Are you a member of the Common Sense party?

First of all, I love this country and all the opportunity it has provided me.   As a father, I now worry about the future and what kind of nation my son (and hopefully his grandchildren) will live and I want him to have all the same opportunities I have had over the years.    For that reason my vote means more to me this year than any other year I can remember.

Before I decided how I was going to cast my vote I thought a lot about what I wanted in my President and I’m writing those ideals down so I have a reference to come back to in 4 years.

Yea, and I had the Rolling Stones playing ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ in the background. 🙂

I want a President that believes a high national debt is bad and has an actionable strategy.   Our nation is living on a credit card and those debts must be paid back with interest eventually.   Right now we owe 42K for every person in the country.  That is significant.  Anyone that owns a credit card knows that eventually you can only afford to pay the interest and not the principal.

I want a President that believes Transparency is a priority.  I thought this article was a great analysis of the last 4 years.

I want the truth.   I don’t want ‘spin’.  I don’t want a President that distorts the truth for their party’s benefit.   The examples are endless and you can get a good glimpse of them at http://www.politifact.com.

I want a President that owns a problem and does not blame the other party….

I want a President that leads with vision, mission, strategy, objectives and results and not with fear. However I do want a President that believes that Intelligence and National Defense are a top priority.

I want a President that commits to a bipartisan approach.  The Congressional Quarterly who has tracked partisan votes since 1953, and its tallies show extreme levels of partisanship over the last 4 years.  I want this to change…  I want a President that can enable the American people to help them drive a bi-partisan agenda.   Something more like what Lyndon B. Johnson did with the civil rights bill when it was being blocked by the chairman of the House Rules Committee he reminded the nation that the GOP was the “Party of Lincoln” and brought huge numbers of people in to Washington to speak to congress.   This resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.   I don’t want to hear “where I can work with them (Republicans), I will. Where they don’t want to compromise, I’ll work around them.”—see CNN.

I don’t want a President to push through their party’s agenda on the back of a crisis.   I was very disappointed when I heard Rahm Emanuel say “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”.   The comment just oozed with ‘we can slip a lot of our agenda through by piggy backing on this crisis’.

I want a President that believes government policy (law) is only necessary if a free market outcome is not fair (examples: providing healthcare to those that cannot afford it).  I don’t believe policy is necessary where the market works such as healthcare for those that can afford it.     I just don’t believe a government agency can manage healthcare as good as a commercial company can…  Many others can be found at Citizens against Government Waste and at The Cato Institutes ‘downsizing government’ site.

I want a President that believes government policy (law) should deal with Causes and not Symptoms (example: taking an aspirin treats the symptom of a fever, but the fever is usually caused by something more serious).   The “Cash for Clunkers” program was a great example of a policy directed toward a symptom versus the cause.  Not sure that was worth the 3 Billion we paid for it…  the 862 Billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Stimulus) was filled with policy that was dealing with symptoms (Coburn/McCain documented much of this in “Summertime Blues”).

I want a President that believes the US Tax collection system should be consistent (more in line with a flat tax).   People that earn more money should pay more in tax (not a higher % but the same as everyone else). The current system is antiquated and needs attention.  Taxes basically redistribute cash from those that earned the cash to those that need it more, as well as, pay for our national defense.  We all need to be paying the same rate.

I want a President that believes the size of the government should be limited based on a % of GDP.

I want a President that has a plan to work to be the best at k-12 education and continue to have the best colleges and universities in the world.

I want a President that believes we need to allow those people educated in our country to stay in our country to help our countries companies be successful. See here for more info.

I want a President that believes we need to make the US a great place to build a company.   There needs to be emphasis placed on corporate tax rates compared to other countries and fixing loopholes that allow large companies to pay little tax.   Startup America was a good program but that is not where the growth is in helping drive jobs.  The focus needs to be on middle market companies– The middle market contributes approximately $3.84 trillion to the U.S. private sector GDP.

I want a President that is against new legislation from congress filled with pork barrel spending.   Here is a list for 2012.

I want a President that is not going to drive a broad social agenda when we have so many other issues to prioritize at the Federal level.   Let the states deal with gay marriage and gun control.   I want a President that will choose a Supreme Court Justice that is balanced and not too liberal or conservative.

I am not a Republican or Democrat.  I’m a member of the ‘Common Sense’ party.