THE ISSUE: “Secure America Challenge”

OUR OPINION: Bipartisan effort can move Washington to act with urgency

With Super Tuesday at hand, candidates in both parties are looking to surge ahead toward their parties’ nominations.

As the campaign reaches a crescendo, a group of leading Democratic and Republican national security experts known as Partnership for a Secure America issued the “Secure America Challenge.” It is a bipartisan foreign policy and national security agenda aimed at the 2008 presidential candidates. The project kicked off with a Sunday TV spot on preventing nuclear terrorism.

“The next president will have to address these five issues immediately upon taking office,” said former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind and PSA co-chair. “But meaningful progress will require cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, no matter which party controls the White House.”

PSA Advisory Board member and former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane said, “We think these five priorities haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. We’re trying to stimulate a more thoughtful debate from all of the candidates and frame for the American people that these are things you should be concerned about.”

Addressing nuclear terrorism, the group’s top issue, former Sen. and PSA Co-Chair Warren Rudman, R-N.H., said, “Republicans and Democrats can agree that securing global nuclear stockpiles to prevent terrorists from buying or stealing materials for a nuclear weapon is at the top of the agenda.”

The statement also calls for new steps to achieve energy security and stem climate change, which McFarlane called “an issue of national security, of huge financial cost, and a potential source of conflict, so there are good reasons why this ought to be very high on our agenda.”

Hamilton added, “America has a crucial global image problem, which we can only address through strong, bipartisan steps to re-establish U.S. leadership on development and human rights. Leaders on both sides of the aisle now recognize that America’s prosperity and security are linked to the prosperity and security of other nations and their people.”

“American history shows that when we put partisan differences aside, we can overcome our greatest national challenges,” Rudman said.

“The American people are looking for something different this time around,” PSA Executive Director Matt Rojansky said. “And yet while the candidates promise change, promise to reach across the aisle and bring people together, a lot of that doesn’t have content.”

The PSA idea is to offer a substantive agenda that can serve as a bipartisan way forward, no matter which party wins in November. In the Washington of today, that is necessary. Finding common ground to address the issues urgently is of profound importance.