’s got a budget, a deficit, national debt and two wars to worry about, to say nothing of health care and Social Security.

It’s clear the new president and his team intend to walk and chew gum at the same time. Any economic stimulus plan will include investments in cities and infrastructure and the new energy economy that is envisioned in our post cheap-oil, post-carbon future–the so-called “green New Deal.” For example, a bailout of the automakers could include a fundamental re-engineering of the business plan to include full emphasis on hybrids, electrics, hydrogen.

The brightest light on the horizon may be the promised White House Office of Urban Policy, which takes a cue from the smart growth movement of coordinating multiple themes–housing, transportation, energy, environment–under one roof. Cities represent a big part of America’s green and economic future: dense, walkable, compact, and based around transit. But managing big cities is increasingly difficult, as New York, Philadelphia, and others make dramatic budget cuts. Cities are looking to Washington for a coherent metropolitan policy, something that has also been missing for the last eight years. They crave cooperation on things like green-building retrofits.

Transportation and infrastructure will be key. One of the first tests for the new administration will be to confront the highway lobby and push for transit in the upcoming SAFETEA-LU reauthorization. Transportation is the lynchpin for the post-carbon future of American cities, like the Interstate Highway Act 50 years ago, as the group Transportation for America is trying to make clear.

Many groups, including the Regional Plan Association and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, have been posing the question of whether we need a national plan for infrastructure, organized around megaregions like the Boston-to-Washington corridor. There’s no doubt a $150 billion plan for 21st century infrastructure–rail, energy, water, repairing roads but not building new ones–would translate into jobs and serious investment.

But it’s also the point where one has to ask: where is the money going to come from?

The issue of money raises troubling questions about the president-elect’s climate policy as well. The Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade legislation, the first step towards a new regulatory regime over greenhouse gas emissions and putting a price on carbon, will be reconsidered in 2009. But it means higher energy prices, as the energy system in the US evolves from coal and oil to renewable energy sources like solar and wind. That’s a hard thing to ask of middle-class Americans in this economy.

The planet’s big GHG emissions culprits need to stabilize emissions within five years and then do the hard work to get the trend line heading down–and even then many parts of the world will suffer from inevitable warming.

I’m a big believer in the “silver buckshot” theory on climate change–that it is no one policy but a bunch of them, integrated, that will make a difference. A new day on transportation, infrastructure, energy and urban policy will be welcome. But most believe there’s no way to reduce emissions without putting a price on carbon.

Politicians like to talk about going in to “clean up the mess” in Washington. In this case, the wreckage and debris is everywhere. The climate and energy challenge requires a paradigm shift and a fundamental systems change–and quickly. It will be expensive and painful. It may be too much to ask for the first 100 days, the first year, and perhaps even the new president’s entire first term.

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By Neal Peirce

It’s happening again. Some of us live in states jumping with candidate visits and presidential election season excitement. But in others visits and attention are rare–a sort of electoral Siberia. Seventy-five percent of all presidential candidate visits are going to just 10 battleground states, led by the familiar trio of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Indeed, if you live in a state that’s overwhelmingly red or blue, don’t expect to see a presidential candidate. You may live in mighty California (blue) or Texas (red), New York (blue) or Georgia (red). Or Rhode Island (blue) or Nebraska (red). No matter. The candidates are rarely seen.

Why? First, it’s the way we’re all divided up by the antique electoral college. The Constitution gives state legislatures almost total power to decide how their state’s presidential electors are chosen. In practice, they’ve almost always specified a “winner take all” system–winner of the popular vote for the state gets 100 percent of the state’s electoral votes.

Second, we’re seeing hardening partisan voting patterns as Americans become more divide ideologically (with negative political advertising driving them even further apart). In 1960, when John Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard Nixon, two-thirds of the states were competitive. In this decade, it’s been barely a third.

So increasingly, closely contested states get almost all the candidates’ time and attention. Check the news tonight and it will be a real exception if John McCain or Barack Obama or their running mates haven’t spent at least part of their day in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, or Nevada, or maybe hitherto red states Obama’s aggressive organizational push has put into play (Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana).

But those are just part of the constellation of American states. How about the rest of us?

The same situation–two-thirds of America ending up as discarded or “flyover” territory–prevailed in 2000 and 2004. The differential in actual voter turnout between the (competitive) battleground states and the (quiescent) “safe” ones rose to a full 10 percent.

Could we do better, fashioning a system that encourages spirited turnout everywhere and prompts presidential candidates to listen to and respond to citizen concerns in all states? A system that doesn’t hinge on chads in Florida, or irregular ballots in Ohio, to determine who will be Commander-in-Chief?

There’s only one answer: make all votes, everywhere, count equally. For two centuries, waves of reformers have tried to do that by constitutional amendment–a cumbersome, easily thwarted process.

The new idea, being advanced in state legislatures since 2006, is the “National Popular Vote” proposal (and movement) founded by Stanford University computer scientist/inventor John Koza. It’s a cause also championed vigorously by the electoral reform group, FairVote.

The proposal: the state legislatures–exercising their constitutional power over their own states’ electoral votes–should enter into an interstate agreement to award all their state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes nationwide. The compact would go into effect when–but only when–states with votes constituting a majority of the Electoral College (270 of the total of 538) signed up.

Instantly, votes across all 50 states would have equal weight and the candidate most Americans voted for would be assured the presidency.

FairVote’s Rob Richie says the National Popular Vote may be a sleeper–ready for serious nationwide attention. Close to 1,200 state legislators have voted for it. It’s been passed in Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois and Hawaii, plus single chambers in several others. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed it twice in California, but the second time with fewer objections.

Backers also hope that as memories of the contested 2000 election fade, partisans originally skeptical of any change may start coming around. George Bush won the Electoral College that year by edging out Al Gore by 537 votes in Florida, even though Gore won 537,179 more popular votes nationally. But in 2004, a switch of just 59,388 votes in Ohio would have given Sen. John Kerry an Electoral College majority, even though Bush led nationally by 3.5 million votes.

The reformers assert today’s system is a threat to both parties, Russian roulette, ready any election year to destroy either party’s popular mandate.

But if that’s not a sufficiently strong argument, then the case to revoke the battleground states’ unfair advantage should help to win over even more converts. Why shouldn’t conservatives be able to harvest meaningful votes in blue California and liberals in red Texas? What’s wrong with liberals being able to appeal meaningfully to African-American voters in red Louisiana or Alabama, providing them (at last) a chance to participate fully, to make a difference nationally?

If we’re all truly Americans–the Obama pitch in the current campaign–no single reform could make more sense.

For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195. For newspaper syndication sales, Washington Post Writers Group, 202-334-5375, wpwgsales@washpost.com.

By Robert E. Lang

A recent story in the Washington Post noted that Democrat Barack Obama is the first big city politician to run as a major party presidential candidate in many years. Yes, Senator Obama comes from Chicago–the so-called “Second City” (really the third city behind New York and Los Angeles). Yet his Republican rival John McCain lives in Phoenix, now America’s fifth largest U.S. city having just passed Philadelphia in population. While Phoenix is more famous for golf courses and subdivisions than urban neighborhoods, McCain in fact lives in a luxury high rise in the upscale and highly citified Camelback district.

Both presidential candidates are technically big city guys. But a better way to label Senators McCain and Obama is “big metro guys.” Chicago and Phoenix also rank among the largest metropolitan areas. In this way, the two candidates typify a nation now dominated by urban regions. Just over half (53 percent) of all Americans live in metro areas that exceed one million residents. As Brookings Institution research has shown, the metros dominate the country’s economy, accounting for an enormous share of its technology, venture capital, and advanced services. They are also the places where the U.S. connects to the global economy via major sea ports and hub airports.

Were just the big metros to vote, the presidential race would be a rout every time. The Democrats dominate major urban regions. In an analysis done earlier this year, the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech found that Democrat John Kerry won–often by very lopsided margins–the votes in three quarters of the nation’s biggest and most globally networked metros. And even in the regions that Kerry lost, he almost always prevailed in the core county. For instance, he battled Republican President (and former Texas governor) George W. Bush to a draw in Dallas County. Kerry blew out Bush in the city of Dallas—the place where Bush plans to retire.

But the Democratic vote in big metros is counterbalanced by Republican ballots cast in rural areas, small towns, and exurbs. In the last two elections, the Democrats counted on the votes from cities and inner suburbs while Republicans appealed to the regional fringe and beyond. The result has been a near even split in the electorate. The Republicans have won by running up overwhelming numbers in non-metro America while picking up just enough votes among suburbanites and even city dwellers to eke out narrow victories. The trick has been to energize the conservative rural base by running against big city culture and lifestyle, while not alienating typically more moderate suburbanites.

But this strategy may have run its course primarily because big metropolitan areas are growing much faster than small towns. They are also becoming dramatically more diverse. The new destination for immigrants is not found on the old gritty streets of lower Manhattan, but in the postwar suburbs that surround all big cities. In the process, the ring of “first suburbs” is now more cosmopolitan and urbanized.

The total Democratic-voting space in the emerging metropolis has likewise expanded and now reaches even recently built suburbs. Consider the case of metropolitan Washington, DC. Close-in suburbs such as Arlington County, Virginia have long been solidly Democratic areas. But a once Republican mature suburban county such as Fairfax has shifted from supporting Bush in 2000 to voting strongly Democratic in recent state-wide elections. Even Virginia’s exurban counties such as Loudoun and Prince William have been swept by dramatic demographic change and are now home to an increasing diverse and Democratic-friendly population. The Democratic invasion of Northern Virginia shifted the state from solidly red to potentially blue. A similar process is playing out in other rapidly urbanizing red states such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina.

The Republicans now face a dilemma. If they run hard to their mostly white rural base, they risk turning off increasingly diverse and Democratic-leaning suburbanites. However, if Republicans court big metro voters by dropping their message of small town values, their base vote may fall off. In 2008, the Republicans clearly believe that they can squeeze out one more victory under the old model. The choice of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee sealed the deal. This small town mayor turned governor uses her experience growing up in Wasilla, Alaska–ironically part of greater Anchorage–to prove her fitness for office. The Republican National Convention even featured former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani talking up small town values while skewering Barack Obama for his supposed cosmopolitan big city ways.

Maybe John McCain can somehow pull out one more win for small town America. But the odds look increasing long. More importantly, no future Republican nominee is likely to try another full-on, rural-based run at the White House. Or to repeat this autumn’s theme of rural places as “real” and “pro American,” using coded language to imply that big metropolitan areas are illegitimate and anti American. We are a metro nation and we do have a common stake in the success of all places–from largest cities to the smallest hamlets. Unless the Republican party grasps that, and adapts its policy approaches and messages accordingly, it will risk a long journey in the political wilderness.

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By Neal Peirce

The next president should appoint a White House chef who believes in preparing locally-grown meals. Much of the food should be incredibly fresh–grown right outside the door, on a 5-acre organic fruit and vegetable garden to be carved out of prime South Lawn land.

Occasionally the First Family should walk out to pull some weeds, helping to reacquaint Americans with their agrarian, self-help heritage. There is a precedent for White House farming: the fabulously successful nationwide Victory Garden campaign Eleanor Roosevelt kicked off from the White House in 1943.

And when the president’s home, the family (John and Cindy–or will it be Barack, Michelle, Malia and Natasha?) should all sit down for a delicious, balanced dinner in the Executive Residence–at a table (no TV dinners, no fast food).

The idea of the president as “first farmer” is surely audacious. But food-industry expert Michael Pollan used it artfully in the Oct. 12 New York Times Magazine. Pollan’s goal: to urge (and have us urge) the next president to inspire a sweeping food revolution, back to greater local and regional self-sufficiency.

Why a revolution?

First, energy prices are bound to rise for years to come. The American food machine guzzles fossil fuels from start to finish–for farm machinery, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, mass production processing and packaging, and transporting foods over thousands of miles. The toll is 19 percent of the country’s fossil fuel use, a big shadow over our hopes for energy independence.

Second, climate change. The fossil fuels we burn for food contribute to our seriously high carbon emissions. Plus, wherever land is cleared for large industrial-scale agriculture, major amounts of carbon dioxide get released into the air.

Third, the serious downsides of mass production agriculture. For decades, the U.S. government has subsidized big commodity crops– “monocultures,” says Pollan. Farmers are paid by the bushel for virtually all the corn, soybeans, wheat and rice they can produce. Artificially cheap grain has translated into low-cost high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks and processed foods, its fattening “empty calories” bereft of healthy fiber or antioxidants.

Fourth, inexpensive grain made it cheaper for big feedlots to fatten animals less expensively than individual farmers could. Meat–another contributor to obesity (plus heart problems)–became relatively inexpensive, hawked by fast food chains nationwide. But the animals’ waste that had historically fertilized pastures made feedlots– “confined animals feeding operations”–into one of America’s worst (and insufficiently regulated) pollution sources.

So, says Pollan, “We are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.” We’re creating a grim health future of cheap-calorie diets triggering fast-rising Type 2 diabetes and threatening millions with blindness, amputation and early death. And then there’s food security: “When a single factory is grinding 20 million hamburger patties in a week or washing 25 million servings of salad, a single terrorist armed with a canister of toxins can, at a stroke, poison millions.”

So where should we be heading? To capture the sun’s power–photosynthesis–suggests Pollan. The secret is rotation of field use and marrying crop plants and animals on the same farms and farmlands–sunlight nourishing the grasses and grains, grazing animals then harvesting their own feed, and animal waste then nourishing the soil for the next cycle. The result: biodiversity, soil health, clean water, and reduced carbon emissions.

Getting there won’t be simple. Entrenched agribusiness interests will fight furiously to protect their subsidies. “Ag schools” will have to be persuaded to shift curriculums from mass production to sustainable agriculture.

And drawing more people back to the land, we’ll have to train a new generation of farmers sufficiently skilled to handle the complexities of plant and animal science and rotation agriculture.

But what an opportunity. For years this column has advocated regionally-based agriculture, farmers’ markets, fresh local foods in schools, universities, hospitals. Pollan goes even further, saying we need to preserve every acre of good farmland within a day’s drive of our cities. He’d force developers to come up with “food system impact statements” before they can devour supposedly “empty” land. Maybe develop new residential villages around farm plots instead of golf courses.

The possibilities continue–for food stamp debit cards given double credit at farmers’ markets. For subsidy of local fresh food distribution networks by the U.S. Agriculture Department. For agriculture enterprise zones to free small and modest-size local farm operations from the severe inspection standards more appropriate for nationwide producers.

Can a “farmer in chief” in Washington talk up, encourage, validate such efforts? My bet is yes–that the more the frightening downsides of today’s system are explained to the American people, the more they’ll welcome and support the change. Instinctively, we like the idea of healthier, fresher food and locally sufficient agriculture. Now’s the time to get serious about making it happen.

For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195. For newspaper syndication sales, Washington Post Writers Group, 202-334-5375, wpwgsales@washpost.com.