Well, It’s time I guess. 

In 2013 I went to a leadership conference. I left so jazzed and pumped up about my ability to lead that I was certain that I’d be able to run for president in 2024 and get elected.  Let me just say that it’s been a crazy 11 years – as you all have seen. I definitely believe that now is the time for me to run.  That said, I didn’t run in 2024, but I did consider it, as I do every two years. 

I used to write my opinions on paper in High school.  In these papers I discussed highly controversial topics, politics, current events, and even law in general.  I’d even say that my opinions have changed on some of those papers since then.

As life happened politics seemed to be something that disrupted my peace. I struggled to do anything regarding politics while I was working a 9-5.  Regardless, I never lost my passion for politics. I have been feeling called to jump back in and take action since that leadership conference, I just kept denying it.  As it built up though, I would take to social media. I’d find myself in a sea of others complaining about all of the things that needed to change, and never once taking any additional action. I feel it’s time… time for us to make a change.

Who would do it better?

How many of you have said “Oh come on I could do a better job of this!” but haven’t given a second thought to running for an office?

Yeah that’s been me too.  In part because while I know how to bring people together – what I don’t have is enough experience in legislation and in office. I recognize that doing those things are very different than running a business, leading a team, or helping people compromise.   So, I have decided that the first step to fixing this for the population – so that more of us feel empowered to run for office is to bring the constitution forward in a relatable way and allow us to ask questions on it. 

When the US was formed delegates participated in a “constitutional convention.” This allowed representatives to argue, learn, try to better understand, compromise, and come to gether in drafting our constitution.  They knew that it would need to be updated over time and so they worked together to include language that would allow us to update this document for as long as we stood the test of time. 

Why now?

We’re at a tipping point with our country. Our people don’t have much faith in our government and that isn’t going to change if we don’t do something about it. I believe we can make changes by doing things like standing up and running for offices.  I think it’s important that we all get on the same page before we just up and do something as crazy as running for office with little to know experience.  When I work with leaders as a coach, as a manager, and as a parent I first work with them on understanding themselves. Then I work with them to opening up to different perspectives in a tactful and strategic way.  A way that doesn’t  make them change their core essence of who they are just to hear and understand where people are. 

It’s my belief that politics, would serve the people best if we could learn to listen with out judgement. And I believe we could do this more effectively if we know who we are, and become truly and naturally curious about who other people are.  This belief is why I’m launching Perspectives on Prescedent.

Here’s what we’ll cover in the first season or two: 

1) What are the 7 moral values that are held by anthropologists world wide? What do they mean and what does it look like in our country?  I will have this discussion with a real live anthropologist who can share insight as I ask questions.

2) What are some of the common values from when our country was founded that we still hold dear today? I’ll have this discussion with other people and with experts on history and law

3) We’ll talk about some of the historical documents leading up to the Constitution – what were our forefathers mindsets like? As the english language has shifted, what do those words seem to mean now? I’m going to attempt to find a constitutional or american history expert to have this conversation with. 

4) We’ll dive in to the Pre-amble of the constitution which is essentially, at least in my opinion, the foundational document that shares our core values and beliefs as a unified people. 

5) Then we’ll explore each article of the constitution in a bit more detail.  What did it mean then, what does it mean now.. is it still relevant? 

6) After we’ve gotten through all of the foundations, we’ll get to the controversial stuff.  The Bill of rights and we’ll go 1 by one in the first amendments. We will attempt to review them from these perspectives: as they are written, within historical context, and within the context of “today” from all sides. 

7) As we’re going through each one, I’d also like to have some conversations about what a compromise or a solution would look like within the framework of the corevalues that we set out before. 

After this?

I’m not really sure where we’ll go after this. I suspect it will take a while. What I hope to better understand afterwards is how we can bring people together on this issues. What are some of the solutions that may be needed to ensure that we’re all on the same page? Maybe create or foster some passion and fire in our listeners to want to take on the responsibility of change. Maybe with that, we can find agreement again.