I am swimming against the current a little bit here.  Most of the news these days is focused on next year's presidential election.  It is certainly important that we choose our next Chief Executive wisely, and with a large number of candidates running in both major parties, choosing one at this point can be a bit daunting. What I am saying about elected officials in general does have some bearing on that choice.  In fact, this investigation of criteria for re-election led directly to the article "What Makes a Great President" in my summer newsletter.  That article discusses a criterion that correlates with presidential greatness, a criterion that correlates with below-average performance in the White House, and a criterion that--perhaps surprisingly for some--doesn't seem to matter.  But in this post I want to examine a more general case.  I want to consider what may be the right criteria for deciding whether to vote for any official.  I am proposing a model where the traits that favor a candidate are the traits of what I call a career citizen.  On the other hand, career politician is my label for the collection of traits that indicate someone unfit for public office.  What differentiates a career citizen from a career politician?
          
First of all, elected officials should be public servants.  We have collective amnesia on what a public servant is, and we tolerate too many people in elected office who are self servants on the public payroll.  A public servant serves the people they represent--all of them--regardless of their political party or whether they made a campaign donation.  Some of you are thinking, well, if an elected official doesn't put donors or members of their own party first, they won't get re-elected.  But as soon as we allow elected officials to put their own re-election ahead of their duty to the public that they serve, we have decided to lower the standard for public service.  We have decided to accept public officials who do their duty only when it doesn't hurt their chances for re-election.  When we accept politicians putting their own tenure or benefit ahead of their duty to the public good, the public good will always be a secondary concern.  

Second, elected officials should be completely beyond reproach in their performance of duty.  That doesn't mean that everyone has to like everything an elected officials does:  popularity is not the same thing as being beyond reproach in the performance of one's duty.  Performing one's duty in a manner that is beyond reproach means being 100 percent transparent (honest and clear) about what you are doing and why, and being able to articulate how your actions are related to the duties you have been elected to carry out.  Again, we have allowed ourselves to grow complacent and accept a low standard of honor and duty in many of our public officials.  In Utah, for instance, our last two state attorneys general are facing felony charges for accepting bribes and selling influence--charges that could land them in jail for 30 years each if they are found guilty.  Now I am not really interested in whether they are guilty or innocent.  My point is that, when it comes to the laws that cover bribery and selling influence, we should not tolerate behavior that is anywhere close to being illegal in a public official.  If your behavior is close enough to the line between legality and illegality that you can be indicted for five or ten felonies, you have NO business being a public official.  Accepting gifts while in public office is an absolute non-starter.  That is why federal officials are restricted from giving or receiving gifts above a token value, and must turn over to the federal government anything received above that value.  As a young Army officer, I was taught the "headline test."  If you are about to do something that you would be uncomfortable reading as a headline in the New York Times or the Washington Post, then you have no business doing it as long as you are a public official.

This last point bears repeating.  We should not tolerate public officials who behave in a way that is just barely legal.  We want public officials who are scrupulously honest, even to the point of hurting their chances for re-election.  Last month, a story about the scandal involving the two former Utah attorneys general carried the headline "Make Mike Lee our guy".  Mike Lee is a United States Senator from Utah. One of the people involved in the corruption trial against one of the former attorney generals claimed that attorney general was bundling campaign contributions--giving money to people so they could donate it to Mike Lee in order to circumvent the federal law restricting individual contributions.  The article was quick to point out that Mike Lee didn't know about the illegal bundling, and that is great.  The question that arose in my mind, though, was how the illegal contributions could "make Mike Lee our guy" unless at some point, someone intended to let him know they represented some dollar amount of contributions. I understand that conversation would not implicate Mike Lee in any wrongdoing as long as Lee understood the individual contributions were legitimate and not the product of illegal bundling.  My point here is that, regardless of the legalities involved, career citizens would respond very differently than career politicians to someone claiming to represent some dollar amount of contributions.  A career citizen would respond by saying something like, "Thanks for your contribution.  You know I don't condone or practice pay-as-you-go politics, but I hope you are happy enough with my performance in support of all the citizens in our city/county/state to support me in the next election as well."  A career politician, on the other hand, might behave so as to indicate that donors got special treatment as a result of their donation(s).  Maybe donors letters get answered when others do not.  Maybe legislative priorities mirror the priorities of certain donors.  Those are behaviors that wink at corruption, even though they may be perfectly legal in and of themselves.  In sum, a career citizen demonstrates a pattern of selflessness--putting the welfare of others before their own welfare--while a career politician demonstrates a pattern of taking care of themselves, especially their re-election, as a top priority.

Why am I spending so much time talking about corruption?  After all, this is America, right?  Sure, we have our scandals, but we don't really have a corruption problem, do we?  Yes we do, at least in my humble opinion.  Lets look at the most obvious examples in recent years:  Rod Blagojevich, 40th Governor of Illinois, began serving a 14-year prison term in 2012 for corruption.  Blagojevich was elected 3 times to the United States House of Representatives before spending 6 years as the governor of Illinois before being impeached.  Blagojevich served as the representative in Illinois' 5th congressional district before running for governor.  You may remember Dan Rostenkowski?  He was the representative in the same district for 36 years and was chairman of one of the most powerful committees in the U.S. Congress before pleading guilty to mail fraud in 1994.  How about Bob McDonnell, remember him?  He was the governor of Virginia from 2010 to 2014.  He was indicted on federal charges ten days after leaving office and convicted a few months later  of accepting improper gifts and loans while in office.  Before becoming governor, by the way, McDonnell served as the attorney general for Virginia, and before that he was a member of Virginia's House of Delegates for 14 years.  These are not peripheral, no-name, skulk-in-the-shadows perpetrators.  They are main-line politicians serving as elected officials in major state and federal government positions for long periods of time.  If you think they just all-of-a-sudden crossed a line or lost sight of the law, I think you are naive.  It is far more likely these people engaged in a long-term pattern of increasingly corrupt behavior that eventually became so obvious that they found themselves facing charges.  We have a corruption problem in public politics, America, and we need to make it our top priority to elect career citizens who demonstrate the willingness not just to live within the law, but the passion for setting an example of selfless and honorable public service.

How do we know who to vote for?  Well, first of all, I would say do not vote for people who have demonstrated long-term success in politics.  Not all such people are bad, of course, but we have to understand that politics, like war, is a morally toxic endeavor.  We should, therefore, elect people who have become successful outside of politics, and we should insist that our elected public servants remove themselves from public office and return to private employment or business for reasonable stretches of time.  This is not a matter of kicking people out of office because they have done poorly.  It is a matter of forcing people to take a break from the morally toxic environment of politics.  Perhaps they can return at a later time, and perhaps not.  That is not the point.  Remember, we are talking about elected public servants, not people who are elected to look after their own careers in politics.  Term limits?  Sure.  But how about we just all decide we aren't going to re-elect the same people over and over?  The Constitution gives us the power to change 87 percent of Congress every two years, but we re-elect incumbents in about 90 percent of the races where they choose to seek re-election.  You want better, more honest government?  Elect people who have earned--not inherited--their own success in the private sector, and don't let them stay in office for more than a few years at a time.

Well, you say, I am a Democrat or a Republican, and the only way I can vote for candidates who believe what I believe is to vote for the candidate who shares my party affiliation, and the only candidates in my party are those who are long-term incumbents.  So really, I don't have a choice--I have to vote for the incumbent, right?  No, you don't.  You have to accept that it is more important to elect someone fresh than it is to elect someone who claims to think like you do.  After all, it is not the case that any elected official waltzes into office and immediately succeeds in getting all of their political beliefs enshrined into law.  We have ponderous bureaucracies that ensure our government does not reflect the views of any one public official.  Electing someone who is fresh is more important to restoring honest, open and efficient government than electing someone who claims to think like you.  Oh, and by the way, people who get elected because they claim to think the way the majority of their constituents think might not be the best people to elect in the first place.  Think about it.  I believe the question we should ask everyone seeking public office is this:  "what is the most important view you hold that runs against the popular opinion of your party, and what are your reasons for holding that view?"  This is a litmus test because it forces someone to either take a real risk or to play it safe.  People who play it safe and claim to support their party in every respect are not fit to be public servants.  That is why the picture at the top of this page shows a green "go" light around citizenship and a red "stop" light around partisanship.  People who cannot speak intelligently about an important issue where their personal views diverge from the prevailing opinion of their political "team" lack either moral courage or intellect.  It is just that simple.  No one should agree with everything a political party stands for in every instance.  

So that's it!  Running for office against an entrenched incumbent is a sacrifice.  We need career citizens--credible people with real track records of merit-based success outside of politics--to volunteer to run for office now more than ever.  When it comes time to decide between candidates, we need to favor challengers over incumbents.  We need to look closely for behavior-based evidence of character and selflessness.  Character and selflessness in this context are measured by the demonstrated willingness to make the good of a business or other non-political organization a higher priority than one's personal interests. Claims of religiosity or political affiliation are not evidence of character.  Such claims are cheap and often counterfeit.  For me, the candidate who gets my vote is the non-incumbent with a record of serving others who offers the best answer to the question: "what is the most important view you hold that runs against the popular opinion of your party, and what are your reasons for holding that view?" 

Last month, I was in Las Vegas for the Society of Human Resource Managers National Conference (#SHRM15).  The closing general session featured Dr Mehmet Oz, who I have come to learn is an amazing and popular public advocate for wellness and a healthy life style.  He was a regular on the Oprah Winfrey Show for five years, and now he has a show of his own.  The bottom line of Dr. Oz' presentation was simply this:  the solution to the health care problem in the United States is individual Americans adopting a more healthy lifestyle.  Dr. Oz went even further.  He said that, unless Americans change their eating and exercise habits in a way that reverses the epidemic of obesity in our country, no health care law will work.  Any system will be overwhelmed because the individual health issues associated with being too heavy will continue to multiply.  On the other hand, he said, if enough Americans adopt a healthier life style, any health care system will work.  And then he proceeded to give us a number of real, practical tips that can be applied immediately and that will positively impact your health right away.

Dr. Oz' message really connected with me.  I don't feel I am particularly overweight:  I stand about 6 feet, 3 inches tall and, at the time of the conference, weighed about 200 pounds.  I've always liked exercise, and usually spend 4 to 5 hours per week in the gym or in the pool.  But regardless of where I stand relative to what is considered "healthy," Dr. Oz' message was powerful for me for three reasons.  One, I had been trying to lose ten to fifteen pounds for several months without much luck.  Two, Dr. Oz' diagnosis of the relationship between the food industry and widespread difficulties Americans experience with their weight parallels almost exactly the relationship I identify in Accountability Citizenship between the information industry and widespread dissatisfaction with our government.  Third, the guy is an amazing communicator--with great anecdotes and pictures.  For instance, Dr. Oz doesn't just tell you the average American eats 144 pounds of sugar per year.  He tells you that our sugar consumption is like eating an entire Bruno Mars made of sugar!

Let us consider Dr. Oz' argument.  The bottom line:  we are all able to take some simple steps that can positively impact our weight and our health almost immediately once we understand the nature of the food trap that ensnares many of us.  First, we have some natural tendencies as human beings that have evolved over long periods of time.  Our brains tell us to eat when our body chemistry signals we need nutrition.  Second, the food industry is big business, and big business is about making money, and a food business makes more money when more people eat more of the food it produces.  So of course, food businesses can get each of us to eat more if they produce processed foods that taste good but have lower nutritional content--that makes us like to eat it and it keeps our natural nutrition sensors telling us we need to eat for longer than they might if we ate more nutrition-dense foods.  This isn't an evil conspiracy.  It's just food businesses doing what we should expect food businesses to do: tailoring products to align with our natural instincts so we will buy more.  Dr. Oz' simple remedy is for us to eat more unprocessed foods, like raw fruits and vegetables and nuts.  These foods are more nutrition-dense, and will cause our brain to send the "you're really not hungry" message sooner rather than later.  I tried Dr. Oz' recommendations and have lost fourteen pounds in four weeks without starving myself.  Pretty powerful stuff--no wonder the guy has his own television show.

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted Close Encounters with Accountability?  Of course you don't!  Well, I will bottom line it for you:  the main idea of that post, and the main idea of my book Accountability Citizenship, is that each of us has the power to take some simple actions with regard to the information we consume that will improve the civic health of our society.  First, we have some natural tendencies as human beings that have evolved over a long period of time.  We like to be right, and once we feel we know how the world works, we are empowered to act to take care of ourselves and those around us.  Furthermore, our brains tell us to respond to perceived threats and catastrophes NOW, by either confronting the threat or running away from it.  Scientists call this last bit our "fight or flight" reflex.  Second, the information industry is big business, and big business is about making money, and an information business makes more money when more of us buy more of the content (information and advertising) it sells.  Information businesses sell more content to each of us by catering to our expressed interests, likes and dislikes.  This contributes to a phenomenon known as the "filter bubble."  Once our information consumption and purchasing behaviors tag us as a Democrat or a Republican or a yellow-spotted hippopotamus, we are inundated with information that makes us feel justified in being Democrats or Republicans or yellow-spotted hippotomuses (should that be hippopotami?).  Furthermore, we come to see those who aren't sharing the same bubble as less moral or less intelligent or less patriotic than we are!  This polarized world view lends itself to the creation of "fight or flight" scenarios out of nearly every issue in the public sphere.  Social security won't be there when we need it, the health care law will destroy America as we know it, guns cause crime--you name it, and there is a filter bubble ready to whip you into a frenzy over these and other issues.  Too many of us mount up and do battle from within our bubbles, and too many more simply run away and surrender our voice in the public sphere.  My simple solution:  take some positive steps to get outside of your filter bubble every day, help create a respectful dialogue in the public sphere, and register your new filter-free perspective (whatever it is) using the powerful constitutional processes available to every American.

Geez, I'm like the Dr. Oz of political geekdom!  I wonder when they'll get around to inviting me on Oprah?

The despicable attacks that killed four Marines in Chattanooga are both an outrage and a tragedy.  My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded.  It is perfectly understandable to be angry at the perpetrator of the attacks. If he were not already dead, I would be among those arguing that his punishment should be the death penalty. But he is dead, and as frustrating as it may be, unless the investigation shows that someone helped him to carry out these attacks, there may be no other legitimate target for retribution.
As I read the news online, people commenting on the attacks began arguing. Essentially, one fellow advocated “burying the terrorist in a coffin filled with pork” and destroying the mosque where he prayed.  As he finished the part about destroying the mosque, he acknowledged such behavior is not consistent with American values except he seemed to think it was okay in response to this incident.  Another pointed out in a sarcastic way that pork-filled coffins were a great way to address the problem of terrorism.  The whole thread immediately degenerated into a liberals-versus-conservatives rant.  

Such bickering is completely inappropriate for at least two reasons.  First, our focus should be on honoring and caring for the victims and their families.  Investigating whether the shooter had help and identifying ways to prevent this type of attack in the future should also be at the top of list of responses.  Second, we should not allow this terrorist incident to cause us to behave in a way that is inconsistent with our Constitution and national values.  As soon as we start to unravel the basic fabric of individual dignity that is the foundation of our freedom, we give the terrorist a victory.  Liberals and conservatives alike should agree that undermining American social values is not a constructive response to this tragedy.

Islam is not terrorism and people are not terrorists because they are Muslims.  It is completely inappropriate and ineffective to respond to a terrorist act by publicly humiliating the religion of Islam or punishing innocent people who happened to worship at the same place as the shooter.  There are millions of innocent, law-abiding, tax-paying Muslims in the United States, and they are entitled to every protection of the law the rest of us enjoy.  That’s what makes America different—and better—than much of the rest of the world.

Remember the sacrifice and pain of the Marine casualties and their families, but also remember that those Marines had committed themselves to supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  It may be that preserving our constitutional values exposes us to the risk of attacks such as the one this week in Chattanooga.  Beyond ensuring that we find and punish anyone who helped in this attack, the best memorial to the Marines we lost yesterday is for us to re-dedicate ourselves to the constitutional values they were committed to defend.

I remember a movie from the 70's called Close Encounters of the Third Kind... it was one of Steven Spielberg's hits and starred Richard Dreyfus and won a bunch of awards.  The idea was that this fellow saw a UFO and then had an overwhelming urge to make a big clay mess in his living room for reasons even he could not explain or understand. Well, you can imagine what this kind of behavior does for those around him--they all think he's nuts.  Of course, he somehow discovers that the thing he built is a model of Devil's Tower, Wyoming, and he is off on his quest, which leads ultimately to first contact with extraterrestrial aliens.  If you haven't seen this movie, it's worth watching.

I've taken to explaining my AccountabilityCitizenship.org quest by relating the story line of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  I feel a bit like the Dreyfus character.  Writing the book Accountability Citizenship and launching this web site and even running for Congress last year: these are my messy clay models.  I was inspired--impelled perhaps--to these actions by close encounters with accountability over decades of leadership in government and in business.  

You see, I have been on teams my whole adult life, and those teams have worked with other teams to solve Big Hairy Problems.  Every time one of these situations occurred, there are always some on each team who start by finding another team to blame.  That never solves anything.  And then we have passionate team-solution advocates, who argue incessantly for a course of action that mainly addresses their team's part of the problem.  Sprinkle a few of these people on each team and you get incessant arguing and no solutions.  In fact, the only way my teams have ever made progress solving Big Hairy Problems was by breaking the problem down to the individual level.  What are individuals, whether customers or people trying to serve customers, experiencing that makes this problem a Big Hairy Problem?  Building a picture from the grassroots level allows everyone to see more clearly the actions that are necessary to address the many individual experiences of the problem.  Clearly, at this point, some prioritization of solutions becomes necessary, but the process of breaking down the problem gives us some objective data--number of customers affected or dollars lost or something--that makes agreeing on priorities easier.  And once specific actions and priorities are on the table, we can talk about who should be accountable for doing them.  What needs to be done?Who can do it?  How can we make them accountable for doing it?  Ultimately, if we hold people accountable for specific actions that solve individual instances of the problem, the Big Hairy Problem gets smaller.  The kernel of every Big Hairy Problem's solution starts with identifying solutions to individual instances of the problem, not with advocating one team's philosophical solution and certainly not with blaming others.

My experience with Big Hairy Problems combined with decades of listening to our national political news impelled me to write Accountability Citizenship and start AccountabilityCitizenship.org.  You cannot listen or read or watch any news these days without being bombarded with all the Big Hairy Problems we are trying to solve on the national political scene.  And we have lots of blamers, and lots of people willing to advocate for their team's optimal solution, but darn few people who seem willing to do the hard work that will really generate solutions to those Big Hairy Problems.  And in the last election, most of the registered voters in my state just stayed home and didn't participate.  I mean, what's the use, right?  Well, no, actually, that's not right.  It's wrong.  Because when you break down whatever Big Hairy National Political Problem that bothers you the most, one of the actions that is necessary to address your individual experience of that problem is for you to communicate your individual perspective on that problem.  What we lack at the national level is a clear consensus on anything.  What passes for consensus is simply one party solution advocate's solution that happens to triumph over another party solution advocate's solution in a given election by a narrow margin of the fifty percent or so of us who care enough to show up.  

I don't know what all the actions are that will resolve the issues of health care and immigration and how much we should spend on defense or highways or the space program.  Even if I did, I do not have the ability to take all those actions.  But I know that what is needed for every problem is a real consensus on a solution, and I know that I have the ability to take specific actions to help shape that consensus.  Voting is one of those actions.  Writing letters and emails to appropriate officials is another.  In fact, the toolkit I propose in Accountability Citizenship is precisely the set of actions I think individuals should take to help resolve the Big Hairy Problem of gridlock and ineffective government.
That's why I wrote it.  That's why I'm breaking it down even more with quarterly newsletters and weekly blogs.  It's why there's a web site called AccountabilityCitizenship.org.  These actions are the only part of a solution I can control.  So here I am.  Come on in and register.  You might win some cool free stuff.  But watch out for the mud in the living room.