The Right Answer: How We Can Unify Our Divided Nation
by John K. Delaney
My rating: 3½ of 5 stars
In December 2019, a friend gave me The Right Answer by John K. Delaney as a holiday gift. At the time, I was vaguely aware of Delaney as the first Democrat to enter the 2020 presidential race, but I hadn’t paid him much attention. The field was crowded with louder voices, flashier platforms, and sharper ideological lines. The gift felt like a gesture of quiet hopefulness—offering not just a book, but an invitation to consider what politics might look like if we chose construction over conflict. By the time I sat down to write this, Delaney’s campaign had long since ended—he suspended his bid in January 2020, before a single vote was cast. And yet, the book lingers—not as campaign literature, but as a thoughtful reflection on what our politics might be if we made more space for decency, data, and the discipline of governing.
I read The Right Answer that winter, noting passages that spoke to the civic impulses I still believe in: common ground, mutual responsibility, the hard but necessary work of listening. Delaney’s vision, laid out in earnest and unvarnished prose, wasn’t revolutionary—and that was precisely the point.
Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland and successful entrepreneur, brought a rare combination of business acumen and policy pragmatism to the national stage. Before entering politics, he co-founded two publicly traded companies focused on healthcare finance and lending to underserved communities—ventures that reflected his interest in both innovation and equity. Elected to Congress in 2012, he represented Maryland’s 6th District for three terms, earning a reputation as a pro-business Democrat who valued bipartisanship and data-driven legislation. His 2020 presidential bid was an extension of that philosophy: a campaign rooted in optimism, civility, and practical solutions—what he called “facts over fury.” He stood, in many ways, as the last echo of a brand of politics that once thrived in both parties but now seems dangerously close to extinction.
None of Delaney’s campaign was designed to set Twitter ablaze. All of it was grounded in the belief that Americans still wanted their government to function.
But The Right Answer arrived—and was largely ignored—at a time when the political center was already disintegrating. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, Delaney's moderation felt out of sync with a party energized by sweeping structural reforms and ideological purity. His voice was steady, not soaring; his appeal was to voters’ practical instincts, not their tribal loyalties.
Looking back, it’s clear Delaney wasn’t just running for office—he was submitting a kind of civic preservation report. His book reads like a blueprint for a governing philosophy built on what used to be bedrock: compromise, incremental progress, mutual respect. It now feels like a dispatch from a version of American politics we are dangerously close to forgetting altogether.
The erosion of the political center isn’t just about polls or party labels—it’s a slow unthreading of the civic fabric. We trade in the deliberative processes of governance for the dopamine hits of outrage. What once lived in Rotary halls and town meetings now festers in comment threads and curated feeds. The incentives are all wrong: media algorithms reward extremity, primary systems punish moderation, and fundraising emails raise more when they vilify than when they unify.
This isn't a plea for false balance or nostalgic centrism—but a recognition that without a stable center, democracy cannot hold. The center is where the work gets done: where laws are negotiated, budgets are passed, and citizens feel heard rather than herded. It’s where humility still has a seat at the table, and where policy is shaped not by purity tests but by lived experience. When we lose that space, we don’t just lose consensus—we lose the conditions necessary for pluralism to survive.
And so The Right Answer stays with me—not as a relic of a failed campaign, but as a reminder of what we still risk losing: the belief that governance is possible without vilification, that policy can be more than theater, that democracy is slow, communal, and—if we’re lucky—boring. But if the center fades at the top, it still flickers below. It’s in church basements, PTA meetings, Rotary clubs, volunteer fire departments, and union halls—places where Americans still come together not as partisans, but as neighbors.
Reviving the center doesn’t begin in think tanks or TV studios—it begins with regular people doing regular things with civic intent. Democrats and Republicans alike can help breathe life into the center by simply showing up: for school board elections, for community listening sessions, for city council public comment. We ask harder questions of our political leaders—about real solutions, not slogans—and support candidates who are willing to risk a primary loss to preserve their integrity. We reward bridge-building over brand-building and remember that pluralism isn’t a liability—it’s the heart of the American promise. The work ahead is ours. Civic strength doesn’t trickle down from elite circles; it bubbles up from participation, trust, and collective effort. The center doesn’t have to be mushy; it can be muscular—rooted in values, powered by engagement, and carried forward by people who understand that compromise is not capitulation, but courage.
I don’t know if John Delaney would have made a great president. But I do know he wrote a book full of humility and resolve, and I’m grateful someone thought to give it to me. Like reading real history or sorting laundry by hand, the work of democracy is quiet, deliberate, and unfashionable. But it’s still worth doing.
