FAPITCA Principles: An Introduction

We just established a new page on the website to introduce the initial draft of the Principles of FAPITCA. Our last post, Preamble for Principles, looked forward to the introduction. Our post today is also forward-looking: we’re looking forward to feedback, commentary and most importantly, your help to get these principles refined and more valuable to the work of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age.

Sometimes, metaphor and analogy help to describe the way complex interactions produce meaningful outcomes. These literary tools can explain why something is important yet hard to describe at the same time. We’re using those tools in this post to introduce the Principles of FAPITCA.

Here’s the big picture:

We believe that most Americans (far more than the “majority”) are looking for a fundamental change to the way we conduct our political affairs at all levels. Americans are looking for our elected leaders to make decisions and actually lead, rather than avoid tackling hard problems because an election is “only” seven months away. We’re all losers in the current approach to government, but the biggest loser in the current way we do the business of the public is our middle class.

With few exceptions, literature and media of the last few years authoritatively tell us that the middle class is routinely losing ground, along with poorer Americans seeking the opportunity to climb into the middle class. The bottom line: No middle class—no opportunity…no America as we grew up to know it.

It’s also a matter of return on investment. The adversarial climate in Congress and too many state houses have fostered a political environment that no citizen of this nation should feel good about investing in. If we pay taxes, whether to the IRS, at the department store or even at the gas pump, we have to doubt the worthiness of the investment we’re making in politics and policy today.

It’s a safe bet we didn’t mean for our investments to empower the conflicts in the Congress and other elected offices of state and local government that “govern” in America (this doesn’t imply the Administration is off the hook, either). The return on too much of our invested tax dollars is hugely in doubt.

We must shift these politically-based conflicts away from being a two-team, winner-take-all competition into which the politics of today have sunk. Somehow, we have to wake up to the reality that we’re all on the same team…that we must practice and play on the local, national and international levels as though we were on the same team.

Though we may favor different solutions to the challenges we face, we are not each other’s enemy. The common enemy we face is the decline of the nation we love.

Here’s a football analogy to help explain the way we see this (sorry…we’re from Texas, remember).

Football and Politics: Not just a Texas thing

The field on which we play is an international arena because that’s the way it is in the connected age…everything’s interconnected to us, including our adversaries. But it’s not really some other nation that’s holding us back from scoring on our current field of play. No, it’s our internal strife that’s holding us back from moving downfield towards the goal line.

Our real challenge is that there are a lot of interacting and competing interests that distract our attention from moving the ball downfield and scoring: this freezes us from deciding the next play. But, every play we run (or don’t) has consequences for America. The opposition doesn’t want us to win because they prefer to see America decline. In fact, to us, American decline is the real opposition…decline is the “team” on the other side of the line of scrimmage.

Some of us may want to pass the ball and some of us may want to run the ball, or even kick. But we have to keep in mind what the real adversary is, and figure out how to beat the decline, not each other. We can’t keep fighting about whether to run or pass. A team at war with itself is a losing team.

We have to get back in the huddle, look each other in the eye as fellow Americans, communicate, decide upon and execute a winning play. We have to do this repeatedly, every play, every day!

Our teammates who can’t perform in this huddle and on the line need to head to the bench and cheer the rest of us on to solve our nation’s problems. Any teammate who criticizes another team member for speaking with and compromising with fellow Americans needs to sit the play out on the bench…they’re costing us the game, whether they mean to or not.

Of course, it isn’t really a game, is it? This is our American way of life at stake. It’s the life of the nation we love. We owe it to our family, our friends and to all Americans to execute a winning course of action.

Whether on “the field” or off, many of us from varied political perspectives have great ideas. The trouble today is that we can’t nurture and harvest the best ideas when we can’t even speak to each other. We don’t need “conservative” solutions or “liberal” solutions…we need the “best” American solutions that we can all embrace and make work. That’s the American way to get return on investment!

The Objectives section of the Principles of FAPITCA discusses the complementary actions of competition and compromise. Together, they are the energizing components of our political process and indeed American capitalism. Understanding and leveraging this fact is how we can work our way out of the swamp in which we find ourselves.

Briefly back to the analogy…

Here’s How We “Tackle” the Problem and Score:

First off, let’s get back in the game. Let’s all contribute to Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age by first playing the same game and by playing for the same team. Let’s energize the Center of America and use the best tools of democracy and capitalism—competition and compromise—as complements.

Secondly, we’re done with analogy and metaphor for the time being. From here on, we talk specifics like Mission, Values, Principles and Objectives. We’ll discuss how to operationalize these specifics. FAPITCA is about practical solutions that bring us together in the new American Center. The blog posts that follow this one will expand on the Principles document and reflect your ideas and comments. Time for you to get involved now!

Originally Posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 2/20/2014

Principled Challenges

We honestly thought we’d have the Principles of FAPITCA posted yesterday. We were apparently overly optimistic. We gave ourselves a couple of extra days between blog posts to make sure we’d captured a concise record of what we felt were the fundamental characteristics that go into Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. Unfortunately, optimism didn’t carry the day!

It wasn’t that we hadn’t previously discussed the main points and the details of what we thought would be the Mission, Values, Principles and Objectives of FAPITCA. Before we ever put one word online in the New American Center website, we researched, debated and talked to family, friends and colleagues about what we wanted to do. Heck, we’re brothers who really care about America, we thought…it should be no problem to agree on the details of what we’ve been talking about for years!

Collectively, we’ve devoted over 60 years to public service in various federal and civilian agencies (including a combined nine years overseas). We’re on the same sheet of music, we thought. It should be no problem for the two of us to agree on what to say and how to say it.

We did agree about nearly everything…in principle; but we couldn’t close the deal because we wanted to make sure we said things “just right” so as not to compromise our individual principles or alienate too many people too early in the effort. This from two brothers who have been in synch on national policy issues for years, both having been students of our nation’s history and political affairs since we can remember!

“Overly optimistic” is exactly what we were. We agreed on the basic principles and objectives in about three hours of serious writing and conversation and then took four days to finally come to basic agreement about how we should actually write the words in the document. We just couldn’t quite agree on some of the words or tenses. What’s it going to be like when we post it and others have a chance to comment and post their thoughts? This is hard work and it’s going to continue to be hard work!

Well, we’re still not quite there, but we will be in the next 24-36 hours (if we’re not being too overly optimistic again).

It was actually a great exercise and preparation for what’s to come. Once we get the initial draft of the principles and objectives published, we’ll have opened the door to the real debate. We realize that. We welcome it, in fact. This is what makes America so great and so close to finding the kind of agreement necessary to move us past the logjams of the current political process – the connected age lets anyone engage in this debate, even us!

If anything, the past few days of drafting the principles and objectives helped us see that America isn’t far off from getting back on track. If we can just find the will and strength to move past the current challenges…if we can just find the vigor to debate openly and objectively and actually make well-reasoned decisions about governing, we’ll get there. Our own debate about the principles and objectives of FAPITCA convinced us that if we can get the Center of America back in the game, we’ll still win.

We really do believe that America will come back and manifest the power of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. We’re certain that America will return to its former greatness as the Land of Opportunity and guardian of freedom and democracy…it will be better than ever. We’re optimistic America can do it or we would never have started this website and blog.

We’re almost there with the Principles of FAPITCA, and we’ll get them posted in the next day or so – once the two of us can finally agree! This first draft of the Principles is just that—a draft. It needs work. It needs your input to shape this into the nucleus for a different discussion for our nation, a discussion built around the Center of America.

In the meantime, please think about how you’ll contribute to fulfilling the Promise, whether through FAPITCA or elsewhere. Please help us engage the Center of America and get our future back.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 2/19/2014.

Preamble for Principles

We’re taking a brief pause from blogging for the next few days as we finish up a draft on what we’re calling the “Principles of FAPITCA.” This is important. This work will build an initial framework. It will let us lay out the problems we face in reestablishing an American “center” as a source of energy for the growth of opportunity, freedom and security in our nation for the near- and long-term.

We’ll also use this framework to clearly state the objectives of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, including leadership fundamentals. Additionally, these principles will lay out our mission and values in establishing the effort to fulfill the American Promise.

Equally important, we’re going to use this work to incorporate some early perspectives from a few thoughtful readers and thinkers who are interested in seeing FAPITCA move forward. So far, we’re relying on colleagues who have stepped forward to see us get some lift-off. This is how we thought FAPITCA might start gaining momentum and we’re very grateful for their help. We’re quite encouraged by these early responses.

Founding principles of an effort like FAPITCA are important to help us understand who we are, what we do and for whom we do it. We’ll try to craft responses to the questions implied by these identifying characteristics to specific problems we propose in the Principles document. This should allow us to provide a coherent way-ahead to think about the challenges we face in rebuilding the American center as a viable part of both the political and social processes in our nation.

From these thinking exercises, and the critically-needed help of our readers, we’ll tie potential solutions to the challenges and discuss strategies to succeed. We’ll also seek to identify the leadership qualities that will help us move forward.

We’ve only been at this for about ten days, though we have been discussing it for years. In fact, much of what we might initially say has already been in the minds of readers. This is actually great, because now these readers have a more open forum to talk about what’s been on their minds.

We understand it’s early to expect a lot of input from readers and supporters yet. You don’t know enough about who we are or why we should nominate ourselves to this job in the first place. We still have to prove ourselves worthy and up to the task. We also understand we face a distinct challenge to make the problem statements clear enough and sufficiently compelling to engage our readers to help.

A big part of our underlying concern is how to articulate problem statements and challenges and to propose solutions so the discussions are understandable at every level and in every corner of the American landscape – for that we need your help.

While we won’t shun from using what we hope are the right words at the right time, we will try to make those words mean the most they can to anyone who will read them. That may be a daunting task in a nation that’s as richly diverse as the United States of America, but it’s a truly important chore in fulfilling the American Promise.

Finally, we know we need to have a real and tangible outcome in mind on which FAPITCA can hang its hat. The ultimate outcome may emerge in the interactions of our growing virtual community, but we’ll seed that garden with some preliminary thoughts that will certainly evolve and be refined in the coming future. It will take your help to nurture and accomplish the outcomes these thoughts provoke.

So, what do we want as outcomes from Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age?

We want FAPITCA to facilitate the following:

• Thinking about what we need to do to fulfill the American promise in our emerging super-connected environment
• Reframing the public debate on issues in which we find ourselves in a political dead end
• Creating a political environment where we avoid polarized “red” or “blue” solutions so we can get to consensus-driven, inclusive solutions that offer equal access to opportunity
• Reestablishing the American center as a relevant, thoughtful contributor to our political process

Ultimately, the FAPITCA community can help to:

• Raise political discourse out of the current swamp
• Inform the American electorate
• Stimulate intelligent discussions in letters-to-the-editors and Op-Ed pieces, the blogs of others and of course, blog posts and comments on this site
• Create a dynamic where our elected officials have an incentive to listen to the American center

In the end, we want the FAPITCA community to help fulfill the American Promise, whether we do the job or someone else leads this work.  We should all be thrilled as long as this work happens.

Please stand by for a few days and then be prepared to help make our Statement of Principles stronger and better when we get them posted. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 2/15/2014.