Retired Navy admiral espouses problem-solving over partisan politics

October 4, 2014 at 12:10a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Elect politicians based on their problem-solving skills, not on party politics.

This is the mantra that No Labels, a self-described national movement of Democrats, Republicans and independents dedicated to a new politics of problem-solving.

In Youngstown on Thursday, traveling the country as part of a yearlong series of discussions listening to citizens and spreading the No Labels word, was retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair.

He is chairman and chief executive officer of Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, a member of the Energy Security Leadership Council of Securing America’s Future Energy, and from January 2009 to May 2010 was director of National Intelligence.

Here, Blair met with area community leaders, many of them business owners, trying to build grass-roots support for the idea of judging elected officials based on their problem-solving abilities rather than their politics.

“The way to get to the politicians is to get to the people who vote or the people who influence the vote,” said Blair in an interview with The Vindicator.

Based on a nationwide survey it conducted last fall, No Labels established its vision of a national strategic agenda focusing on four broad goals:

Create 25 million jobs over the next 10 years.

Balance the federal budget by 2020.

Secure Medicare and Social Security for 75 more years.

Make America energy secure by 2024.

The agenda is driven by things that need to be done, Blair said.

“Our motto is problem- solving. ... Identify them and solve them, don’t break down along political lines. We’ve had gridlock in Congress for too many years,” he said.

Blair said making American energy secure is his particular interest.

Because of his military background — Blair retired from the Navy in 2002 as commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command — he sees making America energy-secure a matter of national security as well as an economic issue.

“The phrase that America is going to be energy (read oil) independent is just not true,” he said, because even though America is now producing 50 percent of the oil it uses, the rest still comes from the elsewhere in the world.

His goal is to make the nation energy-secure, which means that events that occur outside the United States, such as OPEC raising the price of oil, will not affect the nation’s economy.

To become energy-secure, the nation needs to move in another direction.

The country’s fleets of trucks need to convert to natural gas, of which America has an abundant supply, and personal vehicles need to move more quickly toward electric cars,

“If you feel as I do, that it’s a matter of national security, then government-sponsored research to speed up the development of electric-car batteries should be on the agenda as well as tax breaks for those who build electric cars,” he said.

He said that kind of movement would improve national security, help stabilize the economy and be better for the environment.

“We wouldn’t have to send our sons and daughters to the Middle East to protect the oil supply,” Blair said.

No Labels has been criticized in some media for having goals without the details of how to achieve them.

“This year is all about getting consensus and ideas from all of our different constituent groups,” said Margaret Kimbrell, No Labels executive director.

“We can be too cynical and calculating. We need to dream big. This country could do big things. We shouldn’t sell ourselves short,” Blair said.

But, he said, history reveals that little of importance gets done unless the goal has bipartisan support.

No Labels is trying to build bipartisan support for a government focused on working together to solve the urgent problems facing the nation, Blair said.