— VISION —

Over the past three centuries, every aspect of the modern world that has transformed, improved, and extended our lives is a direct result of the relentless pursuit of innovation. By applying the same time-tested, proven approach, we also have the ability to transform and improve our divided and dysfunctional political process.

More specifically, the benefits of modern technology, medicine, communications, industry, and agriculture in our daily lives are all a byproduct of massive innovation in those fields. The reason for this unparalleled success is very simple—innovation is the most effective problem-solving tool in human history.  In every field to which it has been applied, we have consistently generated creative solutions and achieved exponential advancement. Unfortunately, politics has not been one of those fields—until now. If history is any guide, innovation can empower Americans to unite our polarized polity while fundamentally improving our divided and dysfunctional political process.

Innovation may sound like an abstract or elusive concept, but it is a straightforward approach. Innovation is simply finding better ways to do things. From the Scientific Revolution to the American Founding Fathers, the principal focus was to break free of the medieval dogmas of kings and clerics and to apply new ideas for the improvement of the world around us. Since that early modern period, we have fully embraced this transformative approach in many fields, reaping exponential gains. In others, such as politics, we have ignored innovation and fallen woefully behind our potential. Further, there is nothing more real or tangible in our daily lives than the extraordinary benefits of innovation which can readily be applied to improve our political process.

For example, during the Constitutional Convention, the Framers used a quill—the feather of a large flight bird—and an inkwell to pen their historic documents. Today, because of unrelenting innovation in technology and communications, we can send messages around the world in the blink of an eye. Outside of politics, there is almost nothing that we do in the 21st century the same way we did it in the 18th. Imagine for a moment that our government could act with just a fraction of the efficiency and effectiveness of our communications networks. It would be as transformational as the Glorious Revolution in Britain or our own heroic struggle for independence and self-government.

The American Innovation Party (AIP) is dedicated to bringing about this revolutionary transformation. We will accomplish this by explaining why innovation is vastly superior to our current political process and demonstrating how it will transform our politics and our nation.

The AIP will unite Americans who want to solve problems and put an end to reliance on the tired, old, failed ideas currently dominating our political landscape. Both sides of our political debate have failed the United States and continue to cling to the illusions of the past. They both have chosen to pursue power and division at the expense of an effective approach to solving problems.  It is time that we, like our Founding Fathers, declare independence from this divided, dysfunctional, and disproven dynamic. As of today, we demand solutions, not illusions.

Our Founding Fathers vigorously disagreed on political policies and held very different visions of the future of this great republic. They were, however, united in the deep-seated belief that we could improve the way we govern ourselves and do so effectively. In other words, they were united in being innovators and, as such, they created the first true government of the people, by the people, and for the people. In so doing, they changed the course of human history and put this great nation on the path to the enormous success from which we all benefit. Today, we have allowed their innovative spirit to greatly diminish in our politics.

There are three primary reasons that innovation is such a powerful tool of human advancement. First, it begins by focusing on solutions and recognizing that error is the enemy, not each other. By starting with an emphasis on problem-solving, it is both easy and obvious to appreciate the fact that we all make mistakes. Second, it reinforces the importance of reality (facts and evidence) over the pervasive divisions of dogma, ideology, partisanship, and cultural disagreement. Third, it defines success as systematically determining what works versus what does not. As such, it not only addresses but also neutralizes the twin evils of division and dysfunction plaguing our current political process.

If we continue to allow divisions, not facts and evidence, to define our reality, then our political process will be divided and dysfunctional far into the future. Tribalism, partisanship, and cultural warfare have always been part of the human experience and need to be addressed, not ignored or encouraged. Innovation bridges that gap by reinforcing both a mindset and method of consistently creative solutions.

It has been said recently that America is being “gaslighted”, but the reality is this is not a new phenomenon. Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and liberals have all been “gaslighting” America for many decades.  For example, neither side has been honest or straightforward about their role in creating the 2008 financial crisis or their responsibility for the tragic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the unsustainable explosion of federal debt, medical costs, and college tuition, just to name a few.

The underlying cause of our dilemma is our failed and failing political process. Today, we find ourselves stuck between two warring factions of tired, old, failed 18th century ideas. Both sides have completely ignored opportunities to effectively reform or lead our complex system of government, not to mention respond to the new and changing circumstances of a dynamic world. Meanwhile, innovation, the driving force behind the enormous success of the modern world, is fully capable of addressing both issues.

Innovative problem-solving offers sustainable, creative solutions to all of these seemingly intractable problems, but that requires we look at old problems in new ways. Albert Einstein, who knew a great deal about creative solutions to complex problems, said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” As the Nobel laureate physicist pointed out, we have a choice. We can continue to endlessly recycle the tired, old, failed ideas of the past coming from both sides, or we can think about old problems in new ways.

We Americans who want our government to work toward the improvement of our great nation have never had a framework to consistently focus our politics on solutions—until now. This is why our political process has declined into division and dysfunction. Through the AIP, we now have a way to address these old problems in new ways and, simultaneously, respond to new opportunities and threats in an intelligent, effective way.

Further, the reason that third-party movements and independent-minded Americans have not made significant headway in our politics, despite widespread dissatisfaction with both sides, is that thus far, they have not given the American people anything tangible to believe in. Being anti-Washington or anti-Republican/Democrat duopoly is not a framework for solving problems. With all of the proven success of innovation as an effective tool for problem-solving over the past three centures, nothing could be more real or more transformational at this crucial time in our country’s history.

The bottom line is that unless we change the exceedingly unproductive political conversation and culture to which we have been tethered, then division and dysfunction will continue far into the future. Our new national narrative is one of the problem-solvers of America uniting, embracing the innovative spirit of our Founding Fathers and beating back the relentless onslaught of divided and dysfunctional politicians and parties. Innovation empowers us to cut through and clarify all of the necessary elements to solving the myriad pressing problems that need to be addressed.

Conservatism and liberalism, and their corresponding vehicles of the Republican and Democratic parties, are not bad in and of themselves. They are just obsolete and ineffective modes of thinking about the world.  In the late 18th century, when the ideologies, dogmas, and parties of the left versus the right were first beginning to form, popular self-rule was in its infancy.  The longer-term challenges of responding to industrialization, rapidly expanding global trade, immigration, and extending the voting franchise had a limited basis in real-life experience.

Unfortunately, very early on, before the Constitution was even ratified, groups began to form that were in vigorous—even vicious—opposition to one another. George Washington presciently anticipated the logical progression of this process, warning in his farewell address:

“The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It 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. In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

As we can now see with the benefit of hindsight, Washington’s warnings were both percipient and predictive. Equally as important is the way in which this “spirit of party” also entrenched two different approaches or “factions” to solving problems. It was not as if either method was proven to be effective or in any way universally true; that did not, however, prevent those vying for power from capitalizing on this trend to further their political interests and promote their “faction” to the detriment of everyone else.

The downside of this historical trend, as Washington warned, was to lock both sides into a state of perpetual pugilism and to cast aside any desire or effort to systematically determine what works and what does not. The bigger reality is that we all make mistakes, and we all begin with error and bias in our thinking. Therefore, if we truly desire to find creative, innovative solutions to the myriad of complex problems we all face, then we need to first overcome the tired, old, failed ideas produced by the entrenched 18th-century thinking of both the left and the right.

And just as we did in the scientific, industrial, and technological revolutions, we need to adopt both the mindset and method of innovative problem-solving and overcome entrenched dogmas that keep us tethered to past mistakes and prevent us from learning from our current mistakes. By focusing on the reality of facts and evidence and systematically removing error and bias through experiment and testing, innovation can transform our political process in the same way it has every other field to which it has been applied. 

Perhaps in the panorama of the human experience, there is no maxim that is more consistently established than this: People have different ways of looking at the world. Beginning with Cain and Abel, the historical record is replete with people having violent disagreements and opposing worldviews. This may sound like an oversimplification of the problem; however, it plays a central role in our current division and dysfunction. Given that, the central question in this quest for improvement is how we systematically separate what works from what does not, since we all begin from such significantly different starting points.

The first step is to focus on solving the problem and recognize 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 at the same time in conflict with the most effective ways we know how to solve problems. In every area of human endeavor, we have witnessed substantial advancement from the moment we embraced a method of significantly reducing the errors and bias from our initial emotional and instinctual reactions. The current research from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the objective historical record is quite conclusive on this point.

In this sense, the political process is no different than any other area of problem-solving.  The fact that we all have predispositions does not automatically mean that we have to allow ourselves to be imprisoned by them. In fact, in most areas of our daily lives, we constantly challenge and overcome our assumptions and predispositions based on the facts and evidence that are a byproduct of living in a complex, dynamic world. We accomplish this feat by relentlessly seeking to improve the way we do things. In other words, innovative problem-solving is common in our daily lives—from farmers in the Midwest to software engineers on the west coast to medical researchers fighting cancer on the Eastern seaboard. This is the truly lasting inheritance we received from our early Modern forbears, including our Founding Fathers, who revolutionized every facet of modern life. In our current political process, this rarely, if ever, happens.

Politically speaking, so many have become prisoners of their own predispositions because we have surrendered to political divisions and warring political factions. Basing our outlook and approach on solutions is the exact opposite of defining the political process by dogma, ideology, partisanship, and cultural differences. For example, some define the NFL protests solely as an issue of patriotism, others solely as an issue of free speech. At the same time, both sides want functioning roads and bridges, less crime, greater economic opportunity, and better, more affordable schools and healthcare. If we define our politics based on predispositions and divisions, then all of the other potential solutions to our mutually agreed problems suffer, and the ability to solve problems is fatally compromised before the conversation begins. Every debate is defined by “us” versus “them,” no matter what the topic is. And we all know, through both logic and experience, that garbage in means garbage out.

The last step ties together both the focus on solutions and recognition of our human propensity to error and bias. Many of the Founders, most famously Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, referred to the United States as the “Great Experiment.” To fulfill the hope and promise of their vision, we need to treat policies as an experiment, not as an exercise in “I’m right, you’re wrong.” No matter how much a policy is the product of careful, creative, innovative thinking, the potential for flaws and errors always looms. By adopting testing and experiments as the last step, as in all other innovative processes, we can ensure that unforeseen difficulties and unintended consequences are dealt with and adjusted for as the successes and errors of each policy are continuously reexamined.  

Innovation is not just a powerful tool for energizing problem-solving, but also a framework to empower our ability to improve the way we govern ourselves. It has the additional benefit of infusing those seeking solutions with a vitality that to date has been lacking, as well as a method for continuously better results. Additionally, there is nothing more real or tangible in our daily lives than the benefits of innovative problem-solving. The United States’ dedication to an innovative spirit has always been one of our defining qualities and is the foundation of our profound and enduring exceptionalism.

The AIP is a revolutionary step to transforming our politics and, for the first time, incorporating the United States’ unsurpassed innovative spirit into our political process. We were the first country on earth to be founded by a set of ideas, and we now have the opportunity to be the first country to bring the power of innovation to solving political problems both here and around the world. To truly be a shining city on a hill, we need to lead by example, and illuminating the path for others to follow.

We are divided

• Since the very beginning, humanity has experienced division and conflict
• Politically, we have been having the same argument for 2,400 years, with no resolution in sight
• The core conclusion from over two millennia of political conflict is that people have different ways of looking at the world

Our political process is dysfunctional 

• There is a fundamental disconnect between the way we instinctively and emotionally interact and the most effective ways of solving problems
• Americans overwhelmingly want to use facts and evidence to make policy decisions, but our instinctual and emotional divisions make this impossible
• The only way to bridge this divide and refocus on solutions is to apply the most powerful problem-solving tool in human history – innovation

Innovation has provided the foundation of all modern advancement, prosperity, and American Exceptionalism. The AIP will bridge the divide and overcome the dysfunction by:

• Empowering a unifying focus on real solutions, not the tired, old, failed ideas of the past
• Replacing bias and error with facts and evidence
• Unleashing America’s innovative spirit by ending 2,400 years of political division

Bottom line: The American Innovation Party will provide the leadership, vision, and methodology that is needed to end the divisions and dysfunction that currently dominate the status quo.

We are divided because people naturally have different ways of looking at the world. We are dysfunctional because our divisions divert us from focusing on solving problems.

Innovation is the solution to the quagmire of the status quo because it is the most powerful, proven, time-tested tool in human history for problem-solving. Both the mindset and method of innovation drives us to focus on solutions rather than on our instinctual and emotional divisions. As we have witnessed for over two millennia, there is not now, nor will there ever be a reconciliation of instinctual and emotional arguments.

Innovation creates a new national narrative for America based on optimism and results. For far too long, the two warring factions of our political debate have relied on tired, old, failed ideas of the past. Each time we shift back and forth from one side to the other in this endless cycle of division, we hear a rehash of some previously disproved approach.

We can solve these seemingly intractable problems and we can fundamentally improve the way we govern ourselves by embracing the proven, time-tested method of innovative problem-solving.

For the past 2,400 years, we have experienced a never-ending battle between clashing narratives. Plato vs Aristotle, medieval vs modern, left vs right, Democrat vs Republican—this two-millennia-old dispute has never been resolved. In many ways, it is getting worse.

Nevertheless, this lengthy disagreement has yielded some very useful information in the form of Two Immutable Laws of Human Nature applied to politics: 1) We all make mistakes 2) We all have biases. These two characteristics that we all share have been at the root of every man-made disaster and devastation in history.

Despite these formidable barriers to success, we have solved this problem of division and dysfunction in many areas of human endeavor. In fields such as science, technology, medicine, industry, and agriculture, we have risen above our instinctual and emotional reactions. We have accomplished this feat by applying innovative problem-solving to each of these fields. Innovation is the most powerful discovery in human history and has produced more prosperity and well-being than all the others.

Through the leadership of the AIP, we have the capacity and understanding to apply this unparalleled tool to our divided and dysfunctional political process and completely transform American politics.

We cannot reform our political process without changing our political culture. For that, we need a new American narrative to replace the unending clash of our two warring factions. Our enormous success in applying innovation to these other fields provides a roadmap for transforming our politics.

AIP is declaring the era of “I’m right, you’re wrong” politics to be dead with the recognition that error is our enemy, not each other.

We are dysfunctional because we have allowed emotional and instinctual reactions to overwhelm our ability to solve problems. The 2,400-year-old lesson history has taught us, that people have different ways of looking at the world, exposes the fact that the way we instinctively interact is disconnected from the most effective ways we know of solving problems. The AIP bridges that gap by providing a mentality and methodology of innovative problem-solving.

From the earliest settlers, to the Founding Fathers, to the pioneers, to the entrepreneurs and inventors, innovation has been in the American DNA. Our forebears were driven to take risks, work hard, and succeed for themselves and future generations. Their relentless pursuit of finding new and better and ways to do things has been a common thread, from Jamestown to today. This drive is the defining quality of why we have become so exceptional and why we will continue to be even more so in the future. Fully unleashing America’s innovative spirit is a central goal of the AIP.

For most of human history, truth and reality consisted of whatever the ruling kings and clerics determined it to be—even when those edicts contradicted observable facts. During the Renaissance and early modern period, a pioneering group of thinkers discovered that the error and bias embedded in this approach could be largely removed with a disciplined methodology. This led directly to the scientific, agricultural, commercial, medical, and industrial revolutions, as well as to the Age of Enlightenment, which produced our modern political systems.

Prior to this Age, innovation was considered rash and dangerous because it threatened the existing political and social order. Today, however, we consider innovation to be a good and positive force in society. In fact, the method of innovative problem-solving is taken largely for granted in so many areas because it has become so deeply embedded in major industries, medicine, technology, and the sciences.

For example, there are very few things that we do today the same way we did them two centuries ago. Compare the exponential advancement of technology, transportation, and communications of the United States in 1800 versus 2018, with the slow crawl of movement in the American political process.

The pent-up potential of America that is waiting to be released by a well-functioning government is limitless, and innovative problem-solving breaking down the divided and dysfunctional political system is the key to unlocking this stored energy. The other aspect of innovation that makes it the most powerful tool in history is the importance of experiment and testing.

Washington, Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers referred to America as an “experiment” because they understood that the success of the young nation was not a forgone conclusion; instead, it rested on the quality of decisions made by our leaders. As the first nation founded on a set of ideas, with brand new, untested institutions, America would be defined by our ability to embrace what worked and eliminate that which did not. The only plausible way for us to differentiate between the two is to test new ideas in the crucible of real-world application. Everything else is just useless noise.

Over the past several decades, the rise of useless noise, based on emotional and instinctual responses, has completely drowned out the wisdom of our forebears. Innovation will reverse that trend by focusing on solutions and evaluating their success or failure based on the evidence of their outcome.

Simply put, innovation solves problems by focusing on results, division and dysfunction does not. To dislodge the division and dysfunction of our current political process, we need a new narrative, a new approach, a new way of thinking about these problems. As Einstein averred, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Fortunately, both the mindset and method of innovation will empower all Americans to focus on solutions and results, just as we do in so many other fields. In the last two centuries alone, innovation has taken us from horseback to the moon, from inkwells and feathers to messages that can circle the globe in seconds, and from leeches to editing genes and immunotherapy.

We will experience a similar advancement in our political process when we replace the division of ideology, dogmatism, class and racial resentment, and partisanship with innovative problem-solving. The error and bias embedded in our emotional and instinctual responses that so deceptively creep into our thinking must be systematically removed, not elevated into warring factions. We must stop going to war with each other and declare a war on bad ideas. These divisions have locked us into a irreconcilable conflict between two sets of tired, old, failed ideas.

During the Cold War, we relied on the concept of MAD (mutually assured destruction) to stave off nuclear conflict. Today, our political process is also using MAD—mutually assured distraction. Neither side attempts to solve big problems; they just attempt to convince a plurality that the other side is slightly worse. The truth is that we are all linear thinkers in a complex world and this approach is terminally flawed for addressing major issues. We are driven by our initial reactions and instinctual responses which served us well in previous eras, but are completely mismatched to challenges we face in the modern world.

According to USAFacts.org, 88 percent of Americans want to use facts and evidence to make government policies. At the same time, 89 percent of Americans recognize that people tend to only retain facts that comport with their existing worldview. While this may appear contradictory, it is actually a byproduct of the fact that people just have different ways of looking at the world. Our current political process ignores these naturally occurring divisions—reality—to the detriment of us all.

To rise above these barriers to solving problems, we need to apply, just as we have done in so many other fields, the mindset and method of innovative problem-solving to our political process. In addition to breaking our reliance on tired, old, failed ideas, this will also allow us to differentiate between fact and fiction, truth and error, and most importantly, what works and what does not.

Another reason that the innovative approach to problem-solving has been so consistently effective is that it helps us address one of the most glaring gaps in the way that we naturally attempt to solve problems. We all view the world through the prism of narratives or stories. Our minds do not mechanically assemble facts and figures with cold, logical precision that are recalled on demand like a computer program. Instead, our minds involuntarily create narratives, a collection of stories with a beginning, middle, and end. This is the reason that a higher percentage of Americans can name the ingredients of a Big Mac sandwich and all six Brady Bunch children than can name all 10 Commandments.

In politics, this is also why ideologies, dogmas, and partisanship have such a strong grip on our attention and thinking. They give us the narrative structure that our minds crave and respond to instinctually and emotionally. The problem this creates is that it dictates that we think about political problems in the narrow, one-dimensional linear way that narratives operate. Meanwhile, all of the problems we are attempting to solve are part of the complex, dynamic world we inhabit. In other words, there is a complete and total mismatch between the reality of our problems and the ways in which we have been attempting to solve them.

Innovation has been so powerful because it empowers us to strip away those false narratives to which we become so easily attached. By focusing so intently on solutions, we can no longer maintain the illusion of effectiveness of linear thinking. By systematically stripping away the error and bias that are inherent in all linear narratives, we can address the complex, dynamic problem of this rapidly changing, adapting world.