Among the most serious threats to the continued health of the American republic is the extraordinarily low esteem in which the public holds the federal government. And who can blame them when Congress and President Obama seem locked in perpetual partisan warfare, even as millions of Americans have given up on finding jobs, the economy bounces along in the weakest recovery since the Great Depression and the national debt soars to previously unimagined heights.

What is to be done? A coalition of state-based conservative think tanks led by the Oklahoma-based Liberty Foundation is advancing an old idea that if implemented could revolutionize American governance. The idea is “competitive federalism,” which the coalition defines as “the powerful harnessing of our tri-partite sovereignty system that allows states to compete with each other over a broad range of issues to provide citizens with the best value goods and services at the lowest cost.” Think of the difference between having only one place to buy food versus having 50.