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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.