Have another idea...
I have a lot of childs in each of my parent categories. How about the ability to clone a category, with all of its settings intact to use as a template. So we can have our descriptions/extended descriptions, use policy and the settings carry over, as well as display settings and permissions, and then it's a simple to edit any changes you want.
Thinking about it, all you would need is to tell it the cat id you wish to use for the template settings, and a new name to call that created cat.
Not sure how much that would take though, might be simplier than the use policy idea, but just a idea for a good option down the road. Mind you, with all the other ideas from everyone else, that might be version 7.0
Thanks for all your help.