To get an eBook or paperback copy of Common Sense Governance, please click the button below.
If you would like a copy of The Ten Core Principles of American Governance, please click on the button below.
Common Sense Governance
An Introduction
“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
- Abraham Lincoln
Early in July of 1776, as the story goes, Benjamin Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia having just concluded the Declaration of Independence when a prominent woman, Elizabeth Powell, stopped him and asked, “Well Doctor, what do we got, a monarchy or a republic?” Ben Franklin famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Now, isn’t that the question, can we keep this wonderful republic of ours?
It seems that as a country we’re veering further away from the vision and ideals of our Founding Fathers. In a republic, leading citizens selected by their neighbors are chosen to represent them at the local, state, and national levels of government.
Further, power is disbursed between those who write the laws, the legislators, those who implement and enforce the laws, the executive branch, and those who interpret the laws, the judicial branch of government. Between these three levels of government, there are checks and balances so that none of the branches dominate or supersede the others.
Now, if we take off our rose-colored glasses, we’re finding that our precious republic is devolving into a third-world banana republic or worse, an authoritarian regime that uses unsavory methods to retain and gain additional power. The old saying, ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ is alive and well in the United States of America.
While Vladimer Putin poisons his opponents and encourages others to ‘jump’ off high buildings, our government uses more subtle techniques of tying their opponents up in federal, state, and municipal courts on spurious charges. While governments in Iran, Russia, China and others, vet candidates prior to elections, kicking those off the ballot that aren’t ‘qualified,’ blue states in America are attempting that same tactic.
Around the world, foreign intelligence agencies regularly spy on their citizens to keep them in line, now we’re learning that our very own intelligence agencies were being used to take down a sitting president, all because he wasn’t part of the establishment club and became a threat to their power base.
While an individual needs a government-issued identification card to get on to an airplane or enter a federal building, somehow, it’s racist to require an ID card to register or to vote in a US election. Yet, it’s perfectly okay to harvest votes from senior citizens’ homes or cemeteries, where somehow, people have been casting ballots long after they’ve been six feet under. It’s no wonder why people are losing confidence in our elections.
The question is: what is the genesis of this problem?
Right from the start, the seeds of destruction of our republic were planted when George Washington took the oath of office on April 30, 1789. One of his first acts was to nominate Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State and Alexander Hamilton as the Treasury Secretary. Even before confirmation by the Senate, these two individuals were at odds right from the start. As Washington was trying to chart a steady course for a brand-new country, Jefferson and Hamilton had very different ideas as to which direction the new federal government should take.
Hamilton was smart, calculating and a realist. Born out of wedlock in the West Indies, he was orphaned early on, educated in New Jersey, and became a clerk for a local merchant where his talents were quickly noted. Several prominent citizens helped fund his college education at what is now Columbia University in New York City. He joined the New York militia in 1775 and during the Revolutionary War, rose through the ranks, becoming General George Washington’s trusted aide-de-camp, handling all his correspondence, drafting orders, and learning military strategy from his mentor.
After the war, Hamilton became a lawyer in New York, but like many became troubled by the ineffective way the new government operated under the Articles of Confederation. In 1787 he was selected to become a New York representative to the convention that was tasked to find ways to improve the Articles of Confederation, but he quickly started working with James Madison and others to craft what we now know as the US Constitution. He joined Madison and John Jay in writing the Federalist Papers and was instrumental in getting the state of New York to finally ratify the Constitution in July 1988, one of the last states to do so.
Thomas Jefferson was a farmer, an inventor, a diplomat, and far more introverted than Hamilton. Their personality differences bled over into policy differences. From 1784 until 1789 Jefferson was in Europe as the Minister to France and was not directly involved in the Constitutional Convention that led to the writing of the US Constitution. Because of his involvement in foreign affairs, he was a natural selection to become the first Secretary of State, and maintained a close relationship with France, while Hamilton wanted closer ties to the British for trade and economic reasons.
When Jefferson returned home from France, he began forming the Democratic-Republican Party which was wary of putting too much power in the hands of the federal government and supported the strict interpretation of the Constitution. Hamilton was instrumental in the formation of the Federalist Party which supported a stronger national government, and the interests of merchants and business as the engine of the economy.
While Washington tried to keep the Jefferson/Hamilton feud contained, behind the scenes they were at each other’s throats, penning the most outrageous pamphlets, accusing each other of the most disgraceful, hideous behaviors, yet doing so under pseudonyms.
Due to his close relationship with Hamilton, President Washington often sided with his Secretary of Treasury in policy decisions, which included the federal government taking over all the debts of the states for the Revolutionary War, the formation of a national bank, the establishment of a Federal Mint to print and coin money, etc. In many of these cases, Jefferson was at odds with these decisions, and it eventually led to his resigning as Secretary of State at the end of December 1893, early into Washington’s second term.
The rift between Hamilton and Jefferson along with the political parties they formed was not lost on President Washington. In his Farewell Address he foresaw the potential harm that political parties could bring upon a fragile republic when he wrote:
“However, may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Clearly within both of our Republican and Democratic parties of today, there are cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men and women who are far more interested in gaining and expanding their power base, than in doing what’s right and best for the American people.
One party, I won’t say which, seems hell bent on implementing all of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” which can be summed up in the Machiavellian phrase, “The ends justify the means.” Indeed, one of our former presidents, I won’t say which, taught Alinsky’s techniques to organizations like Acorn, to help them more effectively organize and protest. Also, while a former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State, I won’t say which, is said to have written a positive and glowing college thesis on Saul Alinsky and his “Rules.”
Our two-party system
Our two-party system is clearly far better than the one-party systems of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or those in other authoritarian countries. It’s also better than many countries with parliamentarian systems where there are dozens of smaller parties. Often, they need fragile coalitions to form a government, only to see them constantly splinter away, needing to form yet another coalition to govern.
Our issues seem to be that over time our two parties are being dominated by the more radical elements on the left and right and this is leading to a greater divide among the American people. We now have solid red states and solid blue states and a few so-called purple states.
Currently, our national political campaigns are almost completely contained within a handful of swing states. In fact, the last few presidential elections have been decided not even in these few swing states, but in the counties surrounding, Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and a few others.
We all need to emerge from our ideological bunkers and once again embrace common sense in the way we live our lives and in the way we govern our country.
Full disclosure: I am on the conservative side of the aisle, but in no way a radical. I became interested in both politics and public policy from a young age.
After graduating from Penn State with a degree in economics, as a young banker, I had the opportunity to speak to the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives regarding ways to improve the federal tax system. While nothing came from my suggestions, it sparked an interest to think through issues and try to find creative, unique, and common sense ways to improve how we develop and implement public policies as well as how we can do a better job of governing ourselves. After all, we are “We the People.”
This book won't be a diatribe proclaiming all things liberal, left, and blue are horrible, or that all things conservative, right, and red are wonderful. Instead, I'll take a realistic look at many of the issues and problems we face and common sense, tipping point solutions will be identified and proposed. Some of these ideas and potential solutions may seem odd, certainly out-of-the-box, but they should resonate with those who keep an open mind.
Some of the solutions will be policy-based while others will need a little more effort, such as enacting a Constitutional Amendment. The first ten Amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. These were enacted to protect individuals’ rights so that a future government, be it federal, state, or local could not infringe upon those rights.
Since the adoption of the Bill of Rights, seventeen additional amendments have been enacted and there is a specific procedure in the constitution to allow this to happen. For example, when George Washington stepped down after two terms as president, it became common practice for presidents not to serve beyond two terms, until Franklin Roosevelt. FDR was elected in 1932, 1936, 1940 and then again in 1944. After he passed in April of 1945 it became generally accepted that a president of the United States should follow Washington’s example and not serve beyond two terms. Thus, the XXII Amendment was ratified in 1951, formally limiting a president’s ability not to serve beyond two terms in office.
Some of the ideas and solutions may sound familiar to you, that is if you’ve read one or more of my novels. Back in 2014 I published my first novel, Escape from Serfdom. The title was a play off the 1944 book The Road to Serfdom by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. However, the title made it sound like a dark, dystopian story, which it wasn’t. My novel was more like the movie, The American President starring Michael Douglas and Annette Benning and the hit TV series, The West Wing, only leaning to the conservative side.
I quickly found out that my publisher’s sole marketing tactic was to sell more books to the author. Not long after the novel was on sale, the publisher went out of business, and yes, I still have a few boxes of books in my basement. That’s one of the life lessons learned, an expensive one.
Years later, I revisited the story then revised and expanded it into a six-part series called The Ship of State®. In the novel, my fictional president, Donald Burlington was a businessman with no political experience, not part of the establishment, not supported by either party and somehow won the Republican nomination in 2012 and went on to defeat President Barak Obama that year. He governed like a businessman would, using common sense, demanding accountability, and measuring results.
When some people hear the story’s pitch, they think it was taken from Donald Trump’s experience. However, I need to explain that the original novel was published well before Donald Trump went down the escalator in Trump Tower and got into politics.
Now, the concepts and ideas within these pages are important and strong enough to stand on their own without being incorporated in story form. I hope you’ll agree, keep an open mind, and help me bring some common sense back to the way we govern ourselves.