A Word of Thanks and Explanation

Dear subscribers:

After a long hiatus, I started writing again earlier this year. I have been pleasantly surprised by how rapidly my subscriber community has grown. None of us needs another email in our inboxes asking for attention, so I thank you for letting another voice into yours. 

Because of this growth, I decided to republish two articles that best explain my motivation and perspective. Today is the first. If you’ve read them before, thank you for indulging me. 

Are we helpless, or can we do something? 

I’m not a politician or professional activist, just an independent American trying to make sense of it all. Like many Americans, I have been distressed by the direction our country has taken over the past decade. I know the feeling of helplessness when your only outlet is to vote and participate in an occasional No Kings Rally. What can any of us do to make a difference? 

For me, the answer started years ago when I launched my website OurFutureAmerica.org. My view then was, and still is, that the answer to our challenges lies within the 45 percent of Americans who identify as being independent. My hope remains that this majority can find its voice and become a unifying political force for rational, fact-based discussion and compromise.

When it does, I hope it will rally around policies meant to restore a sustained level of economic growth and rising standards of living for those who need it most. 

My search for a political home

Most of us do not choose where we begin politically. I started as a socially liberal, small-government conservative, believing in markets and free trade as the best path to broad prosperity. For a time, that aligned with the Republican Party. 

 Ultimately, the cost of remaining Republican became too high for me. I struggled as the party emphasized restrictions on marriage and abortion while expanding access to guns, all the while presiding over reckless increases in unfunded spending. The free-market party abandoned free trade, initiated a global trade war, dismissed the science of climate change, engaged in wars of choice, and increasingly relied on division and demagoguery to rally its base.

 So why not the Democratic Party?

 The Democratic response has been to move further left, reflexively relying on higher taxes, redistribution, and subsidies as primary policy solutions. At the same time, it has adopted its own villains - scapegoating billionaires and large corporations for not paying “their fair share.” Most recently, the party has subordinated any semblance of policy to automatic opposition to the current administration.

 Writing from the middle

Prior to launching OurFutureAmerica.org, I decided that I should put my own views to the fact-based test. I hired analysts and gave them just one instruction: “Tell me what I need to know about climate change, immigration, and several other public policy issues. Give me the facts, free of any political bias.” And they did. They produced papers on each topic that we put on the site. I discovered that some of my convictions weren’t supported by the evidence and I changed them.

For the next few years, I wrote on any issue on which I thought I had a unique point of view. Articles were grounded in the above-referenced research. 

Then Trump got in the way.

The Trump effect

Trump’s influence changed the nature of public discussion. He speaks in terms of general outcomes rather than process: End the war in Ukraine on day one, replace Obamacare with the best healthcare ever, make our country great again, create the greatest military in the world, lower prices on day one, etc. 

Trump opponents, both Republican and Democratic, were at a loss to respond productively.

Writing in this environment seemed increasingly fruitless. Public discussion was dominated by polarized venom rather than policy debate: Either you were MAGA or a socialist who hated our country; supported open borders or were anti-immigrant; defended Israeli genocide in Gaza or were antisemitic, and on and on. 

So I retreated and watched as things only got worse

On average, Americans enjoy a standard of living, comfort, leisure, and peace unmatched in history. Yet, too many of us continue to experience unnecessary economic distress.

We also live in a time in which our traditional anchors of information, affinity, and civility have been uprooted. The fragmentation of news sources has accelerated, with audiences spread across podcasts, social media, and digital platforms. Individuals now assemble their own information ecosystems. Increasingly, people do not just interpret events differently - they rely on entirely different sources of what they consider to be facts. 

 The result is growing distrust, polarization, and emotional trauma. Congress is dysfunctional. Compromise is a lost art. Respect in public discourse and debate is gone. As a country, we seem unable to sustain the long-term policy commitments across administrations required to address the challenges we face.  

 Is this our legacy?

 Do we want this to be our legacy? Or do we want to do what we can as individuals to make a difference? Do we want to put our heads in the sand, or do we want to engage? 

 My response is to pick up the pen, or perhaps the keyboard, and try again. Then the question is how? 

Being anti-Trump is not enough

There is a daily chorus of anti-Trump writing, commenting, and gnashing of teeth. I can’t add anything to that. But it is this observation that informed the name of this Substack: Being anti-Trump is Not Enough.

While enormous energy is poured into opposition, the Democratic Party is failing to articulate a coherent program: Something to vote for, not just against. 

I believe that this same burden will soon fall upon the Republican Party as it will need to redefine itself once Trump exits the stage.

Our challenge is not the complexity of our problems; it is our inability to reach and sustain consensus long enough to solve them. If we aren’t able to talk about them independent of our partisan lenses, we are doomed to failure.

 My hope is to share ideas with people who think independently of party affiliation and are willing to engage civilly and seriously with difficult problems. To discuss what we are for, not simply what we oppose. 

The value of growth

I believe that the agenda capable of uniting the middle is a pro-growth agenda. Without stronger economic growth, the U.S. faces persistent fiscal imbalance, regulatory drag, declining public trust, unstable prices, weak productivity growth, and a vulnerability to unchecked AI.  

In a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, made a simple observation. 

He said: “Grow the economy by 3%. That’s it. If we can’t find ways to grow the economy by 3% per year, we’re in trouble. We have to empower private capital to invest. Find ways to streamline permitting…if we can grow our economy, and if we can get more Americans to invest in our economy, we’re going to narrow the gap that exists between the wealthy and the middle class.” 

While economic growth may not solve all of our problems, his point is that only economic growth will solve the fiscal cliff we are heading to, create enough supply so as to make things more affordable, and improve the standard of living of the Americans who need it the most. 

Here are some ideas that a pro-growth agenda could entail.

An agenda for growth

Shift the debate from taxes and redistribution to the creation of greater health, wealth, and well-being for Americans who struggle economically.

Adopt pro-growth strategies to improve the affordability of principal household spending on housing, healthcare, energy, and food. 

Restore faith in government by subjecting it to the rigor and disciplines of the private sector.

Restore price stability by subjecting the Federal Reserve to a clear, rules-based monetary discipline.

Repair our fiscal condition by reducing the annual deficit to a sustainable level.

Reform education to prepare for the jobs of a future dominated by artificial intelligence. 

Address climate change without sacrificing economic growth or compromising our standard of living. 

Create an immigration system that works - lawful, humane, enforceable, and trusted by the public.

Refocus defense and foreign policy by narrowing our strategic interests, avoiding foreign entanglements, and preparing for a future of asymmetric warfare.

Defend the integrity of our institutions and maintain public trust.

Develop a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence so that it remains a tool of productivity and not a risk to our national security, infrastructure, or financial institutions. 

Each of these themes has been developed at greater length on edorazem.substack.com as well as on OurFutureAmerica.org. 

What you can expect

My goal is to explore this agenda in a nonpartisan, fact-based way. Over the coming months I’ll explore each of these ideas and apply them to current events, publishing only when I have something meaningful to add. 

If we want a country that works again, we all need to contribute however we can. We need to engage civilly and with independent minds. We need more than opposition. We need a plan.

Thank you for your engagement.