21st century agenda.

As the nation looks for presidential leadership for the coming millennium, today's political debate is strikingly limited by the hoary concerns of the past, none of which touches on the deepest needs of the American public. Perhaps no element of the polity is as unfairly neglected as urban baby-boomers toiling in the lower ranks of the Information Age as obscure public-policy researchers, journalists, artists, and untenured college instructors. These workers make the country's transition into an era of mass communications possible; if their fun potential remains unrealized, the country risks losing its competitive edge in the global marketplace.

There are simple, cost-effective steps the government can take to remedy their problems, if only the presidential candidates would speak up on their behalf. Here is an agenda that benefits not only struggling urban professionals--but all Americans.

HEALTH--No one can be fully productive if they're hobbled by nagging health problems like backaches. Today's medical system is ill-equipped to handle such stress-related illnesses, because of its outdated emphasis on conventional medicine and end-stage care. Most people have to spend their own hard-earned money to visit acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists, and aroma therapy consultants, despite these practitioners' well-documented successes (in such respected journals as Prevention and New Age).

What's required is a network of Preventive Health Maintenance Organizations (PHMO) to provide prepaid care for a wide range of alternative or simply relaxing treatments. As an unsolicited draft report to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment once pointed out, for every $1 spent on a dip in a jacuzzi, $200 can be saved on surgery for herniated discs." (c.f. "Tertiary Care and Hot Tubs: A Cost-benefit Analysis," Levine, A., et. al., August 1991.) And if just three sessions with a "past-lives regression" hypnotist can produce dramatic results, why shouldn't the government help pay for it?

The current political debate also slights the nutrition needs of too many infocrats. Although the surgeon general and National Institutes of Health recommend a diet that is low in red meat and fats, and high in whole grains, pasta, fruits, and vegetables, only the most affluent can pay for expensive nouvelle cuisine dishes. The rest of us must make do with fatladen fast food--trends that cost industry $12 billion a year in lost productivity due to diet-related illnesses. Thus, it is imperative that government vigorously promote a new Cuisine Stamps program that would enable deserving urban professionals to eat such dishes as salmon mousse and lobsterfra diavolo (with linguine) in the nation's better restaurants. Infocrats could promote their health and self-esteem while also networking with executive movers and shakers. It is a "win-win" proposition for us all.

But these efforts to prevent illness won't mean much if the country doesn't take far more aggressive steps to treat the major unaddressed health epidemic of our time: depression, which affects an estimated 20 million Americans. A new class of medications such as Prozac holds the promise of wiping out depression just as Jonas Salk's discovery of a vaccine helped eradicate an earlier generation's victimization by polio. Back then, cost was no object as health professionals fanned out across the country inoculating school-children against the dreaded scourge; today, as a new plague makes millions of young professionals too depressed to even lift up the phone and order in Chinese food, a similar national commitment must be made.

Journalists and writers, faced with constant demands on their creativity, are particularly vulnerable, but too many of them can't afford the necessary prescription drugs and therapy. Prozac should be available for free not just in doctor's offices, but at all the places where urbanites congregate, from bookstores to coffee houses to gourmet markets. After all, a depressed worker means a depressed economy. Our country simply can't afford to let that happen.

Lifestyle--Loneliness and social isolation also contribute to the depression affecting many in our urban workforce. In "Sex and the Democrats: Liberalism's New Frontier," (Harper's, January 1983), I suggested that the government address sexual inequity with measures such as Guaranteed Annual Intercourse. Though still valid, those proposals will not attack the underlying social malaise weakening our competitive spirit; much more needs to be done to regulate the untrammeled laissez-faire marketplace governing meeting and mating.

One arena that is particularly rife with abuse is the so-called "personals ads," in which the lovelorn promote their attributes in their search for a mate. These personals, for instance, blatantly promise gullible men that they'll be meeting "attractive," "shapely," and "intelligent" women with a "good sense of humor," only to discover that they're all too often homely shrews who can't appreciate our witty banter. Unfortunately, Truth-in-Advertising statutes used by the Federal Trade Commission in other retail fields simply are not enforced here.

The Federal Communications Commission also should play a role in this completely unregulated area. One of the most grating elements of dating is the refusal of some people to return one's phone calls, despite good-faith efforts to leave messages at their offices and homes; this is a clear violation of long-established principles of both contract law and the Federal Communications Act. To avoid the inevitable problems that arise from unreturned phone calls--such as prolonged sulking, which negatively impacts a worker's productivity--it should be federal communications policy that all phone calls from suitors be returned within three days. If that person realises to comply, she (in most cases, it's a woman) would be subjected to a series of escalating sanctions, up to and including reimbursement of all expenses--dinners, flowers, and so on--incurred by the suitor. This long overdue addition to current law would return fair play and egalitarianism to the romantic playing field.

Unfortunately, even if such reforms are put in place, too many people lack the savoir-faire, sophisticated tastes, and cultural awareness needed to make them competitive either in their personal or professional lives. The results of this national crisis can be seen everywhere. How many dates or business interviews have been ruined because someone didn't know how to pronounce the phrase "coq au vin" at a fine French restaurant? How many aging babyboomers must stay on top of current trends to survive professionally, but still think the phrase "mosh pit" refers to an exotic Jewish food? All these people are, in one way or another, esthetically-challenged and trend-deprived. Many of them don't have the basic necessities needed to survive in the stylistic rat-race--MTV and Details magazine--and subsist only on a primitive diet of network television and used copies of Time.

My common-sense solution would tap both the idealism of young people and their burning passion to be "cool." Unlike its stodgy predecessors, the Peace Corps, VISTA, and AmeriCorps, the StyleCorps that I envision would enlists tens of thousands of young people in an effort to bring to benighted homes and communities the latest word on music, fashion, and trendy celebrities--supplemented by instruction in the classic elements of good taste and care packages of selected books and albums. Just as the Peace Corps brought electricity to Third World villages, this new initiative would, in part, spread symbols of good taste such as well-thumbed copies of Remembrance of Things Past or the new Smashing Pumpkins CD throughout the nation in order to bridge the class divisions that sadly divide us. Outfitted in black garb and Doc Martens boots, StyleCorps volunteers would help our country become more egalitarian.

Work--Distressingly little attention has been paid by the presidential candidates to the drain on the economy caused by wasted creative activity. To rectify this injustice, the government has an obligation to retrain American workers to compete in the field that leads all American exports: the entertainment industry, particularly film. Under the inspiring slogan, "Every Man a Tarantino," this new program, modeled after the depression-era Works Project Administration, would unleash a flowering of creativity in a nation hungering for even more independent movies exploring urban alienation and random violence.

All these measures, then, deserve to be made part of the 1996 election debate. Without such initiatives our country's true greatness can never be realized. Individuals who once might have blazed brightly in public life will be forced to eke out a living in a tiny cubbyhole in some Godforsaken think tank while blowhards without even a fraction of their talent rake in all the glory and babes. This is a fate that we as a nation must strive to avoid.

Dr. Arthur S. Levine, Ph.D. is a staff fellow at the Democratic National Policy Review Institute. He is not to be confused with Art Levine, a Monthly contributing editor.