Calling All Policy Gurus

We are tired of talking so much about lipstick and lapel pins. At OffTheBus - HuffPost's citizen-produced election coverage site - we are devoting the rest of September to covering the policy differences between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. From millions of uninsured Americans to war in Iraq to financial woes, the next president will have to grapple with tough social, economic, and political issues. And that is why we need your help.

Are you a schoolteacher who can evaluate McCain and Obama's education policies? Or maybe a Wall Street trader who can analyze the candidates' economic proposals -- and responses to the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression? An activist who's well-versed in civil rights, or an IT consultant who can give the low-down on tech policy?

Sign up to participate in our policy coverage. Tell us about your expertise - including professional experience - and an editor will be in touch on how you can contribute. Just fill out this form.

We aren't just looking for writers. We are also looking for people we should interview. We will feature your work here on OffTheBus and the best submissions on the Huffington Post homepage.

Don't have enough time to contribute this time? Join OffTheBus' email list, and we'll email you about other opportunities to publish here at HuffPost.

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Comments

[TopProf]

About education policy, looking at the candidate's explicit statements only goes so far. Look at their advisers. Obama's adviser is the redoubtable Linda Darling-Hammond, a specialist in teacher quality. She is able to interpret the scholarship on what it takes to produce highly qualified teachers (and this has nothing to do with testing or programs like Teach for America). When I learned that McCain's chief adviser and likely appointee as Secretary of Education was Lisa Graham-Keegan, my blood ran cold. As Superintendent of Public Instruction in Arizona she rammed through a wild-west version of charter schools, tax credits to divert students from public schools, and supported vouchers. We could argue about each of these policies (although little independent scholarship supports their effectiveness), they followed in AZ a free-market ideology with no accountability to the general public. The board meant to oversee charter schools was stacked with free-market folks who gave the benefit of the doubt to even the most craven, greedy, ill-prepared charter proposers. Very few of these schools still exist. They took the money and ran, like Enron people. Lisa Graham-Keegan: one more reason to vote against McCain.

[janvoght]

Good Idea, huff post...i wish i had expertise like the kind you seem to be looking for. the only experience i have had about 30 years of, is being a family and working person in America. i know enough to realize that the republicans will stoop to conquer, and not that the dems won't fudge a little, but they seem to be of the more decent ilk. i realize that after 30 years of struggling to raise two boys, make the mortgage payment, and keep food on the table, that unfair taxation hits my group first, and seems to leave the upper levels of society a lot more to keep in their savings accounts, and to educate their kids, and to lavish themselves with luxuries, that i have learned to do without. 4 more years of these failed republican policies would not only be disastrous for me, but for many of my friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, who by the way have tried to work hard to achieve a better life for our children and families. unfair taxation does not seem to trickle down, the way bush/cheney talked about in 2000 or 2004. and something else that just doesn't seem to be working out, is the pre-emptive war we pulled on a country that did not even attack us, which happens to be illegal...could we please have someone with better judgement, and not a war first, strategy? diplomacy has alot to offer.
OBAMA '08

[ricitizen]

Here is another story to be published tomorrow in the Sunday' NY Times Magazine. A Case Study. How O/B thinks and how that plays into his leadership style. See the link. It is a fascinating story and we are lucky to be able to have so much information for us to make an informed decision. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21obama-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

Obama/Biden '08

[constitutionalive]

"POLICY GURUS" indeed ! ... The "economic health" of a nation is dependent upon sensible, coherent, compatible principles united under one umbrella of "national economic policy" philiosophy and those principles, tenets, etc. being understood, upheld, and enforced. Thing is, in any "society", the principles of governance must be integrated and compatible so that the entire society including government and business and education and law enforcement all psh-pull the same way at the same time. As with Bob Woodward's ideas in his new book, the worst enemy the USA has had over the past thirty years is itself, i.e., incompatible political and financial philosophical ideas of hwo the country is and where it should be going have been successively yanking and tugging and tearing apart the fabric of the society and nation as a whole. Each greedy devil raised its ugly head and told americans a sweet story of success and wealth to make the ugliness relatively invisible; and with each election, political advertising agencies latched onto whatever to make wrong ideas and concepts incompatible with the US history and Constitutional Democracy more viable for those who financed the political drag show, enticing american votes to empower the ruthless, self-serving, unprincipled, unethical, and the true enemies of the USA nation. A culture anti-thetical to education has taken hold of USA society so that the educated mind needed to detect all this crap burying the country became non-existent.

So what...TRUTH ??

[mamacat]

I have no expertise, only an anecdote.
There has been a lot in the news about how the Europeans hope that Obama gets elected this cycle. I have talked to several Europeans that I know. Of the three adults who were willing to tell me how they felt, one likes Obama, and two like McCain.

I know some people in Mexico, and they have all expressed a preference for McCain.

Maybe the people I know are just part of a statistical anomaly, I don't know, but those are the facts.

[Freemind42]

you're right, it's a statistical anomoly

[gdcb1128]

i'm pretty sure your numbers don't constitute a scientific study

[gdcb1128]

Do you think you are actually conducting a credible poll?

[Kanashi]

Very weird!

[Chaucea]

Chatting it up with many folks I know in Norway (not all Norwegians either, many folks from all over the world--30 different countries in all), no one likes McCain except for one odd fellow who thought, "Regan was the most amazing person in the world." (for which he was shunned and scorned accordingly ;-)).

And their biggest reason for liking Obama? He has the capacity to be very diplomatic and gracious--something the US desperately needs right now to regain any sense of respect and credibility in the world. Obama won't piss off the rest of the world like the current administration has done so completely.

[larry278]

This ought to be interesting. McCain is SNL, Mad TV, the Daily Show, South Park, Scooby Doo [maybe Colbert]; Palin is soap opera & tele-novel. Obama/Biden must be serious about the melt down but somehow positive about the future as the economies of the world continue to collapse. Seeing the views of disinterested mavins will be a useful diversion. OK, OK, you can't be an expert & be disinterested about how to spend the years of recovery from the melt down.

[BluePride]

There is hope... 2008 is the Year of Decision. This tune was from the mid '70s when there was an unpopular war, gas shortages and price gouging, inflation and corruption rampant. Republicans were in the white house. It's deja vu (all over again!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa-xJPX-ohI