One side views America as the ultimate experiment in cultural pluralism with a wide diversity of people and ideas that come together in a beautiful mosaic. To them, diversity is a strength, not a weakness, the more, the better. The other side views America as a predominately European, Judeo-Christian nation founded in the traditions of European Christian men such as John Locke, Isaac Newton, and the Founding Fathers.  They believe that anything that challenges these cultural conditions undermines the pillars upon which our enormous success was founded.

Complicating matters, President Trump has defined our political process as ‘us vs. them’ in which race becomes just another flashpoint in the battle over identity politics and partisan tribalism. Unfortunately, the Anti-Trump forces have been more than willing to take the bait and embrace the ‘us vs. them’ warfare as the prevailing dynamic in our political process.  This clearly drives emotions and fundraising but does nothing to solve the problem.

For Trump and many of his supporters, the “us” is the traditional European, Judeo-Christian elements within our nation. Trump won the white vote by 21 percentage points in 2016 and is looking to increase that margin in 2020.   Within that segment of society, there is intense anxiety over the demographic changes currently taking place.  In a recent Pew survey, 46% of white Americans view the transition from majority white to a majority-of-minorities country as a shift that “would weaken American customs and values.”

They view anything that alters or changes this cultural status quo as an existential threat to their way of life and the nation as a whole.

Is Demographics Destiny?

One of the most compelling challenges to this worldview is the demographic changes that are altering the composition of the US population.

This is not an abstract issue; it is already happening.  Today, white children in public schools are already below 50 percent of the total student population.  Further, at some point in the next twelve months, the entire under-18 population will be majority non-white, and in ten years, the under-30 population will be as well.  According to recent government census projections, in 2045, whites will comprise 49.7 percent of the US population, making the US a majority-minority country.

These trends are playing out on another front as well.  The foreign-born population living in the US has gone from a low of 4.7 percent in 1970 to 13.6 percent of total residents.  Today, 44 million people born in another country, live and work in the US. This percentage is higher than at any time since 1910 when we were still experiencing an influx of European immigration.  No matter what side of the issue your sympathies fall on, this represents a significant shift in our society and requires a level of leadership that is sorely lacking in our two dominant parties.

Our future is immensely bright, but it won’t look exactly like our past

To bridge the divide, the critical question we should be asking is, what is the overall effect of this influx of immigration and foreign-born people on the well-being of our country.  Of the current Fortune 500 companies in America, 45 percent have either a first- or second-generation immigrant among their founders.  Last year, these companies produced 6.1 trillion dollars in revenue (which is larger than the GDP of Japan) and employ more than 13.5 million workers.  Since 2000, 33 of the 85 Nobel Prizes won by Americans in Chemistry, Medicine and Physics have been awarded to immigrants.  That’s 39 percent of the total US Nobel Prizes in the vital STEM fields that are so essential to our future success.

Putting all of this in perspective, let us consider the analysis of an objective observer of global trends.  Several years ago, Lew Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, in discussing the positioning of the US in global competitiveness, stated that China had a comparative advantage with over 1.3 billion citizens from which to draw talent.  However, the US had an even more significant advantage in being able to draw on a talent pool of over 7 billion people. Additionally, America’s competitiveness was superior due to our demonstrated capability of applying creativity and flexibility in a way that China could not.

The conclusion should be obvious; our melting pot is cooking up a stew of success. The composition of that pot is very different than 100 years ago, but the results are the same.  We benefit mightily from our strategic openness and creative combination of people and resources.  At the same time, these massive cultural shifts need to be handled with care, nuance, and thoughtful leadership.  Something our current political process is entirely unable to produce.  The non-stop tribal warfare from both sides exacerbates the problem, inflames the tensions, and leads to more hatred, more distrust, and lower quality governance and life for everyone.

Grievance politics only generates greater grief

If you believe that the US will continue to achieve success at the same rate, we have in the past by using the same formula we have in the past, and the objective facts do not support your views. Moreover, the demographic changes are rapidly narrowing the application of your argument.  We must deal with reality, which means finding ways to reconcile our Euro-centric traditions with a wider, more diverse world.  On the other hand, if you completely ignore and devalue the destabilizing effects of a significantly shifting ethnic and cultural landscape because it benefits your political power and agenda, then you are also disregarding reality and contributing to the dearth of leadership and solutions.

To bridge the divide and solve the problem, we need to fully appreciate and embrace both the rich cultural tradition we have inherited and the new realities of a 21st-century society with global competition and intensifying pressure to develop new ideas and new products continuously.  Erecting barriers to everyone except white Christians of European descent will not work and neither will labeling everyone who disagrees with you a racist or an interloper.

Looking to the future, not the past

In the early 19th century, many workers in the UK were facing a similar fundamental shift in their society.  The automation of the Industrial Revolution was disrupting most industries.  Even though this process elevated whole segments of the British population from back-breaking subsistence agriculture and low-wage cottage industries into the poverty-obliterating middle class, the transition was fraught with violence, resistance to the inevitable forces of change and slow adaptation to new, improved ways of doing things.   When faced with the forces of creative destruction, it is far more beneficial to focus on the creation, not the destruction.

To bridge this gap, we must break the fever of ‘us vs. them’ identity politics on both sides and accept the reality of change within our society.   By beginning the conversation with a discussion about how we can most effectively adjust to the new demographic realities, treating all sides fairly and recognizing the concerns of everyone, then we can begin to focus our discourse on solutions.   Otherwise, we will be stuck in this endless cycle of perpetual partisan pugilism.   As we have witnessed throughout history, grievance politics ends up generating greater grief because it promises a return to a bygone utopian era that is no longer possible.

By looking to the future and focusing on maximizing our prosperity based on the reality of our ethnic and cultural makeup and attracting and developing the best talent in the world, we will continue to advance far into the 21st and 22nd centuries.

Fortunately for all of us, in many areas that are essential to modern prosperity, we have found a way to circumvent this theoretical stalemate and focus our efforts more productively on reality.  In the 17th century, a few exceptional minds came up with a novel idea:  why don’t we stop arguing about these lofty theories which attempt to explain the world and develop a way to systematically discover how the world actually works.   And thus, the mindset and method of innovation were born.

Innovation is not rocket science, but it is how we use science to make rockets.

In the last 400 years, as we have pushed aside the purely theoretical discourse in favor of a reality-based approach, we have transformed every aspect of our daily lives and every facet of the Modern world.   In fact, every field to which we have applied innovative problem solving and the scientific method, we have experienced exponential advancement, but in areas where we have continued the theoretical food fight, we are still experiencing fruitless floundering.

Unfortunately, there is one area in which we have conspicuously continued to ignore the transformational power of innovation, and that is our political process.  “Innovation is radically transforming all aspects of human activity; except the way we govern ourselves.” according to Dr. Moises Naim, a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and bestselling author.  The continuation of the 24-century dispute between the theories of left versus right has resulted in a state of perpetual pugilism that has no end in sight.  Both sides seem to have adopted the leadership principle attributed to Genghis Khan, “It is not sufficient that I succeed – all others must fail.“

Theory vs. reality

This disconnection between the theoretical approach and the reality-based approach of innovation would not be as unforgivable if the evidence were not so overwhelming.   Each and every field to which innovation has been applied from science, technology, and medicine to agriculture and industry, has experienced miraculous advancement.  This progress is not a by-product of chance or random events; it is a result of a dynamic and intense focus on systematically solving every problem that arose in those fields.   Reality-based problem solving is how we established the firm foundation of Modern prosperity and why humanity has been empowered to reach such lofty heights.  In the last two centuries alone, we have gone from leaches and feathers to gene therapy and smartphones and from horseback to landing on the moon.

Solutions not Illusions

Until now, we have been missing a mechanism to apply the world-changing process of innovation to our politics.  The American Innovation Party and movement is the toolkit that will empower us to accomplish these goals.  In the first step, we must bridge the divide between the two warring, irreconcilable theories of left and right by shifting our political culture to focus on solutions, not dogmatic, ideological, and partisan disputation.  Only by doing this can we then engage the second step of putting our considerable, unparalleled energies into innovatively and effectively solving each and every problem confronting our nation.

I have often wondered how Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, one of the most advanced, well-educated countries in the world at that time, steeped in the traditions of logic, math, and science, could have succumbed to the Nazi spell.  Also, how during the mid-20th century, when we unlocked the mysteries of the atom and our genetic code, fully one-third of the population of the world lived in totalitarian Marxist-Communist regimes. Then I consider the radical dogmas and severe tribalism of both sides of the current American political process, and it seems far less unimaginable.  The more significant point is that all of us are susceptible to outlandish beliefs and the more we allow ourselves to be attracted to lofty theories promising fantastic utopias of bygone eras, the more likely we are to embrace unrealistic choices.

Eyes wide open is essential for clarity of thought and purpose

We must confront this tendency of human nature head-on with clear heads and open eyes.  The way we have done this in so many areas of Modern society is by embracing a mentality and methodology of seeking solutions over untested, unproven theoretical assertions. The two most vital questions we should use to examine any political claim are:  how does it work and where has it, or something similar, succeeded in the past.  Anyone who cannot answer these basic questions does not deserve further consideration.

The reason that innovation has been so enormously successful is that it cuts through baseless theoretical claims like a hot knife through soft butter.  It forces us all to focus on facts, evidence, and systematically determining what works versus what does not.  In other words, it elevates reality over theory and exposes utopian thinking for the child-like indulgent fantasy that it is.

In the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, visitors to the Emerald City are required to wear green-tinted glasses, which gives the city the illusion of an emerald glow.  Once the glasses are removed, Dorthey and her companions see the city how it actually was, warts and all.   Innovation will perform the same function for our political process so that we can see problems as they really are and systematically solve each and every one of them.

More specifically, to apply innovation to our politics, we first need to bridge the divide by replacing the tired, old, failed political culture we have endured for far too long and embrace a new national narrative with a relentless focus on solutions.  Next, we apply the method of innovative problem solving to remove the error and mistakes from our proposed solutions and test the results. We base our conclusions and ongoing improvements on what is working and what is not.   In reality, it is just that sensible, practical, and uncomplicated. I know this because we have successfully applied innovation to many modern fields from science and technology to medicine and industry in precisely the same way.

Let’s look at a real-life example to show how this works in practice.  In 1982, two Australian researchers began investigating the cause of ulcers.  At that time, ulcers were a chronic, frequently debilitating illness that produced immense discomfort and even death.  During the analysis, they discovered that the only common link between the subjects of their research was a bacterium that they named Helicobacter pylori or h.pylori.  Even though their study was carefully done, following standard medical protocols, the medical community refused to take their conclusions seriously.

As is commonly the case, they found themselves caught between two prevailing dogmas of the day. The leading dogma was the assumption that the cause of ulcers was already ‘known,’ so why bother researching a cure.  All of the medical textbooks taught that ulcers were caused by stress, agitation, and too much work. The problem with accepting this conclusion was that the facts and evidence did not support this analysis. The other dogma preventing a solution was the assumption that nothing could live in the stomach because the corrosive gastric juices killed all microorganisms.

Frustrated by the unwillingness of the medical community to set aside their dogmatic assumptions and consider the facts and evidence before them, in July of 1984, one of the researchers gathered a group of scientists together and boldly drank a vile of the h.pylori bacteria in front of them.  Within days, he was violently ill and beginning to develop ulcers.  Fortunately for the doctor and his shocked research staff, this story has a happy ending.  After a regimen of antibiotics, he recovered quickly, and in 2005, Dr’s Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their life-altering discovery.  Today, instead of years of pain and the counterproductive consumption of milk, this devastating condition can be cured by a simple treatment of antibiotics and other medications.  Together, they proved that looking at old problems in new ways can yield miraculous results.

Bridging the Divide

Our current political process cannot reasonably be categorized as a dialogue, it is really two separate monologues taking place independently of one another. If an alien came to earth and viewed one side and then the other, I am reasonably certain they would be convinced the partisan American earthlings were talking about two entirely different countries.   More importantly, without a shared goal and unifying focus, any group of people, no matter how intelligent or talented, will just end up running around in circles, achieving nothing.   If you would like a real-world example of this exercise in futility, just look at Washington or any cable news channel.

The AIP, on the other hand, is implementing a new national narrative with a crystal-clear focus on tirelessly, relentlessly discovering, and implementing the most efficient and effective solution for each problem we face.  By neutering the forces of dogma, ideology, and partisan tribalism, the AIP shatters the feckless and incompetent status quo of both sides and provides the bridge to inspire people of all political persuasions to pursue solutions.

Once our focus is firmly fixed on problem-solving through our new national narrative, we are empowered to look at old problems in new ways. This creates an entirely new landscape to allow us to end the tyranny of entrenched political assumptions and divisions.  After all, enduring difficulties persist and often get worse because of our refusal to consider new alternatives.  Innovation is that bridge because it defines success based on what objectively works and what does not.  This is the opposite of our current political process which defines success based on how closely any action or policy comports with the leading dogmas, ideologies or partisan tribalism of the moment.

Solve the Problem 

After we have built the bridge above and beyond the current quagmire, we are ready to fully embrace the method of innovative problem-solving to propel us across it.  Before any problem can be solved, there must be a shared understanding of what the problem actually is.  For over 1500 years, the greatest universities in Europe taught that the earth was the center of the universe.  Once that galactically false narrative was corrected, it took less than 100 years to discover the actual motion of planets in our solar system and modern science and cosmology was born.

The first step in applying innovative problem solving is to consider only the facts and evidence of a particular issue by stripping away the barriers to clear thinking and analysis.  Hanna Arendt carefully studied the barriers to successful political systems and made the following observation: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction… and between true and false… no longer exist.”  The difference between opinion and fact is a slippery slope, but if we do not carefully guard against the false narratives and assumptions of both sides, then we cannot make progress in finding solutions.  As Aristotle, one of the principal founders of scientific analysis said over two millennia ago, “the fact is the starting point.”

The next step is to objectively consider all of the viable options for solving the problem.  If we allow our judgment to be dictated by a whole host of assumptions from either the left or the right, then we will end up like the people who claimed the earth was the center of the universe or that ulcers were caused by stress.  Objectivity mows down the tired, old failed assumptions of the past and provides the pathway to look at persistent problems in new ways.  Combined with facts and evidence, it is the solid foundation upon which all innovative thinking and solutions are built.

The final step is to implement the best solution available with a perspective of experiment and testing.   Since our Founding Fathers, America has been called the “Great Experiment.”  This framework was applied by Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin because our wise founders knew that only the crucible of real-world application could provide guidance on how to adjust policy to actually solve problems.

There is no possible way to know with any degree of certainty all of the effects and unintended consequences of a bill or policy; therefore, we must be vigilant to continually reevaluate and continuously improve all actions and legislation.  The 1994 Crime Bill is a perfect example.  Passed at a time of the rapidly rising crime, many of the inflexible provisions and false assumptions embedded in the bill have had a devastating effect on communities across the country, contrary to the original intentions.  As crime subsided and the evidence of this unintended negative impact began to emerge, adjustments should have quickly followed.  Instead of defending the flawed provisions, we should have had bipartisan action to correct the errors.

Onward and Upward

The problem with our current political process is that we are attempting to leave the bitter divisions in place and still produce solutions.  That will not happen, as our status quo has become the perfect formula for division and dysfunction.  Further, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats cannot use innovation in their approach because their energies are entirely focused on generating evidence that their instinctual reactions and theoretical assumptions are correct, not systematically finding what works and what does not.

Our founding fathers were some of the most politically innovative minds in history.  They took the best ideas from great thinkers of the Age and throughout history and intricately wove them together to create the most dynamic, innovative system of government in history.  We should honor their legacy by continuing the grand tradition they established by embracing a new national narrative that embodies their innovative spirit.  By relentlessly looking for ways to improve our unique heritage of self-government and accelerate the enormous success to which we have become accustomed, we will transform our political process, just as we have done in so many other areas of our lives.

Unable to break the impasse in their minds, Grove suggested a thought experiment.  He urged Moore to imagine that instead of being the CEO and President of Intel, they were in charge of a new company that had just acquired Intel.  When they walked through the doors for their first day as the new executives in charge, what would they do? Moore’s immediate response was clarifying: their first act would be to fire themselves, and their second would be to invest in microprocessors. When they nervously broke the news to their primary customers, the response was simply, “What took you so long?” Today, Intel is still one of the leading manufacturers of semiconductors in the world due to their willingness to embrace innovation and continuously look at old problems in new ways.

The AIP is advocating that we all engage in a similar exercise.  Imagine for a second that we are not in a divided and dysfunctional political process dominated by two bitterly polarized parties.  Think about what it would mean if our politics actually focused on solving the problems that confront our society.  Picture in your mind a scenario in which we had a real plan in place to increase manufacturing jobs, instead of merely talking about how we could appeal to working-class voters. Also, a plan to reform our health care system by addressing exploding drug prices, improving care access and quality, and dealing with the opioid crisis, instead of spending all of our time talking about how both sides can use that issue to increase their political advantage.  Appealing to voters on kitchen table issues is a very different activity than actually solving kitchen table problems.

If we were to apply this thought experiment to our politics, then we would probably come to conclusions not much different than Gordon Moore.  We would also immediately fire the existing management and adopt an entirely new approach to solving intractable problems. This is the fundamental question confronting America today: how do we replace the status quo politicians on both sides with real leaders who genuinely want to provide results-based solutions for everyone.

The powerful tool that we can use to make this transition a reality is Innovation.  It has worked exponentially well in every field to which it has been applied, and when we have applied it to our political process, as with the US constitution, it has helped drive America’s unparalleled success.

United in Division

The only issue that seems to unify nearly all Americans – Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, Trump voters and Clinton voters – is how disturbingly divided we are as a nation.  According to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, a staggering 80% of US adults believe that we are either “mainly” or “totally” divided.  Further, 90% of respondents in the same survey consider the bitter divisions between Democrats and Republicans as either a “serious” or “very serious” problem.  The study concluded with a stark reminder of how difficult this problem is.  When both sides were asked who was responsible for the division and dysfunction, they each had the same response:  the ‘other’ side was to blame.

Given those results, it is not surprising that according to a recent Pew survey 61% of Americans believe that “significant changes” are urgently needed to the underlying “design and structure” of the U.S. political process.  The quarrel between the left and right has been raging for 2,400 years and is no closer to being resolved today than it was over two millennia ago.  Americans overwhelming recognize the need to bridge our differences and bring our politics into the modern age.

What political innovation is and how we apply it 

The biggest casualty of our divided and dysfunctional political war is the loss of our ability to have an intelligent conversation on nearly every subject. This is the heart of our current quagmire.  Just like a software program with a glitch, until this fatal flaw is repaired, our political process will not function properly.  Further, it has prevented meaningful reform and solutions even in areas where the vast majority of Americans want reform:  health care, immigration, education, infrastructure, environmental protection and manufacturing. Additionally, given the current crop of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, it is clear that nothing will truly change, even if the party occupying the White House does.  Innovation is the mechanism that can get our dialogue and political process back on track.

There are two layers of the status quo that innovation will empower us to overcome.  The first is the macro level in which the American political process merely gyrates back and forth between left and right, Republican and Democrat, with nothing substantial changing no matter who is in charge. After all, repeatedly doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is, in a word, insane.  Secondly, on the micro level, the continuous decline in our debate, non-stop infighting, and lack of focus on solutions leave us unable to look at old problems in new ways.  Doubling or tripling down on the tired, old, failed ideas of the past has not and will never lead to solutions.  We need to break the bondage of the status quo on both levels to make meaningful improvements.

The AIP is the solution to the macro challenge because it empowers us to go beyond the left-right stalemate.  By looking at problems through the prism of reality, results, and solutions, it becomes clear that the narrow, one-dimensional, linear approaches of both the Democrats and Republicans are not sufficient to solve any problem in the real world.  The mindset and method of innovative problem-solving addresses the micro issue by considering only the facts and evidence, carefully weighing each option objectively and subjecting the results to experiment and testing.  It has worked in every other area of human experience, and politics is no exception.  Innovation is such a powerful tool, so let’s look at a specific example of how it will improve our country.

Let’s build a better future through Innovation

To envision how powerful and effective political innovation can be, let’s look at an example of how the AIP and innovative problem solving can break the logjam of the status quo and deliver real results for the American people.  There are many examples we could use, but the clearest illustration of how innovative problem solving can make a real impact is the issue of infrastructure.  The single biggest impediment to achieving a solution to our infrastructure needs is plain and simple partisan division.  Because the AIP would exclude partisan tribal considerations and the attending special interests that fund their disputes, we are far better positioned from the beginning to achieve results. Further, by focusing exclusively on how to most effectively, efficiently, and innovatively solve this problem, we increase our advantage in being able to achieve lasting solutions.

The first step of the method of innovative problem solving is to carefully examine the facts and evidence that apply to this issue.  According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the US will need to spend close to $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix the country’s roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure.  The average age of a dam in the US is 56 years old, and we have literally hundreds of water main breaks every day in cities all around our nation, wasting trillions of gallons of treated water every year.   Also, according to a recent study, more than 50% of our primary and secondary schools require substantial repair, renovation, and upgrade. In examining the totality of the need, the old phrase, ‘pay me now or pay me (much more) later’ comes to mind. More importantly, beyond the cost and wasted dollars, the human toll of collapsing bridges, tunnels, and other infrastructure is a tragedy that in many cases, is avoidable.

The second step is to consider all the options objectively.   The status quo approach is to engage in the same old wasteful procurement process, doling out contracts to well-connected firms that have hired the right lobbying firms full of ex-politicians, bundlers, and collectors of vast sums for Super-Pac’s.  Under this deeply flawed approach, we just add a tax to the wealthy, which will not come close to covering the actual costs and tack on even more billions to our perpetually growing trillion-dollar-per-year deficit.

Alternatively, we can adopt an innovative approach that looks at this old problem in a new way.  The first step is to streamline the regulatory approval process without compromising safety or the durability of any improvements.  As the Bipartisan Policy Center points out, “The nation’s fragmented regulatory structure prevents new innovations from being developed and can prevent proven innovations that are being effectively implemented in a different jurisdiction from spreading. Specifically, overarching state and local regulations have been implemented to restrict specific contract structures, materials, and technologies from being analyzed and deployed, despite their potential benefits.” The US Conference of Mayors has also endorsed those sentiments, concluding in a recent report: “Closed procurement processes lead to unnecessary costs, and may diminish public confidence in a local government’s ability to provide cost-effective services.” This would require a significant effort free of partisan infighting to be successfully implemented but would yield tremendous short and long-term benefits.

Secondly, we need to lower the funding costs and increase access to new funding sources.  One innovative mechanism that can be utilized to achieve this is the Public-Private Partnership (P3) model, which has worked well both in the US and around the world.  As the name implies, it is a collaboration in which private entity finances, manages and constructs a project for a projected stream of revenue from the government directly or indirectly from the users of development.

In 2016, Syracuse University published a study of the utilization of this model in the US.  After extensive research, they concluded that there was a “significantly higher likelihood” of meeting cost and timetable objectives in projects using the P3 model over traditional public project management.  They also found that P3 addresses the key “structural and operational issues” that plague traditional public projects. As anyone affected by the Big Dig project in Boston will attest with its years of delays, 12.4 billion dollars in cost overruns, and the death of a motorist from a partial ceiling collapse.

In Europe, Australia, and the US, the design, construction and maintenance of large public sector projects have been dramatically improved by embracing P3 methods.  In the US, the Courthouse in Long Beach California, the I-595 lanes in Broward County, Florida, and the I-495 lanes in Virginia are just a few specific examples of successful P3 projects.

Further, given the scope and breadth of the problem, we will need to appoint an Infrastructure Czar to help marshal the resources and shepherd through the changes that are required from top to bottom.  As the funding needs are so large, we may need to also raise additional funds through a reconsideration of the gas tax.  In the past, the needs of the country outweighed partisan concerns when it comes to the repair and maintenance of our world-class highway system.   The gas tax was raised by both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. However, the last raise was in 1993, and since then, inflation, greater fuel efficiency, and electric vehicles have put the Highway Trust Fund in serious jeopardy.   The lack of a solution has led to accounting gimmicks, but the longer-term viability is still in question.  We would also propose a carve-out for the most economically challenged commuters to not put additional strain on their finances.

After implementing these solutions, the AIP will still not rest.  As in every situation, we will continuously evaluate the results of these new structures to provide a clearinghouse and communication channel for what is working and what is not working with the new policies.   By looking at this old problem in new ways, having an intelligent, productive debate on how to solve the problem and executing with cutting-edge efficiency, the AIP will turn a quagmire into a shining example of what we can accomplish with a well-functioning political process.  Ultimately, do we want future generations looking back and asking us, “what took you so long?”

The good news is that we have been quite successful in using innovative problem-solving to transform and improve virtually every aspect of the modern world around us. Fundamentally, we are all linear thinkers living in a complex world. This enables us to solve problems that are directly in front of us extremely well and we all do this multiple times every day.

At the same time, the greater the distance, variability, and complexity in any problem we confront, the less innately well-equipped we are to handle the challenge. Our emotional and instinctual responses leave us susceptible to becoming imprisoned by our own predispositions. The more removed a problem is, the more errors, biases, false narratives and misguided analogies seep into our analysis. Patterns and ideas that just “pop” into our heads from emotional and instinctual reactions may offer some illumination, but they are just as likely to be seriously misguided.

To improve our political process, we must be able to systematically differentiate between fact and fiction, error and truth. Moreover, all of the social, economic, and financial challenges we confront through our political process are perfect examples of complex systems. Therefore, if we truly want to reform and improve our political decisions, we must confront this disconnection directly.

Consider how well we have been able to solve extremely complex problems in the fields of science, medicine, technology, agriculture, and industry. We have achieved exponential success in these areas through the effective focus and methodological discipline of innovative problem-solving. Two aspects of human nature have to be addressed to replicate that success:

1. The propensity to make mistakes (to err is human)
2. The bias that clouds our judgment (confirmation bias)

Innovative problem-solving is both a mentality and a methodology.

The mentality is a relentless focus on finding better ways to do things and solving problems. That may sound simple, but the focus is extremely important to keep front and center, especially as political debate becomes impassioned. When our assumptions are challenged, it is quite common to revert to our instinctual and emotional responses rather than maintaining our attention on solving the problem. When focused on solutions, every other consideration—dogma, ideology, partisanship, and cultural divisions—becomes secondary. These substantial barriers to effective solutions contribute greatly to the division and dysfunction in our current political process.

The mentality of innovation is guided by a few principles. The first step is recognizing that error is our enemy, not each other. We all begin political engagement with a host of assumptions about the way the world works based on our innate outlook and collection of experiences. This is perfectly natural, but also in conflict with the most effective ways of solving problems. In every area of human endeavor in which we have embraced a method of significantly reducing the errors and bias from our initial emotional and instinctual reactions, we have immediately witnessed substantial advancement. Current research from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the objective historical record is quite conclusive on this point.

The second principle of mentality is to use reality—facts and evidence—as our frame of reference, not the divisions of dogma, ideology, partisanship and cultural differences. It is far too easy to give in to those alluring temptations which poison the process.

Lastly, we need to remain committed to systematically differentiating between what works and what does not. More specifically, this means experiment and test our results, just as in other fields.  Using propaganda to support policies that do not work is a sure-fire formula for disaster.

The second part of innovative problem-solving is the methodology. This is essential. Without a systematic way to remove error and bias, we will continue to generate dysfunctional results, similar to what we witness every day in Washington. Just as we have seen in many other areas such as science, medicine, and technology, embracing a methodology to bridge the disconnect between our emotional/instinctual reactions and consistently discovering real solutions will produce far better results.

Innovation is a proven methodology—we know it works. As history demonstrates, it will transform any pursuit to which it is applied. The RESET (Reality, Experience, Solution, Experiment & Testing) model of innovative problem-solving relies on the insights and successes of the most dynamic innovators in history.

Reality: Reality begins when we shed our assumptions and refuse to limit our thinking to the tired, old, failed ideas of the past. This allows us to view each problem in completely new ways. Reality does not care, nor is it contingent on what you believe or perceive to be true—only what is actually true. This fact is completely ignored in our current political process, which is why the RESET model is such a revolutionary idea in today’s political environment.

Some people look at politics through the lens of ideology, some use dogma, some moral intuition and others partisanship and cultural differences. Each of these perspectives carry with them considerable distortions from error and bias. Defining our political process in this way ensures that every attempt to solve a problem will be mortally wounded before it even begins.

In a recent survey, 88 percent of Americans indicated they would like to use facts and evidence to make policy decisions; but 89 percent of Americans also indicated that they understand that we tend to believe only data that confirms our existing viewpoint. The latter point completely negates the potential benefits of the first one. By forcing ourselves to look objectively at the facts and evidence, we begin the process from an entirely different perspective than any other group in American politics.

Both sides of our current debate are heavily biased and rely on an endless supply of jaundiced narratives to perpetuate the illusion that they are free of distortions and the other side is not. It is only by stripping away these false narratives that we can view facts and evidence as useful inputs for solving problems. As many great thinkers have observed, the illusion of knowledge is a far greater impediment to discovering truth than is ignorance. Both sides of our current debate are defined by their illusions, not solutions.

Facts and evidence are the foundation of innovative problem-solving. This requires that we jettison our predispositions and assumptions of dogma, ideology, partisanship, and cultural factors, and to deal only with the world as it is—aka reality.

Experience: Social sciences are more challenging in many ways than the sciences of physics and astronomy. Claims and assertions in those fields can be directly tested for their validity.

Further complicating the situation is the tendency of the human mind to conjure up analogies to help make sense of our complex, dynamic world. The challenge in this stage is to be rigorous in applying the examples in apples-to-apples comparisons.

In most cases, we can find examples that feed our existing narrative, because they come to mind easily and readily. However, we must be vigilant against the availability bias creating neat and tidy examples; we must challenge our assumptions and allegiance to tired, old, failed ideas. Each complex problem we encounter will have multiple causes and variables that influence its impact on changing circumstances. We need to be cautious in looking at experiences carefully to determine what has truly worked and what has not in a given situation and historical context. Again, facts and evidence provide the essential building blocks in this stage.

Solutions: If we have performed steps one and two correctly, then the solution phase is well-positioned for success. A strong foundation of facts, evidence and applicable examples provide ingredients for a viable solution. In most cases, we should generate a number of possible solutions which can be critically analyzed and debated for the probability of success in implementation. After ranking these proposed solutions and analyzing their potential for success, the difficulty of implementation, and the unintended consequences of their adoption, we will choose the best option with the greatest upside and smallest downside.

Experiment and Testing: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and other Founding Fathers referred to America as “The Great Experiment.” They knew that we would prosper only if we closely linked our actions and policies to their outcomes. This is the RESET method step that we are ignoring the most. By declaring the success of a policy before its outcome is known, we are dooming ourselves to live with ideas that do not work and perpetuating actions that fail to achieve their intended effect.

We must adopt the approach of carefully observing the impact of policies to see what aspects worked, which ones did not, and what can be tweaked to improve the overall approach. This is the heart of America’s innovative spirit—the drive to always find better ways to do things and improve the world around us. Only by critically analyzing the success and failures of every policy can we have the information necessary to improve the overall solution.

The RESET policy is not a one-time shot. It is a continuous process that empowers us to constantly look for new ways to improve and strengthen our society and our nation.

These stories resonate with us because even though we consciously know that perfection is only an alluring fiction, there is a drive within human nature to embrace the possibility of the perfect formula for society— a return to the Garden of Eden. In the world of political ideas, this previously was the dividing line between the left and the right. Liberals, from Rousseau and the French Revolution to Marx and the Soviet Union, were seeking the perfect system. Conservatives, by contrast, understood the flaws in our nature and primarily sought to constrain the negative characteristics of human action and the power of one person or group.

Ludwig Von Mises captured this ancient tension in 20th century language: “(Utopians) invariably explain how, in the cloud-cuckoo lands of their fancy, roast pigeons will in some way fly into the mouths of the comrades, but they omit to show how this miracle is to take place.” As the conservative movement grew in power and influence over the past five decades, it began to let down its guard and skepticism, while gradually embracing the possibility of conservative perfection. Power and influence eroded the movement’s intellectual discipline until it became accepted wisdom that the only requirement to solve any problem is to cut taxes, decrease government oversight and let the market “magically” sort out the rest, in roast pigeon fashion. Unfortunately, as the great historian of liberty, Lord Acton, pointed out, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Over time, the careful, skeptical evaluation of empirical results gave way to wholehearted endorsement of an overly simplified conservative dogma. Problems no longer needed to be incisively analyzed and systematically solved. Why bother? We all “know” what needs to be done: Apply laissez-faire utopianism, and all will be well.

The trouble is that this linear approach to complex problems has proved to be as disastrous for the right as previous experiments from the left. F.A. Hayek, one of the greatest thinkers in the history of economic liberty, said, “Probably nothing has done so much harm to the (classical) liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire.” Hayek foresaw this problem decades before right-wing utopianism overwhelmed the conservative movement.

Hayek didn’t stop there. In the 1956 edition of The Road to Serfdom, admired on the left and the right, he made prescient observations about the direction of 20th-century conservatism:

Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.”

In a fitting fulfillment of that Hayekian prophesy, presidential candidate Donald Trump declared that he and he alone could magically solve all of America’s problems. Just as Napoleon did two centuries earlier in crowning himself emperor, Trump conferred unto his person all the Utopian qualities that conservatives had grown to expect. And in the midst of their disillusionment with the direction of the country, many bought into his reasoning.

Today, the American political process is stuck between two warring tribes, both metaphysically convinced that their respective Utopian visions of the world are correct. Moreover, the other side is not just incorrect, but evil and sinister. This is the principal reason we have surrendered any attempt at intelligent debate. If your side is correct and the other is grossly mistaken, then any tools that you can employ to defeat this enemy is by definition good. You are in the right, your goal is worthy, your cause is justified. As humans, we all seek certainty in a probabilistic world full of random, unanticipated events and, in our current political environment, nothing provides a feeling of greater certainty than “I am right, and you are wrong.”

In many ways, propaganda-speak, which is the language of Utopians, is just as comfortable and alluring as the possibility of perfection. It is far more emotionally rewarding than intelligent discourse. When employing propaganda-speak, one can completely ignore the complexity of any issue and just focus on a narrow, one-dimensional view of the problem. Further, propaganda-speak doesn’t require one to listen to or respond to the questions of the other side. This is actually a common psychological phenomenon called substitution. When asked a question we don’t like, we frequently substitute a completely different answer that has little, if anything, to do with the question that was asked.

The difference between intelligent discourse and propaganda-speak is distinct. Intelligent discourse begins with facts and evidence, and proceeds to objectively considering all options and systematically determining what works and what does not. Within that framework, there are wide areas ripe for serious disagreement. For example, which facts apply to any given situation, which solutions are viable and which are not, and what needs to be explored further before it is conclusively demonstrated.

The larger point is that propaganda-speak showdowns yield nothing other than a complete reliance on the tired, old, failed Utopian ideas of the past. It will never advance the conversation, and it will never lead to real, durable solutions. At the end of the Greek play, Cloud Cuckoo Land was a smashing success—but bear in mind, that was a comedic world of fiction. In the real world, the impact of our troubled political process has meaningful and serious consequences.

As John Locke, the father of modern democracy, viewed it, people were willing to surrender some freedom in exchange for greater security, stability and productivity. Granted, the state of nature was enjoyable. Frolicking, grabbing fruit from the trees, and bathing in a brook at your whim was fun, but going without food when the hunt came up empty or being attacked by a hostile clan much larger than your own were considerable drawbacks.

Even though society has become far larger and more complex today, we are still reaping the benefits as well as the complications of living together in large groups. Today, the real question becomes how we realize our right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” successfully in a fast-moving, ever-changing world. More to the point, the purpose of our political process is to solve problems in the most efficient and effective way to increase the benefits and reduce the downside of living in a large and growing society.

This is not a new conundrum. Just as we are now experiencing in American politics, we have faced the same challenge in every other area of human endeavor. For example, science had a few exceptional individual scientists such as Copernicus, da Vinci, and Avicenna. The entire field of science, however, didn’t truly flourish and create exponential advancement until the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century and the adoption of the scientific method. A very similar process unfolded in many other fields, including technology, industry, medicine and agriculture.

In all of these areas, the difference between medieval stagnation and decline and the wonders of modern achievement was the adoption of both a mentality and methodology of innovative problem-solving. By adopting this revolutionary new approach, we have transformed every aspect of our modern world and every facet of our daily lives.

Simultaneously, we have jettisoned the superstition, mythology, and slavish adherence to the tired, old, failed ideas of the deep, dark abyss of the Middle Ages. The ill are no longer bled with leeches on their sickbeds, agricultural production has multiplied exponentially, industrial advances helped create the middle class and modern conveniences abound.  Today, everyone has access to more information than the scholars of all previous eras combined and we no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe.

If we were to apply this profound discovery to our divided and dysfunctional political process, it would have similar revolutionary consequences. If our purpose is to solve problems in the most efficient and effective way to increase the benefits and reduce the downside for our large and ever-changing society, then replicating the overwhelming, incontrovertible success we have experienced in nearly every other area of the modern world makes tremendous sense.

By the late 1940s, when Orwell began writing 1984, he had become thoroughly disillusioned by the utopian dreams of socialism. Having fought and nearly died in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell experienced first-hand the messy hypocrisies of the worldwide socialist movement. Combining that with the revelations of Stalin’s reign of terror and purges in the Soviet Union, Orwell began systematically dissecting the illusory effectiveness of the collectivist approach in his earlier work, Animal Farm. He summarized his disenchantment with the movement by stating, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western countries struggled with the transition to democratic forms of government and the implications that full-fledged enfranchisement had on the politics of a nation. Within a relatively short period of time, public opinion and public perception became the dominant force in the governance of every Western country. This process also unleashed the latent influence of propaganda, not just in authoritarian countries of fascist or communist rule, but also in countries where voting was widely disseminated.

This was an unprecedented conflict that few societies were prepared to confront. Granted, by that point, we had defeated the forces of the medieval thinking in many fields such as science, medicine, and technology, but on the political, social, and cultural battlefields, the war was not yet won. In fact, in many ways, we are still engaged in an ongoing conflict between the medieval and modern mindset.

One of the defining differences between modern thinking and the medieval mindset is that in the modern approach, the search for truth became recognized as a process of discovery, a way of systematically finding out what is factual and what works, as opposed to the medieval mindset, which relies on endlessly recycling the tired, old, failed ideas and “revealed wisdom” of the past. Today, we are still struggling to come to grips with this distinction.

The key to this puzzle lies in the way the human mind works. Unlike our forebears, who struggled with conjecture and thought experiments, we now, due to the progress in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, have the tools to understand this far better than ever before. The bottom line of the last fifty years of discovery in these fields is that we all crave certainty in a highly uncertain world, full of random events and unanticipated consequences. When events seem too random or complex to fully digest or comprehend, we seek simple, narrow, one-dimensional, linear ways to understand them. This sets the stage for the emergence and impact of Propaganda-speak.

Propaganda-speak shares many qualities with its Orwellian predecessor, Newspeak, in that it seeks to break the world down into simple, linear phrases and approaches. This cannot be done by someone looking to solve complex problems in a complex world, because there is a fundamental mismatch between what is required and what is available through that medieval authoritarian approach. Today, both the left and the right in America politics are guilty of replacing the search for truth and systematically determining what works with the warm, self-reinforcing embrace of Propaganda-speak. Both liberals and conservatives seek to reinforce their authoritarian, medieval orthodoxies through adherence to the tired, old, failed ideas of the past.

We see this play out on the grand stage of American politics every day. If you don’t subscribe to the Propaganda-speak of “our side” of the utopian orthodoxy, you will be shunned. If you do not adhere to the mindless repetition of our overly simplified, linear version of Big Brother, then we will send you to the Thought Police for re-indoctrination. The left and right both equally employ these tactics.

Again, this is not a new phenomenon. It has been widely studied by various luminaries from Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky to Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind. We all have different ways of looking at the world and different approaches to solving problems. This has been the case since Cain and Abel. These differences are not necessarily a definitive barrier to success until we allow ourselves to suspend the search for truth and systematically determining what works, instead converting those predispositions into dogmas, ideologies, and partisan tribalism. In the medieval mindset, the “other” among our fellow citizens is the enemy; in the modern mindset, the enemy is error.

This stage marks the final surrender of the will to improve and find better ways to do things. In 1984, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is captured and subjected to months of excruciating torture. Finally, confronted with his deepest, darkest fear of being eaten alive by rats, Winston surrenders his last shreds of resistance to Newspeak, Big Brother, and any inkling of independent thought by capitulating to the command to state that two plus two equals five. This represents the absolute victory of ruling party loyalty over facts, truth, evidence, and reality. Unlike poor Winston, we are not being mercilessly tortured; but just as Winston did, given the state of our political process, we are all confronting our two-plus-two-equals-five moment.

If you believe Arendt’s description applies to only one side of the current political divide, you are laboring under a misapprehension. For quite some time now, America’s political process has been stuck between two entirely different visions of how the world works. Both sides carefully cater to a particular set of intuitions and instinctual interpretations of society. Historically speaking, both sides have consistently proven to be incomplete and insufficient to accomplish what the vast majority of Americans have been clamoring for: a trustworthy, competent government that works well, solves problems and gives everyone an objectively fair shot at a better life.

We have gradually lost the pluralism of past generations, which our Founding Fathers articulated and embodied in the Constitution. In fact, George Washington specifically warned in his famous 1796 farewell speech that the “spirit of party… serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”

Building on the insights of great Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Hume, Voltaire and Smith, “the spirit of party,” Washington argued, is “inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.” George Washington understood something that psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists have only recently begun to prove: we are all narrow, one-dimensional, linear thinkers living in a complex world.

As John F. Kennedy also warned, “Too often we…enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” From there, it is quite natural for us to assert that our “opinions” are indeed facts— and the nightmare scenario that Arendt described is not far behind. In the same 1962 Yale commencement speech, Kennedy elaborated on this: “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.” This is how dogma replaces intelligent thinking and compromises our ability to focus on solving problems.

Some of our greatest leaders and thinkers throughout history have warned us of exactly the situation that we now find ourselves in. The good news is that unlike our prescient forebears, we now have the tools to overcome this significant barrier to advancement.

Innovation is the most powerful tool for solving problems humankind has ever discovered. It has transformed every aspect of our daily lives and every facet of the modern world. It is so powerful because the mindset and methodology of innovative problem-solving removes dogma, ideology and partisan tribalism from the process of developing and implementing solutions. It empowers us to break free from the self-imposed prison of our own predispositions.

Whereas dogma begins with a host of unproven—often disproven—opinions and assumptions, innovation begins with facts and evidence. Instead of confining our potential solutions to the narrow, one-dimensional, linear dogmatic subset, we are now free to objectively consider all options. In place of declaring victory before evidence is produced, we systematically discover what works and what does not.

The innovation approach to problem-solving is a byproduct of four centuries of accumulated success, experience, and advancement in the modern world. The tired, old, failed dogmatic approach is a distinctly pre-modern approach to problem-solving that is a holdover from medieval traditions and superstitions. Dogmatists declare they are right because they fulfill the criteria of their assumptions and opinions, not because they actually solve a problem in the real world. Just as you would expect, a dogma chasing its own tail will only end up running around in circles.

For America to achieve a well-functioning government that serves the people and addresses pressing problems, our shift from medieval dogma to modern innovative problem-solving cannot come soon enough.

Given this, the central question in American politics is how we excite the same level of passionate intensity to effectively solve problems that we naturally get from trying to prove that we are right and others are wrong.

Over the past several decades, psychology and cognitive neuroscience research has conclusively demonstrated that our minds automatically search for information that reinforces our existing beliefs, attitudes and intuitions, regardless of the objective facts. Science is just now proving something many have known for quite some time. In the early 17th century, at the beginning of the modern age, Francis Bacon pointedly observed this aspect of human nature: “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”

If we dig a little deeper, we find that history is chock-full of examples of this phenomenon. For example, Thucydides, the ancient Greek scholar and general, had similar reflections in describing the mistakes of the Peloponnesian War: “When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.”  Centuries later, Thomas Jefferson made the same conclusion , “The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination see in every object only the traits that favor that theory.” 

Given the historical frequency of its appearance, it is no surprise that Americans understand this concept on a fundamental level. A recent survey conducted by USAfacts.org found that even though 88 percent of Americans favor an informed debate based on facts and evidence, 89 percent believed that most people only utilize “facts that fit their beliefs.” This is not a recent development. It is an enduring part of our nature.

Why reason is not useful in solving this problem

The most oft-cited proposal to bridge this divide and restore intelligent debate is the widely misunderstood role of reason. During the Enlightenment, French Revolutionaries put so much stock in the power of reason that they elevated it to full theological status by enshrining the “Cult of Reason” as the official atheistic religion of France, intending to replace the Catholic Church. After the “Reign of Terror” and two decades of dictatorship, we can safely conclude that reason did not solve their problems any better in the 18th century than it does today.

In 1979, Stanford researchers conducted a study on the effectiveness of reason. They discovered that people with different social views did not use reason to critically evaluate evidence. Instead, they sifted through empirical data to find ways to reinforce their existing views. The study concluded, “People who hold strong opinions on complex social issues are likely to examine relevant empirical evidence in a biased manner. They are apt to accept ‘confirming’ evidence at face value while subjecting ‘disconfirming’ evidence to critical evaluation, and as a result to draw undue support for their initial positions from mixed or random empirical findings.” 

Both the Stanford researchers and the French Revolutionaries could have saved a great deal of time and disappointment if they had only read David Hume. The 18th century scholar presciently described the problem quite accurately, stating that “as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principle.” A century later, Aleksandr Pushkin reaffirmed similar sentiments more dramatically, “The illusion which exalts us is dearer… than ten thousand truths.” We desperately long to be right, regardless of the facts and evidence.

You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks

Given the difficulties in “reasoning” our way to solutions, we return to the fundamental question of how can we excite the same level of passionate intensity to effectively solve problems in our politics that we naturally get from trying to prove that we are right and others are wrong. The answer to that question is not as difficult as one might think; it merely requires a brief moment of perspective.

In the early modern period, nearly every field of human endeavor confronted this same challenge. Science, medicine, agriculture, commerce, technology, and others were ruled by kings, clerics, and medieval convention. Gradually, we began to discover that the world around us and the cosmos above us does not conform to the dictates of medieval assumptions, instincts, intuitions, and opinions. In fact, there was an entire universe just waiting to be understood, if we would overcome our entrenched beliefs.

Fortunately, there were gifted, insightful men such as Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Voltaire, Newton, Locke, Adam Smith and our Founding Fathers who were willing to meet the challenge of discovery and do the difficult work of establishing the foundations upon which the unparalleled advancement and prosperity of the modern world was built.

Error is the enemy, not each other

This process of discovering how the world actually works and solving problems took many forms, all of which were framed around two guiding principles: reality and results. The animating spirit of this transition was one of relentlessly finding better ways to do things, making miraculous discoveries and improving the lives of vast populations—in other words, innovation.

In the Middle Ages, innovation was considered rash and radical, upsetting the perfect balance that “god intended” of absolute rule of kings, clergy and convention. One popular expression was that medieval humanity was living in the “best of all possible worlds.” The following four centuries proved that Panglossian perspective was nothing other than false belief masquerading as revealed wisdom.

The first field to be transformed by the mindset and method of innovation was the scientific method. At the beginning of the 17th century, students were taught at the best universities in Europe that the earth is the center of the universe, that all disease is caused by an imbalance of humors, and that monarchs have the divine right to rule over their subjects. Gradually, these governing myths were exposed to be erroneous and were overturned. Science was the first discipline to escape the clutches of medieval assumptions and beliefs, because the great thinkers of the day used innovative problem-solving to analyze the world and test their new theories through experiment.

To err is human, to innovate divine

Pioneered through the development of the scientific method, the mindset and method of innovative problem-solving quickly spread through other fields in Europe. Before long, medicine, agriculture, commerce and industry were being transformed as well. This upward surge in progress and productivity eventually made its way into the social sciences. Building upon the writings of John Locke and The Glorious Revolution, our Founding Fathers created the first modern republic in history in a stroke of innovative genius through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Even with this strong foundation, our country’s founders understood that the success or failure of this “Great Experiment” would rest on our ability to focus on reality and results, to embrace pluralism while checking factionalism, and to innovatively solve new problems that would inevitably arise. Even though we have successfully navigated and adapted to these political challenges over the past two centuries, our current political process has lost much of the innovative spirit that drove our founding generation.

Fortunately, in most fields, such as business, technology, science, medicine, and agriculture, we continue to innovate with creativity and productivity. But in politics, we have become immutability wedded to the tired, old, failed ideas of the past. We endlessly repeat the same actions over and over while expecting different results. We must end this sequence of futility and move onward and upward using innovative problem-solving.

Our Founding Fathers were political innovators. Why then do we not fully appreciate their genius and apply that uniquely American innovative spirit to our political challenges today? Our current political factions are more recognizable by their dogmas, ideology, and partisan tribalism than their innovative problem-solving. As Albert Einstein averred, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

In looking at why we frequently ignore reality and results, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman described the problem of both sides in this way: “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.” Instead of ignoring our errors and biases, let us embrace a process for systematically removing them, just as our wise Founding Fathers did and as we have done in so many other areas. We can—once again—embrace innovative solutions to our most pressing political problems.