How best to push America forward

OPINION:

The first of two excerpts of the book “Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works.”

The stakes, I believe, have never been higher. America today is at an extraordinary crossroads. We’re standing on the edge of a potential golden age for America. Advances in technology, science, engineering, and medicine hold the promise of benefits our parents couldn’t even dream of. If we make the right choices now, America will enjoy a level of prosperity, safety, and freedom unknown to previous generations. But if we make the wrong choices, we will suffer very serious consequences from a set of challenges we choose to ignore. Our country could be devastated by terrorist attacks, our prosperity diminished by the rising commercial giants of China and India, and our children and grandchildren unable to pay for the needs of their families and for the health, pension, and Social Security burdens of their parents.

America’s natural majority

Hope lies, as it always has, in the American people. America has a natural, overwhelming center-right majority — and it’s a majority that has a better grasp of the challenges facing us than the Washington bureaucrats, politicians, and lobbyists who don’t think of finding solutions to problems but of managing “the system.” On issues across the board — from permitting a moment of silence for prayer in our public schools to the issues of war and peace — the American people speak with one voice. I know, because we’ve asked and we’ve listened.

Ask the American people if they want a moment of silence for children to pray if they desire in public school, and 94 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if they support making English the official language of the United States, and 87 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if al Qaeda poses a serious threat to our country, and 93 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if they believe it is possible to negotiate with terrorist groups like al Qaeda, and 79 percent say no.

Ask the American people if the Social Security system is broken, and 80 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if it is important for the president and Congress to address the Social Security mess within the next few years, and 96 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if they support the option of a single income tax rate of 17 percent for everyone, with standard exemptions for each adult, married couple, and child dependent, and 71 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if they support drilling for oil off America’s coasts to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and 73 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if they support building more nuclear power plants to cut carbon emissions and reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and 65 percent say yes.

Ask the American people if they support laws that criminalize advocating terrorism or advocating violence against American citizens, and 83 percent say yes.

If the American people agree on so much, why is it that our politicians agree on so little? And why can’t we get the policies America wants?

A system of politics and government that doesn’t work

While Americans are overwhelmingly united, the two major political parties foster deep divide and rancorous debate. And neither has truly engaged in trying to find creative solutions to the serious problems we face as a nation.

Democrats can’t talk creatively about replacing government failure with a model that works because their power base is largely the very unionized bureaucracies that need to change, and their ideological base is the big-government, highly regulatory, high-tax model that is failing. Republicans can’t talk creatively about replacing government failure with a model that will work, because the Republicans’ proper focus on limiting government, an enormous task, often leaves little energy for serious thought on improving government that has been properly limited. Another challenge for Republicans is that they have written off large segments of the country as unwinnable, as “blue-state America,” and therefore not of concern to them.

Both parties are failing America. While Republicans are closer to core American values in their doctrines of lower taxes, limited government, more entrepreneurship, more private sector job creation, and strength in national security, they refuse to think deeply enough about the performance failures of the last six years of Republican attempts at governing, and they refuse to invest the energy that is needed to understand the problems plaguing the inner city. Thus, they have failed to create a credible dialogue with people who have been badly served by Democrats but are deeply distrustful of Republicans.

A Republican Party that addressed the issues, that spoke to all Americans as the natural party of commonsense solutions, of entrepreneurship, of a strong national defense, of revitalizing America’s core values and principles, would find that it represents the majority of the people by an overwhelming margin. But Republicans are stuck in their historic minority mindset. As a party they have labored in the minority for so long that they don’t know how to provide the kind of leadership necessary for a majority party. Worse, Republicans have allowed political consultants to do their thinking for them. The most destructive example of this is consultants who convince Republicans that in order to win, they need to run divisive campaigns rather than solution-oriented campaigns.

The Democrats are no alternative. If Republicans are ruled by timidity at their minority mindset, Democrats wrongly assume that their left-wing base — trial lawyers, the Hollywood elite, labor unions, government bureaucrats — represents the values of the American people, when in fact it represents the values of a fringe opposed by 70 to 90 percent of the American people. When Democrats are elected as a majority, it’s because of Republican failure.

That was exactly the case in the 2006 election. But really, the problem began much earlier. It started in the 2000 election, and became obvious by the 2004 election.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who served in Congress from 1979 to 1999, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.