Answering the Call

The United States is in the middle of a two-front war. We face dangerous external adversaries at a time when many inside our country doubt the benefits of our own leadership and the integrity of the very institutions that are designed to support our democracy here at home.

9/11 taught us that what happens over there matters here. It’s now clear that when we retreat, voids are filled by revisionist powers who believe in division instead of unity, war crimes instead of humanity, death instead of support, control instead of freedom. But global leadership abroad requires that we have our act together here at home.

When asked the open-ended question, who is America’s biggest enemy, 25% of U.S. voters named China first, and 20% named Russia in a December 2022 Rasmussen poll. But 22% said that the Democrats were America’s biggest enemy, and 17% said Republicans were. That’s nearly four in 10 Americans who said their political rivals were our biggest enemy. 

Sadly, this means that trust has been lost in our institutional leadership. I worry about what will happen in a crisis. Will our leaders act responsibly and put partisan division aside in the best interests of the American people? Most Americans think they won’t. Why has this trust been lost, and how do we fix it? I have a simple solution: Look in the mirror.

Our system is one of self-governance. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. And our Constitution codifies it. 

We cannot win the global fight for freedom, prosperity, civility, and good governance if our leaders at home practice incivility, pettiness, tolerance of fraud, lack of accountability, and other disgraces. Simply put, our domestic political division rivals our greatest external threats today.

The disconnect lies between our leadership and ourselves. I believe we have much more in common than divides us, but it serves partisans well to create division and perpetuate the winner-take-all mentality. “Us vs. Them” sells well.

But if we put ideology aside and focus on solving problems that impact us all directly, people with different perspectives can still come together nicely.

We saw commonality when neighbors and strangers helped each other after recent tornadoes in Arkansas. We even see bipartisan support tackling America’s opioid crisis at a time when almost 100,000 Americans a year are dying from drug overdoses.

But it shouldn’t take tragedies to get us talking to each other.

Our democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s the best system of government ever devised by man, and we must work to perfect it. Democracy is about being a citizen, not a spectator.

For example, the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, a joint effort between the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the Clinton Presidential Center, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, and the LBJ Foundation, encourages trailblazers to actively participate in our democracy. Presidential Leadership Scholars alum Virginia Buckingham saw a “news desert” forming in her community as a threat to democracy. So she helped start a nonprofit newspaper in Marblehead, Mass., to fill the void created after a large media company bought and gutted the local newspaper. The new paper covers local government and the town’s institutions.

We are in a time of challenge and controversy. We must work not only to restore trust in our institutions but, more importantly, to strengthen our institutions so that they are worthy of that trust. Basic to that task is embracing principled leadership as we do here at the Bush Center – a place where civility is recognized as the norm.

Leaders with character will inspire trust. Leaders who articulate and live by a core set of principles are essential. Ultimately, a thriving democracy requires leaders who serve the public and who possess the moral courage and strength to do so with honor and integrity.

Our job as Americans is to insist that our leaders favor tolerance instead of discrimination, unity instead of division, accountability instead of deception, decency instead of corruption, and give instead of take. Working together, we can pave the way for a brighter future for our nation and the world.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.