Kirk Wants Platform to Be Brief, Simple

Democratic Party Chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr., seeking to shake the “special interests” label that has clung to the party since Walter F. Mondale’s crushing 1984 defeat, urged fellow Democratic leaders Friday to adopt a brief, relatively general platform “that any eighth-grade civics student could memorize.”

Kirk said the national party’s 1988 platform should appeal to “shared values” and “timeless truths” and--unlike past statements--avoid potentially damaging stances on specific, complex issues such as taxes, abortion or gay rights, leaving those to be debated by individual candidates.

Combatting Polarization

That tack marks the latest effort by Kirk in his three years as party chief to quell the “politics of polarization” that he sees as contributing to the Democrats’ defeat in four of the last five presidential elections. In the 1984 presidential campaign, Mondale became the target of sharp criticism from both Democratic opponents and Republicans for courting special interest groups that were seeking party endorsement of their positions.

Kirk made his appeal in a speech to the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors’ Assn.

It was quickly endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.), who also addressed the gathering, and House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.). Byrd said the platform adopted at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta next year should be a short “open letter” to the American people. To that, Wright added “a hearty amen.”

Kirk said that the campaigns of all six Democratic presidential candidates “indicated support” when he proposed the new approach to them last week, but a spokesman for one candidate said Friday that he had reservations about it.

The platform should not be “so vague and so general and so noncommittal to anything that it doesn’t excite anyone,” said Frank Watkins, press secretary for the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “You don’t inspire people through a directionless platform. That could be a danger.”

But Watkins acknowledged that some previous statements had grown to thousands of words and become bogged down in a “laundry list” of specific positions that were “too complicated to reach people’s guts.”

Rewarding Supporters

Despite support for a simpler platform, actually getting one could be difficult. By party rules, the convention platform committee will be dominated by supporters of the party’s nominee, and nominees traditionally have used the platform to reward groups that have supported them in the primaries and caucuses.

Kirk implored party leaders to push for a change this time.

“If we adopt a platform in Atlanta that speaks in brief, positive, pragmatic and patriotic terms,” Kirk said, Republicans will not be able to use the statement as a “target” and will be left to defend their own “sorry record.”