The midterms are over, and the next race has begun. For anyone thinking about running for president in 2028, Don Baer says the place to begin isn’t a poll or a slogan. It’s an idea.
Don Baer is a Senior Partner at the Brunswick Group, working out of the New York office. In this role, he advises global business and organizational leaders on high-stakes reputation management, strategic communications, public affairs, and critical issues. He served as White House Director of Communications, Chief Speechwriter, and Director of Speechwriting and Research for President Bill Clinton and as the White House Director of Strategic Planning.
Baer earned a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.A. in International Relations from the London School of Economics; and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Ask Don Baer what he would want to know from someone thinking about running for president, and the answer comes back in five words: "What's your agenda for the future?"
Baer's years in the White House coincided with the move into a new century and a wave of technological change. The lessons he took from that period, he says, fit the present even better.
Baer believes that leaders need a "theory of the case": an explanation of the forces reshaping the country that anchors what they stand for and gives them a direction. That direction has to be constructive. "It has to be aimed at actually making things happen, rather than trying to stop things from happening," Baer said. He sees the reverse as one of the defining conditions of today's politics.
From the theory comes an agenda. Agendas are aspirational, he acknowledged, but they are also definitional. They tell voters what a leader is trying to accomplish and why.
He offers a frame he says came to him only as he was leaving the White House. Bill Clinton was the first Democrat re-elected president since Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt's New Deal used the force of government to soften the downsides of the private sector. The Clinton project was the mirror image: using the private sector to check the excesses of government, so both could drive progress into the 21st century.
"We made some advancement on that," Baer said, "but we kind of lost the theory of the case along the way, which is unfortunate, and is partially why we are where we are."
Rebuilding faith, one card at a time
Baer calls "We the People" the three most powerful words of the last 300 years. He also calls the idea behind them a myth, in the deepest sense of the word. Little in world history suggested ordinary people could choose their leaders, set their mandate and expect those leaders to serve them.
For that myth to keep working, the country has to have faith in itself. Over the last 20 to 25 years, Baer argues, that faith has eroded. A central task of national leadership, especially from a president, is to restore it, in an age when every voice seems equal and technology is changing everything at once.
Winning trust back, he said, works much like it does in a personal relationship. No grand gesture or promise repairs the damage. "I win it back every day, by putting another card on the table," he said, showing in small and medium ways that he is who he claims to be. For the government, that means delivering results, often alongside business and community partners.
Today's politics has moved the other way. "We've entered a period of all or nothing," Baer said. "And unfortunately, what we are winding up with in that calculation is too much nothing."
A White House "What Works" initiative
Asked whether he would ever return to the White House, Baer has a ready answer. The only job that would interest him is running a "What Works" initiative.
The idea grows out of what he considers the best line Clinton ever delivered, from the 1993 inaugural address: "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." Baer can call it the best, he joked, because he had no hand in it. He was still a journalist then.
His corollary: somewhere, someone is already solving each of the country's challenges. The job is to find those solutions in communities, states and businesses and shine a light on them. Data analytics now make it possible to say what works in San Diego will work in Minneapolis, but not in Houston, and why. Then leaders can hand people the tools and blueprints to adapt it.
The Editors, mtf.news4 min read"That's actually the story of progress in America, over and over and over again," Baer said. Focusing on what works also flips the country's pessimistic, fatalistic mood. People begin to see that improvement is possible and that they can get things done together.
Scaling is harder than it used to be. When John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, the country had about 180 million people. When Clinton was elected in 1992, about 255 million. Today it is roughly 340 million, with far more varied experiences. To Baer, that is all the more reason to study where things are working.
He wishes more governors and mayors treated their states and cities as the laboratories of democracy they were meant to be, with agendas built around making specific things work and seizing new opportunities.
Launch pads, not safety nets
Fear and rage are profitable right now. Baer's answer to them is old-fashioned. Fear comes from the unknown and from insecurity about where one fits. The way to counter it is to show an alternative reality built on policies that work. "Because otherwise, there's no answer," he said.
Ask voters to name the main policy ideas of the 2026 campaign, he suggested, and they would struggle. Even a familiar slogan like Medicare for All is packaged too neatly to tell people what it would mean for them. Ideas and an agenda have to come first. Then they need to be presented in a positive, optimistic way and tied to the values at the heart of the country.
The most fundamental of those values, Baer said, is that parents want their children to do better than they did. Fewer Americans believe that is possible, and no one is offering a road map
He recalled Clinton's promise to build a bridge to the 21st century, one wide enough and strong enough for every American to cross. The new century was a place worth moving toward. The language also carried an inheritance: the 20th century had been the American century.
Baer also has a quarrel with a familiar phrase. "I don't like the idea of safety nets," he said. A safety net catches people when they fall, but it does not lift them up. "I'm a believer in launch pads." The question for this era, he said, is what it takes to build launch pads to better lives in an age of artificial intelligence.
Rethinking a 125-year-old school model
For Baer, much of the answer is education, which he still believes is the key to moving up from one generation to the next. He admits that may be naivete or idealism.
America's pre-K through 12 system took shape more than 125 years ago, as the country moved from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. The basic model has barely changed. Because education is mostly a state and local responsibility, Baer wants to see governors leading: connecting community colleges with local employers and equipping people for the AI economy. Helping 50,000 people is a great start. So is helping 5,000. The next step is to study why it works and how to scale it.
The lost word: Partnership
Baer grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He points to an example from home of what an agenda for the future can build.
More than 60 years ago, leaders from North Carolina's state government, its businesses and its universities came together to create Research Triangle Park. The results reshaped the region's economy, strengthened its universities and produced discoveries in health care, energy and beyond. Baer calls it one of the greatest public-private partnerships of the second half of the 20th century.
"There's a lost word," he said. "The word partnership is very important."
One idea to help America win the future
Baer's answer: reform the education system so it equips the largest number of people with the tools they need to succeed in the future. Of all the areas he could choose, education has received the least attention over the last 30 years and needs the most reform. Even incremental changes, he said, would deliver the greatest benefit. He does not expect a wholesale overhaul. What he wants is experimentation and innovation in different places, so the country can learn what works and build on it.
