The Right Answer: How We Can Unify Our Divided Nation

By John K. Delaney

The first declared candidate for president in 2020 delivers a passionate call for bipartisan action, entrepreneurial innovation, and a renewed commitment to the American idea

The son of a union electrician and grandson of an immigrant, John K. Delaney grew up believing that anything was possible in America. Before he was fifty, he founded, built and then sold two companies worth billions of dollars. Driven by a deep desire to serve, in 2012 he stepped away from his businesses, ran for Congress, and won. Now he has a new mission: unifying our terribly divided nation and guiding it to a brighter future.

As a boy, Delaney learned the importance of working hard, telling the truth and embracing compromise. As an entrepreneur, he succeeded because he understood the need to ensure opportunity for all, focus on the future, and think creatively about problem-solving. In these pages, he illustrates the potency of these principles with vivid stories from his childhood, his career in business, his family, and his new life as a politician. He also writes candidly about the often frustrating experience of working on Capitol Hill, where many of his colleagues care more about scoring political points than improving the lives of their fellow Americans. With a clear eye and an open heart, he explains that only by seeing both sides of anargument and releasing our inner entrepreneur can we get back to constructive, enlightened governing.

Seventy years ago, John F. Kennedy appealed to our best instincts when he said, “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer.” In this inspiring book, John K. Delaney asks all of us to cast aside destructive, partisan thinking and join him in an urgent endeavor: working together to forge a new era of American greatness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781250294975

John K. Delaney

John K. Delaney, the United States Representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district, was one of America’s most innovative and successful entrepreneurs before he entered politics. The co-founder and CEO of two companies, HealthCare Financial and CapitalSource, both of which were ultimately sold for enormous sums, he is an active philanthropist. A Democrat who is now in his third term in Congress, he was recently named by Fortune magazine as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. He and his wife April have four daughters and live in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The Courage of Our Convictions

Wednesday, August 1, 1923, dawned chilly and clear in New York City. By the time the sun rose over lower Manhattan, a dozen passenger ships had steamed into New York Harbor, hurrying to complete the last leg of their long journeys across the Atlantic. And by the time the sun set, a total of sixteen such ships would dock at the city’s piers, delivering fifteen thousand men, women, and children who dreamed of a better life in the United States of America.

These ships had sailed from all across Europe, and the people they carried came from every nation you could think of—Albania, Armenia, Britain, Egypt, Finland, Italy, Persia, Russia, Syria. As the New York Times put it the next day, There were more than thirty-five nationalities represented by the immigrants who landed yesterday, and some of them spoke such strange tongues that no one so far has been found who can understand them.

The massive RMS Franconia, which had set out from Liverpool on July 22, carried the most passengers. Among its 3,200 travelers were a few minor celebrities, including the president of the Campbell Soup Company and a British tennis star. Also aboard the Franconia were eight members of the Rowe family of Quarrington Hill, England: thirty-six-year-old Emily Rowe and seven of her children, ranging in age from one-year-old Percival to seventeen-year-old Albert, known as Al. They were coming to meet Emily’s husband, William, who’d arrived earlier and hoped to settle his family in New Jersey.

After ten days at sea, the Rowes had finally made it to Ellis Island, the first stop in their quest to become Americans. The family joined the crowds of people shuffling into the main building, up the staircase, and into the Great Hall, where doctors performed six-second physicals, quick assessments to determine whether would-be immigrants were healthy enough to be allowed into the country. One by one, each of the Rowe children passed inspection, but when it was Al’s turn the doctor stopped him. Al was missing his left arm, the result of a childhood accident, and that was enough for the authorities to order him detained.

Would Al be allowed to stay here with his family? Or would he be deemed unfit and sent back? It must have been frightening for this teenaged boy to know he could be put right back on a ship, alone, for the arduous return journey to England. He and his family had risked everything in the hope of making a new life in America. Now that it was almost within his grasp, was he destined to lose it?

At the family’s request, Al was eventually granted an appeal, which would take place in Ellis Island’s second-floor Hearing Room. Taking a seat on a wooden bench, he watched nervously as the official who would decide his fate walked into the room. When he did, young Albert noticed something that stunned him. He could hardly believe his eyes, but the man hearing his case had only one arm.

And that was the moment when Al Rowe, my grandfather, knew he would be an American.

*   *   *

I love that story about my grandfather because it reminds me of just how hard generations of immigrants have fought to come to this country. The United States of America has always been a place worth striving toward, a place where people from all over the globe come to seek opportunity and build their futures.

It’s a place where a young man such as Al Rowe could find a job and raise a family. Al worked at the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, a pencil factory in Jersey City, New Jersey, for fifty years, supporting his family and passing along the values of hard work, honesty, and civility to his two children: my mother, Elaine, and my uncle John. It’s a place where Elaine and her hardworking electrician husband, my father, Jack Delaney, could buy a home and raise their own children, including a son who would go on to become a lawyer, an entrepreneur, a CEO, a U.S. congressman, and now a candidate for president.

For two hundred fifty years, anything has seemed possible in the United States. Yet today our nation is deeply divided. More so than at any time in recent memory, our nation appears to be at war with itself. We’re having a difficult time doing what we’ve always done best—respond to change, and lead.

The hard truth is that we’re living in an era of hyperpartisan politics, and it’s destroying our country. Particularly since the 2016 election, this rabid partisanship has been pulling communities apart; it’s even pulling families apart. Worse, it’s preventing us from seizing the large-scale opportunities that await the next generation, and it’s making it impossible for us to address the urgent problems that are threatening our quality of life. Instead of rebuilding our country, we’re tearing each other down. Instead of figuring out how to close the vast gap between rich and poor, we’re busy figuring out how to blame the other side for our problems. Instead of developing global economic and security alliances, we’re isolating ourselves from the rest of the world. Instead of preparing our citizens for the future of work, we’re risking reduced economic growth with fewer paying jobs. And instead of adapting to new technological innovations, automation, and artificial intelligence, we’re relitigating the decisions made in the past. Instead of leadership, we have divisiveness.

The cost of doing nothing is not nothing. The longer we delay addressing these problems, the worse they become. The longer we delay leading our country into the future, the more opportunities slip away. We have serious work to do, and our government is too focused on political gamesmanship to do it. Politicians these days seem to care more about the fight than about solutions, because fighting is what wins elections.

But the enemy is not the person on the other side of the aisle. The enemy is actually partisan politics itself. The American people are tired of it, and they are more than ready for change. In an October 2017 Gallup poll, a majority of respondents (58 percent) said they’d prefer their political leaders to compromise in order to get things done, while just 18 percent said they’d prefer their leaders to stick to their beliefs even if little gets done.

Clearly, the people are way ahead of the politicians on this issue. I’ve been in politics for only a few years, but I’m convinced that all this partisan fighting is based on the deeply flawed notion that the other side is always wrong. Even though I’m a strong Democrat, I don’t think the Republicans are wrong about everything they believe. Succumbing to knee-jerk politics is the easy way out; instead, I believe we should look clearly at the facts and then identify solutions based on what’s actually happening rather than on what might score political points.

I’m also an entrepreneur, so I tend to focus on the pragmatic question of how to get things done—and the way our government tries to get things done is, frankly, baffling to me. Imagine that you’re trying to do business with someone and the first words out of your mouth are You’re stupid and everything you think is wrong. Now let’s work out a deal. That would never fly in the business world, and it obviously doesn’t work so well in politics, either. Why would you want to alienate the people you’re trying to work with? Why not search for common ground, rather than harping on disagreements?

In other words, why not embrace bipartisanship and the truth? We’ve got to stop retreating to our corners and complaining about each other. At a crucial moment in our nation’s history, we’re looking for arguments when we need to be looking for solutions.

*   *   *

After all the political fighting, mudslinging, and pure hostility of the last few years, the central question is this: how can we bring the country back together again and start solving real problems to help real people? That’s my goal as a candidate for the presidency, and that’s what this book is about.

In these pages, I’ll reveal nine ways we can work to unify our fractured nation. I’ll describe big ideas and my proposed solutions for the most pressing problems facing us today. And I’ll explain why I think I’m the person who can lead us where we need to go.

I’ve worn many hats in my professional life, first as a kid from a blue-collar family working summers on construction sites; then as a successful entrepreneur who founded and led companies that created thousands of jobs and brought in billions in revenue; then as a philanthropist; and then as a proud three-term U.S. congressman. I’ve spent my thirty-year career assessing tough problems, pivoting to innovative solutions, and leading with determination and optimism, and I want to bring that blend of experience to focus on the challenges facing America today.

I believe it’s time for us to change direction. It’s time to focus on the facts and on the future. It’s time to discover the ideas we can agree on rather than hold tight to the beliefs that divide us. The truth is we agree on a lot more than we think we do. All of us want the same basic things, the very same things that brought a teenaged Al Rowe to these shores: a chance to make a living with dignity, to raise a family, and to embrace the unique opportunity that the United States of America has always offered. So let’s figure out how to protect and strengthen those American ideals—together. Let’s work together toward a common goal for the common good. Let’s reject despair and choose action. That, as President Kennedy so memorably put it, is not the Democratic answer or the Republican answer, but the right answer for Americans today.

CHAPTER 1

Tell the Truth

The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

In the weeks following President Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, many of us felt like America was being torn in half. In response to the new president’s divisive policies and hurtful rhetoric, protest marches and demonstrations broke out, pundits screamed at one another on TV, and the Resist movement began gathering steam. People across the country demanded town hall–style meetings so they could tell their elected officials exactly where they thought our nation was headed. Some politicians agreed to face their constituents, but many refused, deciding it would be best to wait out the furor.

That February, I was scheduled to speak at an event for senior citizens in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The previous fall, I had been reelected by a comfortable margin, and now I was starting my third term as the U.S. representative for Maryland’s Sixth District. The event, which we’d scheduled months ago, was a workshop where seniors could get practical help and advice on topics such as Social Security and Medicare eligibility and programs. We hadn’t planned it as a town hall event, but because of the way things were going it had the potential to turn into one.

We were expecting about three hundred attendees and, given the topic and the particular location, I knew the audience would lean very liberal. I planned to open the workshop by telling the crowd about a bipartisan bill I was cosponsoring, which would set up a bipartisan commission aimed at extending the fiscal health of Social Security for seventy-five years, an issue that’s very important to me. The bill follows a model employed by Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill in the early 1980s, when they successfully extended the fiscal health of Social Security for fifty years; since the passage of their bill, the poverty rate of seniors has been cut in half.

While my policy instincts are often considered progressive, my political instincts have always been bipartisan. I believe that my job as a member of Congress is to find the best ideas no matter where they reside, whether on the progressive or the conservative side or somewhere in between. I also strongly believe that legislation brought forth in a bipartisan way, with sponsors from both sides, has a better chance of succeeding in the short term and enduring in the long term.

During my second term, in fact, the independent site GovTrack.us ranked me as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, a designation I was proud of. Under normal circumstances, I’d be happy to tell any audience that fact, but these weren’t normal circumstances. Progressives were understandably furious with President Trump, and they certainly didn’t seem to be in the mood for working together.

Just before the event began, I turned to a member of my team. Do you think it would be a mistake to talk about bipartisanship right now? I asked.

Yeah, he replied. Probably best not to bring it up. This group wants you to be a partisan.

Yet, as I stepped to the podium, that didn’t feel right. Yes, Donald Trump had been elected president, but that wasn’t going to stop me from working with the other side to get things done, so why should I pretend otherwise? Wasn’t it better to tell the truth, no matter the consequences?

I started my speech by talking about my bipartisan work on Social Security. Then I went straight to it, saying, I was rated the third most bipartisan member of the Congress last year, by the way, by an independent group.

I had no idea how the crowd would react to this news, but I didn’t expect what happened next: the entire audience erupted into applause. Apparently, this was exactly what this liberal group wanted to hear—and it was a great reminder that telling the truth about where you stand is always the best option.

*   *   *

My father, Jack Delaney, died in the summer of 2016, but if you had met him you would have understood immediately why I tend to prefer straight talk.

Dad was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of a dockworker and a bighearted mother. He was proud of his Irish heritage, and he grew up scrapping and playing sports, eventually becoming a star high school football player in the town of Hasbrouck Heights. His high school sweetheart was a girl named Elaine, a pretty student at the rival high school who’d been named Miss Wood-Ridge of 1953. Elaine, too, was of Irish heritage, on her mother’s side, but her father, Al Rowe, was from England.

My parents married just after graduating high school in 1957. Rather than going to college, they went right to work. Dad joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers as an electrician, a profession that provided him with a good living for sixty years. My mother was a bank teller at Wood-Ridge National Bank for a couple of years before giving birth to her first child, my sister, Diane. Four years later, in 1963, I was born, and the four of us lived in a Sears Roebuck house, the kind that people used to buy out of the Sears catalogue and have assembled on their little plots of land.

My father was a no-nonsense kind of guy—he had a strong handshake, liked his sports, enjoyed having a beer with his buddies. Every day, he’d get up before dawn, put on his usual uniform of work boots, jeans, and a T-shirt or flannel shirt, and then head out in his pickup truck to his current job site. Dad worked hard at his trade, and he taught my sister and me that same work ethic. He was also very good at his job: he became the foreman on some of the biggest projects in northern New Jersey, including overseeing much of the electrical work in the old Giants Stadium when it was constructed in the mid-1970s.

One of my favorite things to do as a boy was to go to work with him, riding in his pickup truck with the big toolbox in the back. He’d show me around the sites, teaching me the rudiments of the electrician’s trade and giving me small jobs to do. He showed my sister, Diane, and me the value of hard work. In fact, I can’t remember a time as a kid when I wasn’t working during breaks from school. I spent summers as a mason and excavation laborer, a painter, a landscaper, and most often as an electrician’s assistant, working side by side with my father.

Dad was the strongest person I knew, always winning arm-wrestling competitions in local bars and performing feats of strength for his buddies. He wasn’t a showboat, but he carried himself with pride and expected his fellow workers to treat him with respect. Usually they did. But one day, when I was about ten years old, I saw what happened when they didn’t.

That morning, a Saturday, we hopped in the pickup truck and Dad drove us to a sprawling industrial job site. The project was well under way, and my dad’s team had been running wires through the studs and installing hundreds of outlets. He wanted to check on their progress, but to his surprise he found carpenters installing Sheetrock on the