Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the chief architect of the Contract With America who led a Republican surge in 1994, believes it is time Americans demand that their leaders address real problems facing the country and create a government that is small, efficient and responsive. Here's an excerpt from "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works."
The story of this book is in many ways the story of a video. Last summer, I posted a portion of one of my speeches on the popular Web site YouTube. It was a short, three-minute video in which I explained the difference between the world that works and the world that fails, using the example of FedEx and UPS versus the bureaucracy.
The UPS and FedEx systems are so capable and so efficient that they can track, in real time, millions of packages as they move across the country. UPS locates fifteen million packages a day; FedEx eight million — while they are moving. In contrast, the federal bureaucracy can’t locate between ten and twenty million people in this country illegally. Perhaps, I said in the video, the federal government should send each of these people a package by FedEx or UPS.
It’s a tongue-in-cheek example, but it makes a serious point. Efficient, well-organized, functioning systems like FedEx and UPS are not a theory — they’re a reality of the world that works. And they stand in glaring contrast to the world of bureaucracies and special interests — the world that fails.
The response to the speech was immediate and overwhelming. Tens of thousands of Americans viewed it and the word quickly spread. By August half a million people had viewed it. In November, the total passed a million. The success of what eventually became known as the “FedEx versus the Bureaucracy” speech convinced me that there is a great hunger in America for something much better than we’re used to from our government and public officials. There’s a hunger for someone to tell the truth about what fails in our public policy; to tell the truth about the inefficiency of the bureaucracy and the corruption of the special interests. And even more importantly, there is a hunger for the truth about what works in the world around us, and how we can have more of what works in our government — more competence, efficiency, and excellence and less incompetence, inefficiency, and failure.
That is the essence of what I’ve called throughout this book “real change.” Real change means more than just tinkering around the edges of our political system. Marginal change is not going to produce the results we want. Real change means transforming our system.
The Detroit public school system is designed to pay bureaucrats well and pay them on time, and it fulfills that design. Never mind that it fails to educate the children who pass through it.
So much of America’s current political system is designed to reward special interests, protect entrenched bureaucracies, and feed off partisan conflict. And it lives up to its design. For the lobbyists, bureaucrats, journalists, and politicians who have invested in the system, their investment has paid off.
One hundred and forty-four years ago, Abraham Lincoln stood on the battlefield at Gettysburg and resolved that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
But we no longer have government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We have government of the bureaucrats, by the consultants, and for the special interests. We have a system that is designed to bypass us, the American people. And so it is up to us, the American people, to change it. That’s why I wrote this book. That’s why I’m asking for your help.
America today is at an extraordinary crossroads. One path leads to even greater prosperity, safety, and freedom. The other leads to a steady decline from world leader into a country surpassed by China and India and with a declining ability to pay for its health, pension, Social Security, and other programs.
I wrote this book to launch America on the path to a better future for all Americans. But I need your help and your involvement to make sure America takes the right road in the years to come.
The road to a successful American future begins with our ability to take advantage of the coming explosion in scientific knowledge. It continues on the familiar terrain of a proven system of markets, entrepreneurs, and sound economic policy. And it gains speed and direction through the strength of the American civilization, which has worked so brilliantly to increase freedom, prosperity, and safety since the first English-speaking people arrived in North America believing that their rights came from God.
This combination of science, economics, and American civilization will enable us to have a better environment, a better energy system, greater economic growth, a better health system, and the right to pursue happiness for even the poorest and least fortunate Americans.
In the America that works, entrepreneurs, creativity, scientific knowledge, and measurable, real achievement matter. In this successful America, you matter as a customer and as a citizen. In this successful America, we the people have real power over our lives, and we the people get to make real choices.
That’s real change.
This book is designed to start a new discussion among citizens, to lead to new demands on our politicians, bureaucrats, and news media, and ultimately to lead to action that will help create real change in America.
This book is designed to give you the arguments to make the case for real change and to give you the hope that together we can make a difference in America.
Real change must begin at the individual level, with each person deciding that the special interests, the bureaucracies, and the forces of the past will not determine the course of the future. Real change has to start with families who don’t want to see their quality of life decline even as they work harder to maintain it. Real change has to start with citizens who say to their families, friends, and neighbors that the time has come to insist that their politicians change or they will change their politicians. And once enough Americans decide they’ve had enough of the world that fails, the movement for real change will have begun. It will roll through the state houses, over the entrenched special interests, the hardened bureaucracies, and the cynical politicians, and it won’t stop until it reaches Washington, D.C. Join us and be a part of real change.
Excerpted from "Real Change" by Newt Gingrich. Copyright 2008 Newt Gingrich. Reprinted with permission of Regnery Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.