Walking in Your Shoes to Restore the American Dream
Transcription
Walking in Your Shoes to Restore the American Dream
Walking in Your Shoes to Restore the American Dream Chapter 1: Rugged Individualism, the Common Enterprise, and Accountable Leadership Joe Sestak knows that America’s greatest deficit today is not the budget deficit, but the trust deficit. As wages stagnate and social mobility decline, our citizens wonder whether the American Dream can endure for another generation. Will our children be better off and attain a higher living standard in the future? Americans are hungry for leaders who can restore the public’s trust and faith in our government and democratic process. They want serious leaders who can identify challenges, find solutions, and fix them. We need good public servants in the United States Senate to champion for the public interest and restore our faith in government, and I want to earn the opportunity – and your trust – to be that kind of champion for Pennsylvania. Restoring trust The general lack of faith in our government and its leaders today has ravaged our democratic process and undermined our sense of national unity. It is not just politics. The public trust has been devastated by fraud and failure in virtually every area of public life: Enron, WMD, Katrina, fiscal cliff, Super-committee, Bernie Madoff, AIG, filibuster, red and blue, I win…you lose. For too long, ideology has paralyzed our government, and “trust deficit” is the phrase I use to describe the state of our union. As such, the government of the people has rarely been held in such low regard by the people. And, when the body created by and for the people does not enjoy the public trust, it must be viewed as nothing short of a crisis. I am running to represent Pennsylvania in the United States Senate because I want to change that. We must start by holding our leaders, of both parties, accountable for their actions. To put it simply: We must restore trust in our leaders and, in the coming months, I will work hard to earn the trust of all Pennsylvanians. America’s story: Rugged individualism and the common purpose Over two centuries ago, our founders aspired toward a more perfect union – one that promises to promote the general welfare for all and secure the blessings of liberty for each. These twin constitutional pillars have given us a practical pathway to govern, unlocking the talents of rugged individuals while ensuring shared prosperity for the common good. Through balancing rugged individualism and the common enterprise, government became a force of accountability for the achievement of the American Dream: the right of the people, as the Declaration of Independence proclaimed, to create a government “most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.” We became a country of tall ladders that we built together for all those brave and dedicated enough to climb them on their own. All we asked of those who climbed was to help add more rungs for our children to climb even higher, because we all knew well that, though we were rugged individuals, no one can achieve the American Dream alone. This is our true American Exceptionalism, our creation of an unparalleled environment for individual opportunity by both the establishment of individual rights and our shared investment of our collective resources; by a people striving for their own rugged individualism, but never measuring it apart from the common enterprise. My story: A sailor in public service My views on leadership were formed, for the most part, during my 31-year career in the United States Navy, where I eventually reached the rank of a three-star Admiral. I saw how American leadership is most effective when it embraces and empowers the dual tenets of our unique national character: rugged individualism in pursuit of the common mission. To ensure individual achievement, we provided every sailor career-long training and education, enabling each of them to contribute fully to our general overall military readiness. At the same time, we retained our sailors’ commitment because each had the opportunity to achieve individually the skills he or she valued as their personal contribution. We, in other words, created ladders of opportunity, and our people were brave enough to climb them on their own. No doubt about it, I could not have successfully commanded the 15,000sailor USS George Washington Aircraft Carrier Battle Group if the military did not prepare and empower our people to serve a collective purpose. It is an approach that brings unity to a mission, not divisiveness. The success of our nation should be no different. Americans want a government that gives them the opportunity to apply their innate abilities, intellect, ambition, and persistence for their individual achievement, while ensuring a shared investment from our collective resources so that we all might benefit. Americans want leaders who will lead the country based on facts, plot a course of action, and be held accountable for the results. Making a commitment to that type of leadership is what it’s going to take to overcome the litany of failures the American people have had to endure for far too long. Finding the problem and fixing it – that’s the essence of leadership. Achieving the American Dream Over the last several decades, it became popular for public officials to force a pitched philosophical battle upon the American people, presenting our people with a Hobson’s choice of either ending government service to our citizens or using government to solve everything. As the divisive rhetoric escalated, our people continued to endure declining economic mobility and stagnant wages. This is a failure of leadership – an assault on American unity at the expense of the American family. As a result of this failure, almost fourfifths of Americans no longer believe in the American Dream – the idea that our children, based on their efforts, will have the opportunity to do better than we have done. At this critical stage in our nation’s history, divisive rhetoric is not what we need from our leaders. Americans yearn for a new type of leadership – focused, purposeful, and responsible people in public service who are willing to be held accountable for the actions needed to guide our ship of state through rough seas. We need leaders who will help us restore the American Dream, and can give us some sense of direction – and achievable benchmarks – as we strive to get there.