A brighter day

The main thing that changed on Tuesday is what Americans believed to be possible.

Wednesday morning felt brighter than any I’ve seen in the last two years. And not because the Democrats won. Voters cast their ballots, election workers counted them, and losing candidates conceded. The biggest fears were not realized and for that we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

A free people settled our differences peacefully, yet again. The world was watching, and the system did its job.

Building bridges before the ballots

In the weeks before the election, Bright America was in Charleston and Houston, bringing together people from across the political spectrum. We went because the constitutional values and rule of law Americans share need defending before, during, and after an election, and defending them takes people who will sit at the same table.

Trust is the work ahead

The next few weeks will bring plenty of political handicapping about who won, why, and what comes next. The question I care about most is how to get Americans to believe in their government again.

I believe the answer starts with guardrails. Reforms that limit abuses of power by any president, and rules that hold accountable those who abuse power or engage in corruption, serve the interests of all Americans and both parties. Power changes hands. Any check we decline to build today will be missing when the winners find themselves the losers sometime in the future. James Madison saw this clearly in Federalist 51: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and then oblige it to control itself.

If we fail to act, we will be back in a worse place, with even less trust to work with.

Dark, corrupt money belongs at the top of the agenda

Nothing erodes confidence in government faster than the sense that access goes to the highest bidder. This election cycle showed how far that has gone: the Texas Senate race was the most expensive non-presidential contest in American history, at roughly $573 million according to AdImpact.

Senator-elect James Talarico, who won that race, opened his victory speech by calling out the billionaire megadonors and defenders of a political system he called broken. Later in the speech he named the remedy: we must “get big money out of our politics.”

Dark, corrupt money in our elections deserves a place near the top of the reform agenda. Republican president Theodore Roosevelt called for banning corporate contributions to campaigns back in 1905, so this is an old fight with deep roots in both parties. Working with our strategic partner, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Bright America will be pushing for change in the states and in Congress.

A Word to Republicans

I spent twenty years working in Republican politics, and I was in the House in 2006 when the GOP lost its majority. I know what a night like Tuesday feels like, and I know how tempting it is to blame the map, the money, or the media. What troubles me more is that I no longer recognize the party I gave those years to. Too many of its leaders set abandoned their morals and principles for a man who had neither, but promised they would win.

But time in the wilderness can be useful if the party uses it well, and my advice to the people leading the rebuilding is to start by going back to the communities they lost and listening before they talk. Across the country, I have met former Republicans and conservatives who would come back to the party if it gave them a reason to. The next generation of leaders is already out in those places, serving on school boards, county commissions, and in statehouses, and that is where the party should look first. Washington and the internet should be the last places anyone goes searching.

I would also be careful about handing the next chapter to another celebrity. The party has already learned what happens when a big following stands in for good character. Leaders who earn trust at home, one neighbor at a time, will carry it much further than leaders who build an audience through a screen. That matters for all of us, because the country is better off with two parties that each stand for something good, and the guardrails we need will only last if both sides demand them.

The work continues

In 1801, after the first peaceful transfer of power between rival parties, Thomas Jefferson told the country, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” He was reminding Americans that they shared more than the fight that had just ended.

That remains true. Our differences are real, and so is the work we share: keeping the republic. I, for one, plan to keep going and to keep building toward a Bright America.