WePEG1787 — WTP’s Principles of Effective Governing

For fourteen chapters, we have been building toward a remarkably simple idea: WTP cannot govern what we do not measure. We have principles, elections, candidates making promises, representatives exercising power, enormous public budgets, and political organizations telling us what the government accomplished or failed to accomplish.

What WTP have largely lacked is a common instrument connecting all of it.

That is the purpose of WePEG1787—We the People’s Principles of Effective Governing. WePEG1787 does not tell WTP whom to elect. It does not belong to a political party. It does not require candidates or citizens to agree with every principle.

It makes governing positions visible and comparable before power is granted and gives WTP a framework for measuring what happens afterward.

WTP score. Candidates score. Representatives govern. WTP measure. Results answer.

The Bifurcation That Changes Everything

WePEG1787 began as a way to measure candidates: give them governing principles, ask them to rate their agreement from 0 to 10, publish the results, and allow voters to compare.

But there was a missing half. What is the candidate’s score being compared to? A candidate scoring a principle 8 tells a voter little unless the voter knows whether he or she scores it 2, 5, 8, or 10.

With the citizen’s score, WePEG1787 becomes an instrument of self-government. Both WTP and the people asking WTP for authority examine the same principles. Both reveal their judgments.

Neither receives an automatic preferred score. Agreement becomes visible. Disagreement becomes visible. Most importantly, the political party no longer has to stand between the citizen and the governing question.

Before WTP measure the candidate, WTP measure ourselves.

Zero to Ten

The scoring system is intentionally simple. Each principle is scored from 0 to 10. Zero means no agreement with the principle as stated; 10 means complete agreement; the numbers in between express degrees of agreement.

The score is not a grade assigned by Liberty Civics™. A 10 does not make someone a good American, and a zero does not make someone a bad American. The score tells us how strongly that person agrees with the principle as written.

If Liberty Civics™ rewarded people for producing the “correct” scores, WePEG1787 would become another ideological conformity test. Instead, the purpose is disclosure.

A candidate should be free to score a principle zero and explain why. WTP should be equally free to score it zero. Then we can have the governing debate.

No One Is Exempt. No One Is Omitted.

The Measuring Stick works only if applied consistently. Executive-power principles apply to the president we support and the president we oppose.

Fiscal principles apply to Republican spending and Democratic spending. Federalism applies whether California resists Washington or Texas resists Washington. Election Integrity applies whether our candidate wins or loses. The moment we exempt our own faction, the Measuring Stick becomes a political weapon.

No one is exempt. No one is omitted.

The Candidate Before Power

WePEG1787 adds structured disclosure before governmental authority is granted. The candidate reads the same principles available to WTP and provides a score for each one. A 10 is a clear statement of strong agreement; a 4 is useful information too. A refusal to score is also information.

The purpose is not to trap candidates. It is to let them reveal themselves.

A candidate may have an excellent reason for disagreeing with a principle. WTP should want to hear it. A candidate may expose a weakness in the principle itself. We should want to hear that too. The Measuring Stick must be willing to measure itself.

WTP Before the Ballot

Place the citizen’s scores beside the candidate’s. Instead of beginning with Republican or Democrat, the voter can begin with governing principles. Where do we agree? Where do we disagree?

Which disagreements matter most? Is another candidate closer? Is my preferred candidate actually governing from principles substantially different from my own? WePEG1787 does not replace voter judgment; it improves the information upon which judgment is made.

The Election Is the Beginning of the Measurement

Suppose a candidate scores a principle 9 and wins. That score becomes a benchmark. During the term, WTP can examine votes, executive actions, budgets, appointments, regulations, or other decisions and ask whether the representative governed consistently with the position presented before the election.

Circumstances can change, and representatives should be allowed to learn, but a change deserves an explanation: What changed? Why? What evidence justified the change?

Then Come the Results

Agreement with a principle does not prove that a policy based upon it worked. The Laws of Nature still get the final examination. Did Liberty increase or decrease? Did competition improve?

Did family stability, public safety, educational achievement, purchasing power, economic mobility, opportunity, equal treatment, election confidence, or accountability improve? Did debt or dependency increase?

Not every outcome can be reduced to a single number, and correlation does not imply causation. Measurement can be difficult. None of that is an argument against measurement; it is an argument for measuring better.

Don’t merely measure what representatives SAY. Measure what government DOES and what RESULTS follow.

Four Records

WePEG1787 ultimately gives WTP four different records. The WTP Record tells us what citizens say they believe. The Candidate Record tells us what a candidate said before receiving power.

The Governing Record tells us what the elected representative actually did. The Results Record examines what happened after the government acted. Those records create a feedback loop: Principles → WTP → Candidates → Governing → Results → Re-examination of Principles.

This system must retain the possibility that WTP are wrong. Perhaps the implementation failed. Perhaps outside events overwhelmed the policy. Perhaps the measurement was defective.

But if a principle or our formulation of it repeatedly predicts results that do not occur, we must reconsider. That possibility separates a Measuring Stick from an ideology.

WTP cannot demand accountability from the government while exempting our own governing judgment from accountability.

The Debate We Actually Need

Imagine two candidates completing WePEG1787 and producing dramatically different scores. Put the principle on the screen. Put the scores beside it. Let each candidate explain.

Give WTP the evidence. Now we have a governing debate instead of competing thirty-second advertisements. The same process works among citizens.

Two neighbors may discover that they have voted for opposing parties for twenty years while agreeing on most governing principles, or they may locate a genuine fundamental disagreement. Either result is useful.

WePEG1787 does not eliminate disagreement. It locates it.

Leveling the Playing Field

There is another consequence of the Measuring Stick that may be even more disruptive to conventional politics: WePEG1787 can dramatically lower the cost of becoming a credible candidate.

A first-time candidate often begins with enormous disadvantages. The incumbent has name recognition, donor relationships, party infrastructure, endorsements, voter data, media contacts, and a governing record. A challenger may have none of them. Before the challenger can even discuss governing, enormous resources may be required simply to become known.

That creates an unintended barrier to representative government. Highly qualified citizens may make excellent representatives, but have never spent years building a political organization.

A business owner, teacher, pastor, engineer, physician, farmer, economist, parent, veteran, or community leader may understand governing principles exceptionally well and still face a system in which the ability to finance a campaign becomes part of the qualification for governing.

WePEG1787 changes the starting point. Give the first-time candidate the same Measuring Stick as the incumbent. Let both score the same principles on a scale of 0 to 10. Put the scores beside the candidates’ résumés.

The unknown candidate now has a way for WTP to understand governing judgment before that candidate possesses a governing record. The incumbent retains an appropriate advantage where it belongs: WTP can compare previous scores with an actual record in office.

WePEG gives a first-time candidate something political money normally has to purchase: an immediate way for WTP to know who the candidate is as a governor.

Money Can Buy a Message.
It Cannot Change the Score.

Money will always matter in elections. Candidates need to communicate, travel, organize, reach voters, and operate campaigns. WePEG1787 does not repeal those realities and cannot eliminate independent political spending.

But it can reduce what enormous amounts of political money can accomplish.

Suppose Candidate A scores a governing principle 9 and Candidate B scores it 2. A political organization can spend millions praising Candidate B or attacking Candidate A.

It can purchase advertising, mail, digital campaigns, consultants, opposition research, and messaging. But there is one stubborn fact it cannot purchase away: 9 and 2. The candidates scored themselves. WTP can read the principle and compare.

A smear does not change a Principle score.

This is how WePEG1787 can help neuter the power of unlimited political spending without limiting anyone’s speech. The answer to political money does not necessarily have to be for the government to decide who may spend what.

Another answer is to reduce the value of expensive persuasion by giving WTP better information. Instead of the government controlling political speech, WTP become harder to manipulate through it.

The Politics of Personal Destruction

Character, honesty, competence, criminal conduct, and relevant past behavior can matter greatly. But campaigning can also turn opposition research into a substitute for governing debate.

WePEG1787 cannot prevent attacks. It can make them less decisive. A candidate can answer the allegation and return to the record: Here is who I am. Here is what I believe. Here is how I scored. Compare me with the other candidates.

The Filing Fee Experiment

Take the principle to its logical conclusion. What should it really cost a qualified citizen to present himself or herself to WTP for public office?

Imagine a civic culture in which a prospective candidate could pay the required filing fee, submit a résumé, complete the WePEG1787 principles, explain the scores where desired, and stand before WTP.

Campaigning, contributions, endorsements, criticism, and free political speech would remain. But the candidate would no longer be politically invisible.

The price of admission to representative government should not be the ability to finance a personality contest.

This could matter greatly if Liberty Civics™ produces what self-government should produce: many first-time candidates. WTP should be able to identify capable people in our communities, ask them to run, and give them a realistic way to present themselves without first requiring them to become professional fundraisers.

From Dark Money to Daylight

The conventional dark-money debate focuses on who gave the money, how much, through which organization, and what disclosure or regulation the government should require. Those can be legitimate questions.

Liberty Civics™ asks another: Why is the money so valuable? It is valuable because money can influence what WTP know and believe about candidates.

WePEG1787 attacks that value at the information level. Put the principles in daylight. Put WTP scores in daylight. Put candidate scores in daylight. Put the résumé in daylight.

After the election, put the governing record beside them, and then put the results beside the governing record. Money can still speak. It just cannot own the Measuring Stick.

Don’t silence the money. Make the money less powerful by making WTP better informed.

The Floodgates

Candidate scoring alone improves elections. WTP scoring creates a civic language. Thousands or millions of citizens independently scoring principles could reveal patterns that party affiliation cannot.

A community might discover overwhelming agreement on one principle across party lines and deep division on another. Representatives could see where constituents actually stand rather than relying only upon election totals, polls, advocacy groups, or party platforms.

This is not direct democracy replacing representative government. Representatives still represent. Elections still elect. The Constitution still allocates authority. But representatives gain a clearer picture of the governing principles of the people they represent, and WTP gain a clearer picture of ourselves.

No Political Authority Required

Nobody has to wait for Washington. Congress does not need to pass a Liberty Civics™ Act. A president does not need to issue an executive order. Political parties do not have to approve. WTP can begin.

A citizen can score. A candidate can score. A civic group can ask candidates to score. A worship center can teach governing principles without becoming a political faction.

A classroom can compare constitutional principles. Technology can distribute the results widely. Self-government should not require the government’s permission.