Leadership

The Most Important Election in Modern Times

July 10th, 2012 // 10:01 am @ Oliver DeMille

Most elections are called “the most important election” by those running for office—after all, if they can get more voters enthused and active, it improves their chances of victory.

But in 2012, the U.S. election truly may be the most important in our lifetimes.

We are at a crossroads, and November 6 will turn us in one direction or the other.

With the Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare, the battle lines are clearly drawn.

And while many conservatives don’t want to admit it, President Obama is still the frontrunner.

As I’ve written in the past, most red states will vote for Governor Romney and most blue states for President Obama, but the election will be decided by independent voters in the battleground states.

Right now, Obama is 2-3 percentage points ahead with independents in these swing states.

That’s not a huge lead, and polls will almost certainly shift several times in the months ahead, but Romney isn’t ahead.

Conservatives also struggle with why President Obama is still popular.

But in every election since 1952 the candidate who seemed more like a leader has won.

And Obama is still popular with swing voters in battleground states.

Conservatives tend to determine popularity based on policy, as do liberals, but many independents decide who is popular on the basis of non-political factors.

Moreover, the President’s policies on education have impressed many independents.

He gave more schools increased local controls and took on the teacher’s unions (though not enough).

Where George Bush centralized control of education more to Washington, Obama went the other, better, direction.

Many independents also like President Obama’s belief in more open immigration.

Though critics are quick to point out that we’ve deported more people under Obama than under any other president, Obama’s announcement that we won’t deport those who came as children is very popular among independents—even more in most battleground states.

Because of the high numbers of Hispanics in swing states, this one issue may sway the election.

Typical Republican criticisms that Democratic Presidents are soft on foreign policy won’t sell to independents in the post-bin Laden era, which scores points for the President among swing voters.

With all this, the President’s biggest asset may still be his personality.

Though his opponents scoff at this, he really does come across as a guy everyone wants to like.

He sings well, dances well, plays basketball well—in short, he’s cool.

If you hate his politics, you think being cool is beside the point or even unpresidential, but a majority of independents in the contested states really like having a cool president.

Besides, Obama came across sincere and committed when he went to Washington to change things—like a Jimmy Stewart character.

A lot of people still hope that’s the real Obama, and they’re waiting for him to truly lead.

Unfortunately, they think, the partisan extremes of Washington D.C. don’t allow a president to really lead anymore, but if he doesn’t have to worry about another election he can just lead like he always wanted to.

Most conservatives underestimate how much swing voters really like Barack Obama.

On the other hand, the big challenge for Obama with swing voters is Obamacare, and this hits hard in three ways.

First, is it overwhelmingly unpopular with American voters.

Only 28% of Americans thought the Supreme Court decision to uphold the law was a good ruling.

And swing voters dislike it almost as much as conservatives.

Independents haven’t found the Obama Administration’s explanations of Obamacare credible, and its unpopularity is growing.

Second, Obamacare is the main Obama achievement of the last 4 years, and many independents see it as the only major Obama accomplishment.

The problem is that voters elected Barack Obama to fix the economy, and many feel that he put healthcare (and, as a result, government expansion) ahead of jobs and economic opportunity.

In both the 2008 and 2010 elections, swing voters strongly supported the candidates they perceived as best for job creation.

Now they wonder: Why hasn’t President Obama done anything major about jobs? Why did he put all his capital into Obamacare?

Third, the Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare puts the debate in stark relief: Big Government vs. Jobs and the Economy.

The Obama Administration has become the poster boy for “Bigger Government, Fewer Jobs.”

The campaign is talking itself blue in the face trying to reverse this view, but swing voters aren’t listening.

Which brings us to the real consequence of the Court’s decision—the Congressional elections of 2012.

Regardless of who occupies the White House for the next four years, the future of the nation will be determined by whether Congress is for More Big Government or Drastically-Increased Economic Opportunity.

The problem, as independents know, is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are proven fiscal leaders.

Democrats spend on domestic programs, and Republicans often outdo them in international spending.

While many Republicans are loudly decrying Obama’s massive domestic spending and increasing debt, few independents have forgotten that Bush tripled spending over the Clinton years and that big-spending Republicanism came when Republicans held the White House and both Houses of Congress before 2006.

Though Obama has overused the point, it remains true that Republicans gave us the Great Recession.

We need to elect Free Enterprise candidates, since big-spending Republicans are as bad for our economic future as big-spending Democrats.

Still, if Congress remains split (Republican House vs. Democratic Senate), or goes all Democrat, we are headed for bigger government with more socialist tendencies.

If Republicans control both houses, there is a chance for our freedoms and economy—and this time the people will send a clear mandate that they want smaller government and a growing free economy.

This really is the most important election yet in modern times.

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Oliver DeMille is the chairman of the Center for Social Leadership and co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Blog &Current Events &Featured &Government &Independents &Leadership &Politics

Covenant Government and the Sacred Trust of Freedom

July 10th, 2012 // 9:45 am @ Oliver DeMille

A friend recently told me that he considers family relationships much more important than politics.

He said marriage is a sacred, covenant relationship, and as such it is a higher priority than civil government.

I had two responses to this thought: First, I totally agree.

I think our families are a sacred trust and take a higher priority than pretty much anything—except our personal relationship with, and allegiance to, God.

Second, I wonder if our modern understanding of government has devolved so far from the time of the American founding that we don’t consider government a covenant or holding political office a sacred trust.

In fairness to my friend, he is a lover of freedom who cares deeply about our nation and the decline of liberty.

He is among the most dedicated students of freedom I know.

Lecturing him on anything related to freedom would certainly be preaching to the choir, and he certainly sees political leadership as a sacred trust.

But his words made me think.

Ideal government is a covenant, and was understood as such by the Israelites because of the teachings of Moses.

It was passed down over the generations and eventually became known as “The Divine Right of Kings”.

John Locke’s political treatises addressed the reality that such a divine right of any legitimate king was long lost by the time of the British monarchs.

The American founders discussed this concept at length, and the words “covenant,” “sacred,” and “trust” were widely used in connection with government.

A search for “covenant politics” in various founding writings and modern political journals will yield many interesting articles.

The word “covenant” is still used in our time—based on the legal tradition of Blackstone –in nearly every state and province of the United States and Canada in the common CC&Rs (Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions).

In Anglo-Franco-American law, a “covenant” was originally a specific kind of contract where both parties promise to do something for the other, and the contract is binding on both parties, even if one of the parties fails to perform or defaults.

Thus, there are fundamentally two kinds of contracts in law: Absolute and Conditional.

Conditional arrangements make up over 99% of contracts, where if the other side defaults the contract is void for both parties.

But the oaths of government officials are of the Absolute variety.

The founders made government service a covenant, rather than a simple contractual, arrangement.

Regardless of whether or not the people fulfill their duties, government officials are expected to do theirs—as expressed in their oaths of office.

The law also differentiates between “express” and “implied” covenants—“express” being those that are clearly written out, and “implied” being those that should be assumed by any reasonable standard of duty.

Jefferson used this concept when he sent American troops to protect U.S. citizens against the Barbary Coast pirates without any Congressional declaration of war.

He openly admitted that he had no “express” constitutional authority to take the action, but that the responsibility of presidency gave him an implied duty to protect those he served.

He followed the same line of reasoning when he signed the Louisiana Purchase.

The difference between him and some modern presidents who have taken seemingly similar actions is that he openly admitted that he had no authority, but had acted solely on his sense of duty, and he would not have blamed Congress for impeaching him as a legitimate response.

He acted according to what he considered his implied covenant duty and was willing to accept the consequences for exceeding his constitutional authority.

This clearly established the importance of covenant in governance.

Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison all followed the same course at different times when the chief executive had a duty to protect the national security of the U.S., and the Doctrine of National Preservation was a duty to which they were willing to sacrifice themselves on behalf of the nation.

In these cases Congress refused to exercise their check, impeachment, because they believed the leader had lived up to his Constitutional Oath to guard and “protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

The law, again based on Blackstone and English legal tradition, also differentiates between “inherent” and “collateral” covenants.

An “inherent” covenant is the cause of any and all fiduciary responsibilities –meaning, a responsibility that a person takes upon himself automatically by entering into a covenant relationship.

In contrast, “collateral” covenants must be clearly stipulated and understood by all parties involved.

There is a lot more of this, but I won’t bore you with all the details, like: Joint versus Several covenants, Principal versus Auxiliary covenants, Continuing versus Dated covenants, Full versus Partial covenants, Restrictive versus Universal covenants, Usual versus Special covenants, and about 10 others that are foundational in Anglo-Franco-American legal traditions.

One that I should mention is Transitive versus Intransitive covenants.

“Transitive” consists of those which pass the duty on to the covenanter’s agents, successors, and in some cases, posterity.

This is important because it shows why some people might argue that the governance covenant may be as important as the marriage covenant.

Obviously, a covenant is a covenant, a supreme promise, so ranking them by importance is a bit ridiculous.

That said, the marriage covenant is intransitive, meaning that my spouse and I are both bound by it, but when I die, my children don’t become her spouse.

If I held a hereditary government position, such as the anointed kings of old, however, upon my death my oath and covenant of good governance would pass with full responsibilities and duties to my heirs.

Government is a covenant, or at least good, free government is.

Under the U.S. constitutional model, positions requiring an oath are transitive; for example, when a president dies or becomes incapacitated, the responsibilities inherent in the oath of vice-president devolve all presidential duties upon him.

He must receive his full authority by collateral covenant and take an official oath; but if there is a gap between when the president dies and when the oath is taken, he has the full responsibility of the office by covenant.

(Note: Responsibilities, but not authority.)

Again, this is repeated in most military and other government positions that require an oath of office.

There are really only 3 types of government:

1) government by fiat, where the strongest take power by force and rule by might;

2) government by contract, where the government serves as a mercenary, responding to the highest bidder in order to obtain a profit for government officials;

and 3) government by covenant, where the constituents delegate authority tied to responsibility and the leaders put their responsibilities above their authority.

I believe that the marriage covenant is the most important agreement in all of society, second only to our promises to God.

And, in fact, the marriage covenant often included promises to a spouse, society and God.

Marriage has huge ramifications on all facets of society, including law and politics but extending much further.

But let’s not forget that good government is also a covenant.

It isn’t a mere contract, where if the people shirk their duties the officials may simply ignore the Constitution, or where if the officials are corrupt the people can just give up and let freedom wane.

We all have a responsibility to maintain freedom, and this obligation is transitive, meaning that it is our solemn duty to pass on as much, or more, freedom to our posterity as we inherited from our ancestors.

This is, in fact, a sacred trust.

Perhaps Calvin Coolidge said it best when he declared, as the President of the United States, that, “The protection of rights is righteous.”

If this is true, and it is, what would we call the act of destroying rights or of allowing them to be lost through distraction or neglect?

Such questions are extremely relevant right now in modern America.

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Oliver DeMille is the chairman of the Center for Social Leadership and co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through Leadership Education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Constitution &Featured &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Politics &Statesmanship

A Vital Leadership Trend that Isn’t Yet a Thing

June 27th, 2012 // 5:42 pm @ Oliver DeMille

We need a whole new level of leadership. And we need it soon. Just consider some of our pressing national challenges:

75% of current Americans worry that another recession is coming.
U.S. consumer confidence in June is at a six-month low.
The average price of a gallon of gas in the United States was $3.88 at the beginning of the year and it is $3.48 halfway through the year. Most experts predict that it will be below $3 a gallon by the end of 2012. A few say it will be above $4. Either way, we have a problem. Lower prices look like a positive trend, but they keep us addicted to foreign oil. The pattern is to jack up prices until they hurt so bad that we begin seriously seeking alternative energy sources, then ease back on prices a little until we give up on finding a better way. Then, when we’ve stopped weaning ourselves from our addiction, jack the prices up again. Only the right kind of leadership will solve this for the long term.
President Obama’s support is down since 2008 in almost every voting demographic, but it is up 2 points among Hispanics. Few election experts believe Mitt Romney can win the election—especially in the battleground states—without a significant uptick in Hispanic support. And Romney came across to many as sharply anti-immigrant during the 2012 Republican primaries. Neither 2012 presidential candidate has yet shown the will to establish a truly effective national immigration policy.
The July 2, 2012 cover story of Time Magazine reads: “The History of the American Dream: Is it Still Real?” The Asian, European and South Pacific versions for the same date held an alternative cover story: “Made in China: Why Apple’s Future Depends on the World’s Largest Market.”
A June column in Newsweek calls this year’s graduates “The Not-So-Special Generation.”
Over two-thirds of Americans want the government to use unmanned drones to hunt down criminals, but two-thirds do not want the same technology used to patrol highways and issue speeding tickets. We want more government oversight of others, less of ourselves.
A majority of Americans want the government to decrease spending, but there is little agreement on cutting any specific program.

Many other serious national concerns could be cited, but one thing is certain: We are a nation deeply in need of more, and better, leadership.

Sadly, it appears increasingly evident that our political leaders may no longer be able to fulfill this role.

The story of Barack Obama is instructive on this point.

As a lifetime liberal with long experience and connections in the progressive community, President-Elect Obama took over the White House with big intentions of reframing our national politics into a less divisive, more cooperative endeavor.

He seems to have been surprised at the vehemence of the two-party system, and how quickly the opposing party lined up to get him out of office—regardless of what he did, or didn’t do, as a leader.

President George W. Bush, who came into office with big goals of creating a more compassionate conservatism, faced the same reality—the opposition lined up against him before he proposed a single policy.

Whether you are a supporter of President Obama, a critic, or more neutral, the reality of our new politics is frustrating.

The next president, either in 2012 or 2016, will likely face the same problem.

Welcome to the new system in Washington: A president isn’t judged for what he does as much as for which party he belongs to.

We are a nation with major struggles and we desperately need great leadership, but our political system has reached the point where our top elected officials have little chance of providing such leadership.

The system simply won’t allow it.

The next campaign starts the morning after Election Day, with no break between elections and no sense of a U.S. president we’ll all follow for four years.

Today’s system is more divided: the chief executive is now widely perceived as only as the president of the Republicans or the president of the Democrats.

We are at a crossroads in America.

We need great leadership as much as at any time in our history, but our political system no longer allows it to come from Washington.

We may have reached the point where only an Independent President will be able to get anything done.

Or, another solution may be a revolution of leadership, with leaders rising from other—non-political—arenas.

This may be one of the most important trends of the 21^st Century, but it is not yet a trend.

Needed: A generation of non-political leaders to help America get back on track!

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Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the co-author of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Blog &Current Events &Featured &Government &Independents &Leadership &Liberty &Politics &Statesmanship

A Third Power

June 25th, 2012 // 9:33 pm @ Oliver DeMille

Michael Strong wrote, in his excellent book Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems:

“A short history of twentieth-century economic and political thought might be summarized as:

“Market Failure! Markets don’t work as well as the classical economists thought and therefore we must control them (1900-1960).

“Government Failure! Governments don’t work as well as democratic theorists thought, and therefore we can’t depend on them to do the right thing either (1960-2000).”

Markets are excellent for what they are for! Free markets create more wealth and distribute it more widely than any other economic model.

Under free markets we always witness a large middle class.

But the market doesn’t solve all problems in society.

Nor does government.

Neither markets nor governments solve everything.

Markets create more affluence and involve more people in prosperity than any other system, and governments are the most effective entity in protecting inalienable rights and maintaining laws that allow markets to flourish.

But there are a number of things governments should not do and markets will not naturally do, and these tend to be precisely the major challenges our society faces (and seldom solves).

If we are to effectively address society’s main ills (beyond a quality standard of living for most people and the protection of our rights and freedoms), people need to voluntarily take on the world’s ills and find ways to address them.

Charity, philanthropy, volunteer service, service project and social entrepreneurship (the creation of companies or projects with the specific goal of addressing societal problems) is vital.

Government is great for what it is for, but it becomes dangerous to all when it goes beyond its proper role.

Markets are fabulous for creating affluence and helping spread it to a large middle class, but they are not focused on fixing the various societal ills.

It is up to people to improve our world beyond the natural roles of government and markets.

The discussion nearly always centers around how government should do everything versus how government should do less and leave more to markets.

But those arguing for markets too seldom go out and really implement needed solutions in our communities and nation.

It’s time to get past the old Cold War argument.

Of course government should be limited, of course markets can do many things better than government, and of course markets depend on good government policy for safety and the rule of law.

But there is another piece to fixing the world: the non-governmental, non-market driven action of individuals who see a need and set out to make a difference.

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Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Blog &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Featured &Government &Leadership &Mission &Statesmanship

Pooled Sovereignty

June 21st, 2012 // 7:06 pm @ Oliver DeMille

The breeding ground for a global system that supports pooled sovereignty is found in the top universities, and it is promoted by the bureaucratic elite in many nations.

Much of what occurs in Washington only makes sense to those who understand this drift toward globalization.

For example, a push for increased government spending, debt and regulation on small business (even in the face of recession and a struggling economy) make perfect sense if the goal is to shift the American economy away from international leadership to global participation—to make the U.S. economy and government more like those of Europe and Asia.

Stimulus, universal health care, less entrepreneurship (through increased levels of government regulation)—all are necessary to create an American economy that can fit seamlessly with the industrialized European/Asian nations.

Another step in this process is to end the use of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and replace it with an IMF or other currency.

The IMF has already proposed this change, and international support for it is growing.

Just to be clear, when the dollar replaced the British pound as the world’s reserve currency in the 1970s, the average net worth of nearly every home in Britain fell more than 30% the day after the change.

The British economy has still never fully recovered, nearly forty years later.

If the same change comes to the U.S., we will likely experience a worse economy for the next four decades than we have over the past four years.

Unfortunately, as Forbes reported, “It’s hard for the State Department to imagine an international agreement to which America is not part.” Republican and Democratic presidents since FDR have drastically decreased American freedom using treaties.

This is bad for Americans—good for pooled sovereignty.

Ultimately, there are two types of leadership that can turn this around: presidential leadership, and citizen leadership.

Sadly, few candidates for president (from either party) and exactly zero elected presidents since 1959 have effectively pushed back against this growing threat.

As for the American citizenry leading the charge, find out what percentage of your friends can tell you the details in the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Rome Statute, or UN Agenda 21, and that percentage is about how likely the people are to effectively lead.

In fact, this lack of citizen leadership means there is little incentive for presidents to take action against pooled sovereignty.

Or to put this in practical terms, a half-century with a bad economy is likely ahead.

Unless something changes…

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Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Current Events &Featured &Foreign Affairs &Leadership