Wake up, America — it’s time for new leadership

On Sunday evening, Emmanuel Macron, the leader of the center-left En Marche! Party, won the presidential election in France over National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

Following the announcement of Macron’s victory, former deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes, tweeted:

Instead of starting a new trend, Brexit and Trump wins were a wake-up call for voters in the West https://t.co/LAGQan8acB

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) May 7, 2017

A wake-up call for voters in the West? Brexit and Donald Trump’s electoral victory should have been a wake-up call for leaders in the West. The voters are not the problem.

It is going to take thoughtful, compassionate, servant leaders to both address the legitimate grievances of those who have been left behind by the changing economy — families, children, mothers and fathers — and lead the United States and the West into its globalized future. So far, we haven’t seen this kind of leader in the United States.

Indeed, we in the West face great challenges in the 21^st century. The liberal international order and democracy are under attack, and are among the key foreign policy challenges of our time.

{mosads}Revisionist powers, such as Russia and China, are trying to re-write international rules and norms — often by force — and are undermining democracy at every turn. These actors are trying to dismantle the international security architecture that has maintained global security.

The United States and our allies in the West cannot allow this to occur. We must stand up for institutions like NATO and the European Union. We must not allow larger, more powerful actors to change borders through force. And we must not allow democracy in the West to be undermined.

However, our leaders cannot do any of this without bringing along the people. And it goes even further than that.

Our leaders must fight for the people and their interests within these international institutions. They must ensure that the people are beneficiaries of a globalized world and free trade. And they must ask the people to help them in this grand endeavor — to protect the liberal order that our grandparents fought for during World War II and constructed following the war.

The people must feel like they are on the front lines of this great effort of our time.

To do this, our leaders first must be committed to reform: reforming these international institutions, our trade deals, and the very nature of our politics itself. But we don’t have leaders that appear truly willing to do that.

Is it time to reform entitlement programs to ensure care for the 80M projected to be enrolled in Medicare & Medicaid https://t.co/VjdW1StbVL pic.twitter.com/nfuMIt0wT5

— AmericanAction Forum (@AAF) March 2, 2017

Take the debate over healthcare. In 2010, Democrats largely went to their standard playbook and basically structured ObamaCare as a transfer in wealth. With the latest healthcare bill to pass the House, the Republicans also, in large part, went back to their standard playbook: tax cuts. What is missing in both of these approaches to healthcare: reform.

More specifically, in 1963, 17.5 million Americans were 65 or older. Today, the number has jumped to over 55 million, and spending on Medicare is over 14 percent of the federal budget. It is projected that 80 million people will be eligible for Medicare by 2030 — less than 13 years from now.

What’s more, in 2014, Medicaid covered 70 million low-income Americans, making Medicaid the largest provider of health insurance in the United States. And Medicaid played a large part in the expansion of coverage within ObamaCare.

Neither ObamaCare nor the House-passed healthcare bill took meaningful steps to reforming these programs, which truly represents the risk for a large portion of the U.S. population to lose health insurance coverage, given the number of people currently covered and projected to be covered by these programs.

We need leaders. Servant leaders. Leaders who have both the courage of their convictions but are also committed to reform. Because, simply put, 20^th century programs, policies, and institutions must be reformed to meet the economic, political and security challenges that we face in the 21^st century.

It’s also going to take a new kind of politics — not based on the traditional Republican vs. Democrat approach.

And it’s going to take new leadership — a new generation of leadership. A generation of leadership that is not beholden to old ideology and that has new ideas.

I only hope we can achieve new politics, new ideas and a new generation of leadership in time.

Alex Gallo is editor of GenerationReform.com and served as a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee for five years. He is a West Point graduate and combat veteran and a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School. His work has been published by The Washington Post, National Review, The Huffington Post, The Hill, and Foreign Affairs.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.