Americans can solve 21st century challenges through the kind of “creative cooperation” that is starting to build in areas around the country, including in the restaurant industry, former President Bill Clinton said Sunday at the 2012 National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago.
Giving the keynote address, Clinton praised the restaurant industry’s efforts to work with suppliers and local schools to fight childhood hunger and childhood obesity. While partisanship has made the political process largely ineffective, he said, an initiative like the NRA’s Kids LiveWell program provides evidence that a collaborative spirit could take root all over the country. Kids LiveWell was launched in collaboration with Healthy Dining, a nutrition research and menu consulting firm, and works to create healthful restaurant menu items for kids.
“What works is what [the restaurant industry is] doing to feed kids and help them eat healthier,” Clinton said. “What works is cooperation.”
Examples of governments, businesses and nonprofits coming together to effect positive change abound within the restaurant industry and without, he added. His foundation’s Alliance for a Healthier Generation several years ago worked with beverage companies to change the kinds of drinks sold in school cafeterias and vending machines to lower-calorie and lower-sugar options.
Within four years, businesses and schools cooperated to cut the amount of calories kids were getting from just beverages sold in schools, and the partnership resulted in drastic reductions, he said.
“There was no tax, no regulation, no nothing,” Clinton said. “It was just a simple agreement by people who found a way to pursue a legitimate business strategy and save our kids’ health.”
Clinton’s foundation took a similar approach to increase access to life-saving AIDS medications for people in poor nations, he recounted. Drug manufacturers agreed to a different business model, in which they had low margins on their product, but high volumes and payment certainty, Clinton noted.
“Reforms like that happen not when people fight and call each other names, but when they work together,” he said.
Similar collaborative action will be needed from lawmakers to confront challenges like high unemployment, growing public debt and inflation in health care costs, he said. Clinton argued in favor of complicated policies, such as the 10-year deficit reduction plan laid out by the Simpson-Bowles commission, or an individual mandate or pay-per-performance system for health care.
Such solutions have worked elsewhere and could improve the prospects of the United States, if legislators of both parties can begin working together, Clinton said.
“There is a real practical world out there that doesn’t fit very well with our politics,” Clinton said.
But those practical solutions are getting stronger everywhere and improving local economies, he said, from a resurgent Silicon Valley to the public-private partnerships driving genetic research in San Diego, Calif., or aerospace research in Orlando, Fla.
Clinton praised the restaurant industry several times for showing the long-term thinking evident in trying to improve food choices available to children and their families, thus ensuring future generations of restaurant customers and leaders.
“I think it’s a grave mistake to count America out,” Clinton said. “We have the best capacity to be both energy-independent and environmentally responsible of any country on Earth. We have the best research labs and vital venture capital. And even though unemployment is high … we are still younger and more diverse than Europe, Japan and, soon, China.”
He ended his speech optimistic that Americans ultimately would work together to effect positive change.
“Argument is good, and debate is critical, because nobody is right all the time,” Clinton said. “But cooperation works better than conflict in the 21st century world.”
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @Mark_from_NRN
