What do we want our America to be?

There are ways to extract ourselves from the Chaos Caucus and its wannabe authoritarian presidential candidate. But extractions are never painless.

As I was growing up, Republican presidents and candidates had names like Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, George Bush and John McCain — and Iowa’s Herbert Hoover.

Each was, or became, aware of the essential norms and skills for governing: respect and civility (even friendship), cooperation, negotiation, and compromise.

“Insurrection” was not in their vocabulary. They accepted lost elections and generally wished the winner well.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I hear you say, in chorus with Speaker Tip O’Neil’s one-time top aide Chris Matthews. (Those were days when the Speaker and President Reagan got along as friends — “after 6 p.m.”)

OK, then. Here’s our companion challenge.

Step one. What do we want our America to be? We’ve been walking backward through the legislative process, never defining our destination. No wonder we never reach it.

Do we want a country based on Gordon Gekko’s assertion that “greed is good” because “it’s all about the money?” A game in which whoever dies with the most toys wins? Major banks prospering by cheating customers?

Universities that charge students $23,580 for tuition, board and room, and then add 11 mandatory fees (with two for the student union) — plus $150 to watch their fellow “student-athletes” play football? A medical bill for a brief visit with the item, “Miscellaneous $2,000?”

What’s greed bought us? America’s ranking is worse than its peer nations in life expectancy, infant mortality, pregnant teens, obesity, heart and lung disease, affordable prescriptions — and happiness.

All of us who are not Native Americans have immigrants among our ancestors. Do we share their dreams today? Share what made my grandfather’s eyes wet up when he sang “God Bless America?”

Our Declaration of Independence declares, “that all (people) are created equal, … endowed with unalienable rights (of) life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?” The U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, includes “the right to … food, clothing, housing and medical care.” In Matthew 25 Jesus commands that we provide food, water, clothes, health care and shelter to those in need?

The destination choice is step one.

Step two is abandoning knee-jerk, discussion-ending labels such as “capitalism” and “socialism.” Address instead, “what are the goods, services and personnel necessary to create what we want America to be?”

Step three doesn’t start with a House appropriations bill. It starts with listing needed resources — and their availability. The economic impact of individuals’ and organizations’ volunteer services are estimated at billions of dollars (exceeding federal programs’ cost to taxpayers). Nonprofit organizations. Schools and colleges. Public spirited businesses. Creative cost savings. And, yes, governments’ contributions.

It may not be the total solution to the Chaos Caucus, but it’s three steps closer to a destination we first need to define.

Like Robert Kennedy, Nicholas Johnson “dreams of things that never were, and asks why not?” mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org