Twelve Rules to Win the Election and Energize America
We’re a week away from another election. These are the principles and agenda that would win.
Both major candidates have offered their rationales for electing them as America’s next president. Neither vision is that compelling, leaving Americans to once again chose who to vote against instead of who to enthusiastically vote for.
Here are twelve principles for an agenda that would energize Americans and win.
America is For Every American
Anyone who believes in America’s values is an American, and every American is entitled to full respect and opportunity. Cut all the division over personal identity.
No tolerance for anyone claiming America is only for some Americans. No tolerance for anyone pitting some Americans against others. No privileging one group over others, and no comparing privileges. The only rule to be an American is you fully sign up for the values of America.
Pledge equal dignity, worth, and opportunity to anyone joining the American tribe, and make absolutely sure it’s the reality of America.
Competence First
America is supposed to be a nation of excellence. So much of our society is no longer excellent. We’ve been putting other interests and values in front of excellence. It’s time that stopped.
Government needs to serve the people first, delivering the services it’s supposed to offer instead of engineering the people it’s supposed to serve. Businesses need to be excellent at what they do over financial engineering. Universities need to educate. Police need to make us safe. Our society needs to recommit to the principle that every enterprise, institution, and agency must actually do what it says on the tin. Every other consideration comes second.
The first priority is everything needs to work.
America Must Build Things
Stop the decay. Make things here again. Make more housing, food, education, and health care. Make more of everything, so instead of fighting over a dwindling pie there’s more pie for everybody. Create great airports, highways, and public buildings. Build amazing monuments once more.
Prioritize building things over the bureaucratic arts of finance, management, arbitrage, and shuffling papers. Raise the status of people who create and build, so the best and the brightest go there. Lower the status of managers and shufflers, so talent gets allocated where we need it.
Government’s Job is to Set Fair Rules and a Level Field
Government’s job is to set fair rules so everyone can compete on a level playing field.
The job is not to micromanage a vast and complex country. It’s not to put a thumb on the scale for someone’s concept of the good. It’s not to engineer progress or efficiency. The job is to make sure the rules are fair for everybody.
This principle should dictate what government does, and what it must not do.
Eliminate the Corruption
Corruption is rampant throughout America. This needs to stop.
The people who run things need to place their duties before their interests—in Congress, corporate suites, and public institutions alike. Leadership isn’t a reward. It’s a duty to those you’re supposed to lead and the people your institution is supposed to serve.
Stop tolerating selfish leaders who think they won a contest and now get to enjoy rewards. No tolerance for people on top the org chart exploiting those underneath. People working under your leadership aren’t your expendable serfs but your responsibility. Your customers aren’t opportunities to extract value but people you’re supposed to serve. Institutions must be transparent. Leaders must be accountable. Powerful institutions cannot lie or cheat.
Not all corruption is illegal. A leader who puts their personal desires and interests above their duties is corrupt.
Restore the Middle Class
America is supposed to be a middle-class society. It’s the only way a free society of self-governing social equals can work. We’re not an unequal nation of lords and peasants. Rebuild a dominant middle class.
Restore the stability of jobs. Make sure middle-class comfort is available and affordable. Make sure meaningful work that can support a good life is feely available. Ensure middle-class opportunity is available to everybody.
A rich and efficient society with a roaring market is useless unless mass prosperity is shared.
Restore the Power of Ordinary Americans and Democratic Accountability
Democracy means more than voting. It means leaders responsible to the people.
Americans are losing faith in democracy because they’ve lost trust that their government is actually responsive to their demands. They vote and nothing changes. Government isn’t transparent, keeping secrets and manipulating the people to engineer outcomes instead of obeying them as public servants. Government lies brazenly with no consequences to anyone when caught.
Require transparency and public control that cannot be manipulated or evaded.
Market Capitalism Over Managerial Imperialism
America is a market democracy and markets are good. Empower entrepreneurs, creators, and builders. Control corporate bureaucracies, imperial managers, and arbitragers.
Market capitalism doesn’t mean deferring to large powerful corporate bureaucracies. Corporate managers, even of massive firms, are just high-level hired employees not builders or owners. Market capitalism also does not mean financial arbitrage, which does not build, create, or invest, but merely buys, sells, engineers, and extracts.
Just like any large bureaucracy, large bureaucratic firms must be transparent and accountable to maintain democratic accountability and control. Empower builders to build. Regulate and control powerful bureaucracies to ensure they play fairly by transparent rules. Extend this principle beyond its demonstrated success in Silicon Valley to the entire American economy.
Help People Get into the Game: Teaching People to Fish
It’s not government’s job to engineer outcomes. It’s also not government’s job to step back hoping people learn to swim. Government’s job is ensuring everyone has the tools they need to succeed at whatever they choose to do on the fair and level playing field it creates.
As the proverb says, you don’t just hand out fish. You also don’t just tell people the lake is free if they have a pole. Teach people to fish.
Reengineer politics away from both the left and right visions of the twentieth century and towards a new one based around helping people get the tools they need to succeed on a truly level field.
Get Politics Out of the Culture
What started as well-meaning movements to make society fair turned into intellectual fads. Symbols, vibes, and affirmations overran actually improving people’s lives. It must stop.
Leave culture in the culture. Make politics about doing things.
Reward Those Who Play by the Rules
Americans who work hard and play by the rules should get ahead. They shouldn’t be taken for granted or treated as the last ones in line for consideration.
If the rules are fair, leaders are transparent, and the tools to succeed available, the people who are the backbone of the system should thrive.
Restore the American Dream
The American Dream is a dream that every American should have the freedom to pursue whatever life they choose, and have a fair chance at achieving it. No matter who you are, where you start, and where you come from, everyone must have a chance to become anything in America.
This is more than a dream of prosperity. It’s a dream about freedom, infinite opportunity, and self-determination. Make the American Dream once again true.
This American Dream agenda speaks to everything people care about: rebuilding things, creating opportunity, restoring the middle class, leveling the field, ending corruption, and democratic accountability.
It’s not a laundry list of hot button issues or policy proposals nobody believes will ever happen. It’s principles to reorder society that can create better answers to such questions. It’s a realistic, positive, vision for the future. While the political elite, activists, and influential backroom operators might not respond to these ideas, the American people will.
These are the issues people care about, so these issues would win. They’re also a blueprint to renew the country. The question is why no one in political leadership sees the opportunity and wants to pick up the torch.
What do you think of these twelve rules? Join the conversation in the comments.
I think it's a great idea, and I would support it cheerfully. Unfortunately, both our major political parties would fight it with tooth and claw.