Martin O'Malley: America can choose a President with experience, vision and results

By MARTIN O'MALLEY
@Union Leader:

In times of crisis, our country has always faced a choice. We can resign ourselves to the tyranny of how things are always done, or we can harness our American ingenuity and inclusiveness to work toward a brighter future. Time and time again we have chosen the latter, always realizing our greatest potential through great challenges.

Today, our country faces new challenges  —  including a changing climate, a justice system in need of reform, and an economy where 70 percent of Americans are making less today than they were 12 years ago. Once again we face a choice: Whether we will give our children a future with less opportunity or a future of more.

I am running for President because I believe that it is time for new leadership, and to get things done as a country again. The next generation can be the greatest generation, if we make better choices today to unleash a new era of American progress.

What I’ve seen and heard in small towns and cities across New Hampshire is that people are tired of the same old politics. They believe that our government is unwilling or even unable to tackle the challenges we face. But they aren’t tired of working together or looking for commonsense solutions, and they are eager to forge a new consensus in order to restore the truth of the American Dream we share.

They’re looking for a new way of governing that actually gets results, for all of our people.

As President, I will put new ideas, bold approaches and measurable results front and center in how we govern. That is why I have laid out 15 Goals to Rebuild the American Dream, which will serve as a guide — day in and day out — for what an O’Malley Administration would accomplish.

My goals are grounded in a more just and forward-thinking vision for our country. I believe we should be a nation where wages rise  —  not fall  —  with productivity; where every child has the opportunity to go to college debt-free and get a good job; and where our seniors can retire in dignity, not in poverty.

I believe that America can face down the threat posed by climate change; can save lives lost to substance abuse; can kick special interests out of our elections; and can prevent any bank from being too big-to-fail, too-big-to-jail, and too-big-to-manage.

These goals are achievable. But it is urgent that we elect leaders who know how to get things done to ensure that our nation can once again achieve greatness.

Now, I am not the only candidate for President who holds progressive values — but I am the only candidate for President with 15 years of executive experience turning those progressive values into actions.

When I ran for governor of Maryland, I set out bold goals as part of a transparent roadmap for how I would govern. And once in office, I led my state forward, together, to make nation-leading progress even in the face of a recession. Instead of cutting public education funding, we increased it to make our schools the best in the nation. We froze college tuition four years in a row to make college more affordable. We fought for the DREAM Act and marriage equality — and we won. And because of our better choices and investments, we earned for our state the highest median income in the nation, and a faster rate of job creation than neighboring states that tried to cut their way to prosperity.

Because goals are fundamentally about leadership: the ability to lay out a vision and march toward it in the face of adversity — with actions, not just words.

Next year, the people of New Hampshire will have an important choice to make. It’s a choice about whether we still have the goodness, the grit, the determination, and the compassion to forge a new consensus for progress.

I believe that we do.

With a commitment to action over rhetoric, courage over convenience, and leadership over close-mindedness, we can rebuild the American Dream once again — and restore our faith in a government that truly works for everyone.