Every elected official brings not only his knowledge and experience, but their core values and beliefs to the obligation of solving our challenges. These values and beliefs drive and mold his or her actions and decisions, whatever the issue, whether today known or unknown.
I’ve asked for your support. In considering my request, you should know my own core values and beliefs, which I’ve carried with me throughout my life. They guided me through my four years-plus of serving you and our Hawai‘i in Congress and will again guide me if re-elected. Here are ten of them:
Our Country
Ours is the greatest country. Not just our founding principles, but our history and our continued promise. Our fine balance of democratic majority rule and the freedom to think and be different. Our inclusion of new peoples and cultures. It’s not always easy being an American: we do make mistakes, we sometimes get out of balance, our path to a better future is rarely straight. But our foundations are sound, we can and do self-correct, and we have bettered our world, often at great sacrifice. If and as we stay true to our principles and heritage, we will prevail in all we face.
Our Hawai‘i
We do have a very special and unique home. Lucky-you-live-Hawai‘i is not just a saying; it’s a way of life, admired and envied everywhere. But it can’t be taken for granted; it must be protected and nurtured always, from our natural environment to pan-ethnic culture and beyond.
Public Service
To truly serve one’s fellow citizens, as JFK called on us to do, as do ministers, or teachers, or those in uniform, or so many others. Not for personal gain, but because it helps others and gives meaning to life. And because, as one to whom much has been given, much is in fact expected.
Government
It is, after all, no more or less than our agreement to act together toward our common good. Yes, many of us feel unrepresented and burdened today. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t bettered ourselves and our world through our government, for we have. Our task is not to reject but to improve it.
The Limits of Government
It neither can nor should do everything, any more than, as President Obama just said, we can or should solve all our world’s challenges. Individual and private enterprise and contribution still ultimately drive our advancement, and must be sustained to do what they do best. Our goal is always to decide what should be left to government and then make sure it does it well.
Inclusion
When we exclude, through overly partisan politics or special interest control or rejection of differing perspectives, we divide, and decisions are not accepted as the common will. But if and as we feel included in, connected with, our government, as our representatives communicate openly with us and account for our views and needs in their decisions, so are we stronger and wiser together, vested in our collective choices.
Working Together
Ours is a group effort, helping those of us in need, picking each other up, the whole more than the sum of its parts. It’s all of us, in our own personal and work lives, working together and with our government, and vice versa. And it’s our elected officials working with each other, regardless of party or belief or interest, toward win-win solutions. Not that we’ll always agree with each other, because we shouldn’t and won’t. And not that it won’t sometimes come down to a vote, because it will and must. But effort must always made to find common ground, no view should be disrespected, and where we disagree, we should do so agreeably and move on together as fellow citizens to the next challenge.
Hard Work & Perseverance
So true in life, indispensable in the pressure cooker of national office.
Leadership
The responsibility and obligation of every elected official to make the best decisions possible for us all. To face our mutual challenges realistically and squarely, identify the options and consequences of each, consult with those we represent, consider our own experience and judgment, make the decision, explain it, and be accountable for it. And, in doing so, to look always not just to today, but to the next generations.
A Better Way Forward
In change. Not just any change, not to our foundations, nor just for the sake of change, and not that change isn’t often discomforting or that it shouldn’t be approached with caution. But change that recharges, offers new opportunities, different approaches, other solutions, fresh starts, unavoidable adjustments to a changing world in a changing time. Change as a part of life and of our country’s own heritage, as directing our destiny rather than reacting. I believe that there’s always a better way forward and that we can and will find it if only we seek it out and forge it.
