1787 is a new and improved brand of leadership that will never, as President Washington warned, “serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party.”
Technically, 1787 National Committee is classified as a “political party” but, in truth, we would never describe ourselves this way if it weren’t for the Federal Election Commission (FEC). They say we have to be a party since we will “nominate qualified candidates for president and various congressional offices in numerous states.” Otherwise, we would run from the “political party” label!
We promise you, 1787 will never follow the old-school blueprint of being a political party. There is no preconceived agenda, no inflexible platform, and no misplaced loyalty to anyone, especially lobbyists and special interest groups. You don’t even have to be a member, and we will never, ever forget that we have to consistently earn your vote, never just come to expect it.
When we initially started to work on 1787, we had this Pollyanna dream that we could all sit around a table – or, even better, in a beautiful rolling field, dressed in groovy dresses and daisy chains in our hair, sipping Rosé – and thoughtfully come up with solutions for our national challenges.
Knowing what we know now, we're pretty sure that we were just trying to dodge the grind that is unavoidable when trying to make something like this work. Slowly, we started to understand that someone had to provide, at a minimum, a place to begin the conversation… or we would all just be sitting around holding empty wine glasses, staring at an empty white board in a field somewhere – which would be super fun, but would probably not be very productive! : )
Because 1787 is brand new and trust in anything political is at an all-time low, we also knew simply announcing that we planned to change the world wasn’t going to cut it with the American people… and it shouldn’t. There is no way anyone can be expected to take this effort seriously unless and until the vision for 1787 is clearly laid out. We also know that the work is far from done. Now that the groundwork has been laid, the goal is to gather as many good ideas as possible from as many people as possible, then create solutions that allow for a certain amount of flexibility so we can quickly respond to changes in the national condition, or when we all, together, discover a better way – a perpetual work in progress.
Our hope is that seeing all these topics together in one place makes it easier for every American to work hard to prove these initial ideas wrong or at least offer recommendations they think may be better. That is the very best way to find the very best solutions! Please believe, we honestly don’t care where the answers come from or what ideology they align with. We just want us to have the very best ones.
Will we agree on everything? Of course not, but that’s the point. Walt Whitman said it best, I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear. It’s our variety of opinions and experiences that will stimulate colorful debate on our most challenging issues. It is only then that we can expect to discover sustainable solutions. There will always be disagreement, but we think we’ll be shocked by how straightforward the answers actually are when we drown out the noise of special interest groups, ideological labels, and the paralyzing backlash of a hard-core base. In many cases, it literally comes down to just doing the math.
You have our word, 1787 is motivated by one thing and one thing only: To cultivate the greatest version of the United States of America.
Elections are meant to be a choice. This seems like such a quaint idea because we have gotten so used to just voting for the least bad option. But wouldn’t it be amazing if – instead of our politics being reduced to a third-grade playground – everyone that was interviewing to be a leader of a city, county, state, or the entire country presented their vision for the future, along with realistic, tangible solutions… then each of us simply choose the vision and solutions we thought were best? Doesn’t that sound divine?
Now that we think about it, since we the people hold all the power in our hands, we should start demanding that everyone running for office on any level do just that. You will find that 1787’s vision for the future of America is very (very) different from that of President Trump. But here is the God’s-honest truth: We deeply believe that every single one of us has the right as Americans to choose the America we want. We will never judge you if, at the end of the day, you choose an America more in Donald Trump’s image than 1787’s – because that would be our fault not yours. It’s not your responsibility to agree with us just because we're cool (which, make no mistake, we most certainly are). You probably have kids to raise and science projects to build, not to mention a job to get to. And hopefully on the weekends you go to your grandkids’ little league games and have dinner with your friends and family, or maybe even go to church (well, at least 20% of you do).
You did not choose a career in politics – probably on purpose – so it’s not your job to sit down for two hours every morning and read The Economist or reports from the National Intelligence Agencies and Federal Reserve or studies from the Government Accountability Office. In other words, you have a life. Unlike you, we did choose a life in politics. So, it’s our job to convince you that the 1787 way is best, and we trust we will. To us, it’s way more fun this way because preaching to the choir is the easy way out. It’s not courageous, it’s redundant.