Right wing economic policies. Left wing social policies.
So relatively low taxes, less bureaucracy, balance the budget, etc. But also gay marriage, equal rights for a variety of groups, and science based environmental policies.
Does left wing social policy include e.g. universal welfare, health care and access to education though? Or are you thinking mainly of "liberal" rather than "left wing"?
Part of the problem is that left wing social policies cost money and have to be administered, conflicting with low taxes and less bureaucracy.... :(
You hit the nail on the head. Reality wouldn't let you do all of that without compromises, and we didn't agree where the compromises should be. But that wouldn't stop a politician from promising all of the above. :-)
That said, we did find broad agreement on many things that are completely off the political map in the USA. For example we could reduce the size of our military, liberalize drugs, get rid of the DEA, and reduce prison populations. All of that saves money. We also agreed that none of us actually expect Social Security to still exist when we need it, and so we'd prefer it replaced in the long run by something out of the hands of the politicians. Something along the lines of Australia's Superannuation would make sense. (But it wouldn't be fair to do it like Bush suggested - where it is privatized but with cutoffs that massively reduce what people can expect to get.)
Absolutely none of that is in the public discourse. But it would have been more popular in that office than anything being offered by the political parties.
In other conversations we also agreed that in general it is better to make rules simple and clear with the right incentives, rather than trying to add rules and counter rules that are guaranteed to give perverse incentives and a field day for lobbyists. For example we have laws mandating fuel efficiency standards, with complex exceptions saying that different types of vehicles get different treatment. I can't say anything about the net result other than that I'm sure that it lets politicians say that they solved the problem, while giving established Detroit companies some benefit. (The most obvious candidate for a benefit is that the regulatory mess is a barrier to entry for competitors.) But if you simply tax carbon fuels steeply enough, then incentives will be right. And then if you redistribute those taxes back to people in direct payments, then people can afford the taxes, and are left pushed to choose efficient vehicles for economic reasons.
