My debate with Barack Obama

Editor’s note: Barack Obama and Mitt Romney begin their series of high-stakes debates this week. But less than 10 years ago, the future president was vying for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. A Chicago businessman and attorney, John Cox, was also seeking the seat and faced Obama in a debate. Cox ultimately withdrew as a candidate and, in 2011, became a full-time resident of San Diego. We asked him to write about his moments on stage with Obama.

Two relatively unknown candidates for the United States Senate seat in Illinois showed up for a debate in August 2003 at Chicago State University. One later became a lot more well-known. The other stayed unknown.

I was the one who stayed unknown. The other candidate who showed up that hot August morning became the president of the United States just five short years later. If you had told me then that the relatively obscure state senator I debated that day would soon be elected to the most powerful position in the world, I would have thought it would be more likely that the Cubs would have won the World Series by now.

It’s not that the suave, smooth-talking candidate lacked charisma or the ability to engage in an intelligent debate; quite the contrary, he was personable, had a nice smile and was certainly thoughtful. It’s just that the ideas he espoused that day seemed to be coming out of left field, literally.

Our debate was supposed to be about health care and education. Neither of us was a doctor or educator – although he was a part-time constitutional law lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

I was, and still am, a businessman with degrees in law, accounting and political science. My mother, Priscilla, was a Chicago public school teacher for most of her life, working in one of the toughest high schools on the south side of Chicago (also the one she herself attended).

But the real debate that day wasn’t as much about the specific problems in those two fields or the proposed solutions we debated for over an hour and a half. It was more about a fundamental difference between philosophies – differences that have continued and are even far more stark today than they were then.

I believe the difference that America brings to the world is its history as a place where people have sought their fortunes. Not because they were greedy – I don’t think the overriding purpose of life is mere accumulation of riches. Rather, America to me has stood out as a place where you can realize a dream of betterment. Call it ambition, call it achievement, call it capitalism – attach any name you want to it – but America is the place where dreams can be achieved. No matter where you start.

The history of other places around the world wasn’t always so hospitable to dreamers. Over the millennia, people in power got there and did whatever they could to keep others out. They did it with militaries; they did it with government, they did it with religious influence, they did it with economics.

America was that place that seemed open to possibilities. That oft used but taken for granted word – freedom – is not just the ability to speak or write or practice your religion. It is also the ability to achieve what you can in a free market. At the same time, your achievement can elevate the living standards of your fellow man.

That is the essential difference that came out in my debate with Barack Obama. On just about every point we discussed our debate came down to one overriding principle. I believed in free markets and competition to solve these problems; Mr. Obama believed that government was necessary to deliver these services in an affordable and quality manner.

My advice to Mitt Romney is to talk about how truly free markets open opportunity and competitive fires drive abundance, quality and affordability. I am talking about truly free markets – not ones such as we have now that are gamed by not only government but by cronies (big businesses and unions that buy politicians).

If you look at health care, that means we need to have more doctors, nurses, hospitals that openly advertise and compete for our dollars. The same with education – get away from an educational bureaucracy with monopolistic tendencies and give all parents the tools (yes, vouchers) that would enable them to shop for quality, efficient education for their children.

In our debate, Mr. Obama introduced me to a term I hadn’t yet heard (but now well know) – social Darwinism.

What is this? It is the idea that throwing people to the tender mercies of the free market is irresponsible. According to Mr. Obama, people aren’t equipped for this; they can’t “fend for themselves.” That is the argument he made to me time after time; to the cheers of his entourage and the audience, made up mostly of his supporters.

Despite the lack of audience support, I persisted in my rebuttals. I took his arguments as an unacceptable lowering of expectations. Give people the tools to learn and improve themselves, they can do what they need to obtain and evaluate these services. If health care and education are truly competitive, their price will be lowered so as to be affordable for most and private charity can make up the difference. I also think that if we expect people to not be able to take care of themselves or their families, they won’t. A safety net should be just that – a last resort used by as few people as we can muster.

As Ronald Reagan put it so well, government isn’t the solution to our problems, it is the problem. Of course we need laws and enforcement mechanisms to make sure that people fulfill their promises and don’t hurt others. But bigger government doesn’t foster innovation and efficiency; instead those in government benefit the most. My advice to Mitt Romney is to reaffirm that confidence in the American people as well as to make the historical argument that free market capitalism works. Every attempt at redistribution, socialism and government control has failed throughout history – in fact, we can see it crumbling before our eyes in Europe right now.

Continue to argue for policies that unleash the “animal spirits” of investment to achieve economic growth. Make the case that less regulation and less government will work if we give it a chance. And don’t forget to smile; show your optimism in America – our best days are ahead of us if we stick to our principles.