Summary: WHAT IF… We Required More of our President?

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What if the person sitting in the Oval Office worked for us instead of themselves?

Most of us are frustrated, and the reasons are not hard to find. Promises break. Recent presidents have enriched themselves while everyday Americans struggled. Executive orders have taken the place of legislation. Pardons have gone to friends and family. The deficits we are handing our children now run into the trillions.

We try not to be vindictive. We have every right to want better.

Frustration can harden into anger and destruction, or it can be turned toward restoration. We can divide and isolate, or we can come together on the truths we share and rebuild what works.

If history is any guide, the difference between those paths will be measured in our freedoms and in more than 100 million American lives.

Let’s start building the second path together.

That is what Simple Liberty is: Everyday commoners collaborating across party lines to solve America’s biggest problems. Citizens, not politicians or pundits. We work toward the common good of all Americans, grounded in three simple values that restore our republic.

The question is not “Who do we blame?” but “What if?”

Here are seven common-sense standards Americans on the left, the right, and the center can stand behind:

#1 - What if character actually mattered?

What if we elected a President committed to the long-term common good, one who would not profit personally or enrich family while in office? George Washington served two terms and gladly returned to his farm. What if character became our first requirement again?

#2 - What if the President operated within the Constitution?

The President’s first oath is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, not to stretch it or reinterpret it for convenience. What if we stopped cheering when our own side stretched it, and insisted instead that no President may?

#3 - What if Executive Orders served laws, not ambitions?

Executive Orders exist to carry out the laws Congress passes and to respond to true emergencies. They were never meant to bypass Congress when a President lacks the votes. What if we ended pardon abuse by constitutional amendment, ruling out blanket and pre-emptive pardons for allies and family, and reserving mercy for cases judged one at a time?

#4 - What if fiscal responsibility were required?

Our national debt reached $38.4 trillion in 2025, up from $5.6 trillion in 2000. Both parties have spent recklessly, buying votes with borrowed money. What if a President worked with Congress to cut waste, eliminate redundant agencies, and operate at a surplus, so that the debt we hand our children shrinks every year?

#5 - What if education united rather than divided us?

We rank 28th among developed nations. Funding is not the problem: We have spent trillions while schools replaced American truth, character, and civics with moral relativism, redistributionist ideology, and historical revisionism.

When shared values erode, something else fills the space. France, Russia, Germany, China, and Venezuela each followed that pattern, at a cost of more than 150 million lives. What if we taught every child our true history, its successes and its failures, along with the character a republic requires to survive?

#6 - What if America led through strength AND wisdom?

America need not be the world’s police force, and it need not write blank checks. Retreat is no answer either. What if we pursued a foreign policy grounded in historical fact rather than ideology, strengthened alliances built on shared values, and measured success by the peace and prosperity we build with our allies? This course demands more of us than either extreme, and history suggests it is the one that works.

#7 - What if the President modeled our values?

What if the person in our highest office consistently demonstrated courageous good character, truth, integrity, gratitude, responsibility, and civility, in public and in private? The most visible adult in America shapes how our children behave and what they believe. Character in that office does not stay in that office.

The Mountain Ahead

Making these changes will be challenging, but not impossible.

The presidency is the office we choose most directly - one person, entrusted with the power of an entire branch, elected by the whole nation.  No vote we cast carries more weight.

This why every vote counts.  Too many of us are not voting - or voting based on emotion rather than facts - and every uncast or miscast vote forfeits power to the powerful.  In 2024, roughly 89 million eligible Americans did not vote - more than voted for either candidate. 

Self-governance is not a spectator sport.

The cost is small - a little of our time, attention, and action.  American citizens must now show up as responsible stewards of our freedom and close the door in tyranny’s face.

We can do this.

This is the first of three posts on the branches of government our Founders designed to serve us, not rule us.  We begin with the Executive - the one who enforces the law.  Congress, the many who make the laws, and the courts who apply them, will follow. 

Each was carefully designed to check the others.  Each has drifted from its purpose.  Each can be restored.

Lasting restoration occurs when we - American citizens - strengthen our character, comprehend the facts, and gratefully steward the people’s government for the common good.

Simple Liberty unites everyday Americans to research the facts behind our nation’s biggest problems and develop solutions for the common good

...because politicians and billionaires won’t do it for us.