EDITORIAL: Voters should demand specifics from presidential candidates

Selecting a presidential candidate to support is a frustrating task. The average voter remembers that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was involved in a bridge scandal, that Hillary Clinton has email issues and that businessman Donald Trump has a loud mouth and louder hair, but do most voters really know where those three — or any of the other candidates — really stand on the issues?

Candidates on both sides have complained about media coverage of the campaign, but the job of the national media is to dig out differences between the contenders, especially if they won't say where they stand on specific issues and don't make themselves available for interviews where they can be asked about their positions.

For example, it wasn't until this week that Mrs. Clinton finally admitted that she's opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline project. That announcement came on the heels of her recent statements that she favors piling new mandates into Obamacare and further subsidizing higher education. These are wrongheaded ideas, but for someone who basically hid from reporters for the first few months of her campaign, these slow-coming specifics will help voters decide whether they can support her.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has taken to the pages of The Wall Street Journal twice this month with op-eds detailing how, if elected, he would completely overhaul the U.S. tax code and "repeal the coal ash rule, the clean water rule, net neutrality, and much more." Mr. Bush hasn't moved up much in polls, but a plan to reform Washington certainly won't hurt him.

Despite his popularity with some of the GOP base, Mr. Trump, perhaps more than any other candidate, has failed to articulate a lot of specifics. Mr. Trump has jumped at the chance to to talk about immigration and trade, but he quickly changes the subject when he's asked about issues such as agriculture, the military and foreign policy. Even he, however, has acknowledged the need to take concrete positions, and his recent release of a "position paper" supporting the Second Amendment and national concealed-carry reciprocity is a step in that direction.

Americans might not have noticed, but Gov. Christie has a plan for entitlement reform, without which the national debt will continue to skyrocket in the decades ahead.

As these candidates make their way to Nevada for the state's first-in-the-West caucus, voters shouldn't be afraid to require specifics. The campaign and the country demand it.