We need a president who believes in America

The president is a liberal and that means he believes in government, not the individual. For example, three years ago he said, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

It’s the same thing we heard from Hillary Clinton when she said, “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”

We need a president who believes in America, who trusts and believes in the American people. Americans are smart enough to know that the greatest business successes, the quantum leaps in technology that have made our economy the greatest the world has ever seen, and the most beneficial developments in medicine didn’t come from the government. They came from individual Americans who were able to make those things happen because the government didn’t stand in their way. People such as David Packard, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates put computers in our hands, not the government.

The Republican Party is the natural choice to give America that president, but we must select a candidate who will enact policies that allow Americans to do what they do best: Create a robust and thriving economy. For starters, across-the-board tax cuts will free up capital that businesses — not government — can use to create jobs and turn our meager recovery into an explosion of growth and innovation.

We need to unify the taxes paid by businesses — large and small — under one low rate of 15 percent. We need to simply individual income taxes into three brackets — 10 percent, 15 percent, and 25 percent. And we must permanently eliminate the death tax, so that Americans can pass on family farms and other small businesses without being taxed a second time.

Our president should also believe in America enough to stand with our friends and against our adversaries. America is threatened by enemies that are dedicated — by nationalism, by ideology, or by their medieval interpretation of religion. We need a president who has the experience, knowledge and temperament to successfully deal with all of these challenges.

Obama has embraced our enemies and shunned and even insulted our allies. We need a president who will ask the British ambassador to return the bust of Winston Churchill so it can again stand in the Oval Office where it belongs. As I said at the Iowa Freedom Summit, to paraphrase George Orwell, Americans should sleep soundly in their beds assured that rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm them.

For six years under Obama, America hasn’t prospered. Unemployment is low not because Americans have found productive jobs but because so many Americans have dropped out of the job market or settled for part-time jobs.

The American economy has been the great engine that drove freedom through two world wars, made it possible to eradicate diseases such as smallpox and made us a force for good in the world. It’s time we had a president who would lead Congress to reduce the burdens of government that are stifling our economy today.

We know how to propel our economy to grow just like it did in the pre-Obama years, but it won’t be easy. It requires a president who can exert the kind of leadership that creates a strong political will among the people to solve the problems of low economic growth, some of which Obama inherited and made vastly worse and others which he created.

If the Republican Party nominates a candidate who pioneered government-run healthcare, or believes in giving control of our children’s education to federal bureaucrats through Common Core, or believes that America should retreat from the world stage, we will fail to deliver a president who demonstrates both at home and abroad that he believes America is the greatest nation on Earth.

As governor of Virginia, I was humbled to follow in the footsteps of great men like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who stood in St. John’s Church in 1775 and said “Give me liberty or give me death.” I believe in America. Patrick Henry believed in America before there was an America. And in 2016 we must elect a president who believes in America. If we do so, the twenty-first century will be the American Century.

Jim Gilmore served as governor of Virginia and was a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.