Europeans who settled America gave their lives a slingshot shape. They pulled back so they could shoot forward. They volunteered to live in harsh conditions today so their descendants could live well for centuries. The pioneers who traveled West did the same thing. So has each generation of immigrants — sacrificing the present for the sake of the future. 
 
 This slingshot manner of life led to one of those true national clichés: that America is the nation of futurity, that Americans organize their lives around romantic visions of what is to be. 
 
 In 1775, Sam Adams confidently predicted that the scraggly little colonies would one day be the world’s most powerful nation. In 1800, Noah Webster projected that the U.S. would someday have 300 million citizens, and that a country that big should have its own dictionary. 
 
 In his novel, “Giants in the Earth,” Ole Rolvaag has a pioneering farmer give a visitor a tour of his land. The farmer describes his beautiful home and his large buildings. The visitor confesses that he can’t see them. That’s because they haven’t been built yet, the farmer acknowledges, but they already exist as reality in his mind. 
 
 This future-oriented mentality had practical effects. For decades, government invested heavily in long-range projects like railroads and canals. 
 
 Today, Americans have inverted this way of thinking. Instead of sacrificing the present for the sake of the future, Americans now sacrifice the future for the sake of the present. 
 
 Federal spending is the most obvious example. The federal government is a machine that takes money from future earners and spends it on health care for retirees. Entitlement spending hurts the young in two ways. It squeezes government investment programs that boost future growth. Second, the young will have to pay the money back. To cover current obligations, according to the International Monetary Fund, young people will have to pay 35 percent more taxes and receive 35 percent fewer benefits. 
 
 But government is not the only place you can see signs of this present-ism. Business has slipped into this pattern, too. C.E.O.’s serve short stints and their main incentive is to make quarterly numbers, not to build for the long term. 
 
 Banks can lend money in two ways. They can lend to fund investments or they can lend to fund real estate purchases and other consumption. In 1982, banks were lending out 80 cents for investments for every $1 they were lending for consumption. By 2011, they lent only 30 cents to fund investments for every $1 of consumption. 
 
 As Robert D. Atkinson and Stephen J. Ezell note in their book “Innovation Economics,” American firms are also lagging in their commitment to research and development. Between 1999 and 2006, for example, German firms increased research-and-development spending by 11 percent, Finnish firms by 28 percent and South Korean firms by 58 percent. During that same period, U.S. spending increased by a paltry 3 percent. 
 
 Increasingly, companies have to spend their money on retirees, not future growth. Last week, for example, Ford announced that it was spending $5 billion to shore up its pension program. That’s an amount nearly equal to Ford’s investments in factories, equipment and innovation. 
 
 Why have Americans lost their devotion to the future? Part of the answer must be cultural. The Great Depression and World War II forced Americans to live with 16 straight years of scarcity. In the years after the war, people decided they’d had enough. There was what one historian called a “renunciation of renunciation.” We’ve now had a few generations raised with this consumption mind-set. There’s less of a sense that life is a partnership among the dead, the living and the unborn, with obligations to those to come. 
 
 The political debate, though, is largely oblivious to this mental shift. Republicans and Democrats are so busy arguing about the merits of government versus business that they are blind to the problem that afflicts them both. 
 
 In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama is apparently planning to give us yet another salvo in that left-right war, as he did in his second Inaugural Address. One of his aides, in a fit of hubris, told Politico that the president will be offering Republicans a golden bridge to ease their retreat. 
 
 But it would be great if Obama gave an imaginative speech that reframed things as present versus future. 
 
 If the president were to propose an agenda for the future, he’d double spending on the National Institutes of Health. He’d approve the Keystone XL pipeline. He’d cut corporate tax rates while adding a progressive consumption tax. He’d take money from Social Security and build Harlem Children’s Zone-type projects across the nation. He’d means test Medicare and use the money to revive state universities and pay down debt. 
 
 Would Americans buy that agenda? Maybe. Americans are neglecting the future, but I bet they’re still in love with it. ||||| My dad recently said, "Put away the harps!" He was speaking about his health, but I believe what he said applies to the conservative movement and the future of the country. 
 
 Americans have the sense that the economy is fragile, that its rewards are unfairly tilted toward the few, and that the greatest prosperity in this century will be enjoyed by people in other lands and not by our children. 
 
 This conclusion is wrong. America could be on the threshold of its greatest century. 
 
 With new drilling technologies, the United States will soon have an energy surplus. This means trillions of dollars in new wealth and a foreign policy not dominated by oil. 
 
 Given advances in agriculture and bioengineering, America could be the Saudi Arabia of grain in a century when the world is clamoring for more food. Wireless communication, artificial intelligence and rapid advances in life sciences are transforming every facet of American business and daily life. Entire classes of diseases are on the verge of being eradicated by manipulating individual molecules on the surfaces of living cells. 
 
 Technological innovation means that in the coming decades, driverless vehicles will flawlessly move people and products on our highways, never getting lost, never having accidents. The development of 3D printing machines is racing ahead—and they will be down-scaled for home use, so that consumers can instantly create thousands of objects at the touch of a button. 
 
 This country is younger than all other industrialized nations, and if we get immigration right, we're going to stay young. By 2050, China will have more old people than the United States has people. 
 
 These are but a few of the country's advantages, and collectively they point toward a century of unparalleled prosperity and world leadership. 
 
 But the bright future is at risk if the federal government continues on its arc of irresponsibility. America's government-spending addiction and its lackluster system of public education are the two greatest impediments to achieving the country's potential. 
 
 I know conservatives have the solution. As governor of Florida, I balanced the state budget for eight years in a row while cutting taxes every year. I have dedicated my adult life to revolutionizing schools to make them serve children and parents and not an indifferent bureaucracy. 
 
 All Republican successes at the state level can be undone if the GOP continues to lose presidential elections. The party will forfeit its opportunity to chart a better future for the republic. In the last six presidential elections, more than 20 million times, Americans made the conscious decision that someone other than a Republican offered the nation a better future. This is because too often the conservative message was focused on what we are against, not on what we support. 
 
 We can learn from our mistakes. We must move beyond the divisive and extraneous issues that currently define public debate. The Republican Party must not write off entire segments of American society by assuming that its principles have limited appeal. 
 
 For the same reason that millions of immigrants from every nation were drawn to American shores, we need to draw into the Republican Party people from every corner of society. That can be done, because conservative principles, not liberal dogma, best reflect the ideals that made this nation great. 
 
 These core principles—greater individual responsibility, more personal freedom, smaller and more effective government—are the only principles that empower people to rise to the top, to raise a family and to be free. 
 
 The face of the Republican Party needs to be the face of every American. Real relationships take time to grow, and they begin with a genuine interest in the stories, dreams and challenges harbored within each of us. 
 
 I met Berthy Aponte, the mother of a developmentally disabled child, at a campaign stop in 1998 when she stood up and challenged me to help children like hers. Over the following months, I traveled Florida with Berthy, visited group homes, and talked to parents who feared nothing more than having their disabled child outlive them and become the ward of an uncaring state. My personal connection with Berthy caused me, as a governor, to have a renewed focus on helping the developmentally disabled. Elevating their lives elevated the lives of all Floridians. 
 
 Today, the sad reality is that if you're born poor, if your parents didn't go to college, if you don't know your father, if English isn't spoken at home—then the odds are stacked against you. You are more likely to stay poor today than at any other time since World War II. 
 
 Conservatives have allowed liberals to channel the anger and frustration that comes from this oppressive dynamic to attack the very idea of success itself. In their view, anyone who has climbed to the top 1% has committed some form of gross social breach and deserves scorn. This is enormously shortsighted. In a fair capitalist system, financial success should be the byproduct of innovation and achievement. 
 
 The central mission of conservatives is to reignite social mobility in this country—restoring the right to rise. 
 
 First, America needs a government that allows both small people to rise and large businesses to fail. Government has a role in regulating, but its role shouldn't include picking the winners and losers. 
 
 Second, the country needs to equip every child with the best tools to rise—a quality education. The U.S. spends more per pupil than any other country yet these pupils frequently rank in the bottom 20% on international math and science tests. 
 
 Somewhere in America a child is being born whose bold idea may save a life, or the lives of millions. For every child who reaches his full abilities, there are a hundred who could have done the same but are stuck in failing and indifferent schools. Reform-minded conservatives have the resolve and the record to confront and end this tragic waste of human potential. 
 
 America needs an education transformation based on standards benchmarked to the best of the world, a system of no-excuses accountability that refuses to accept failure and rewards excellence. The country needs a culture based on empowering parents with an abundance of choices and a deep understanding of the transformative power of digital learning. 
 
 Third, Americans need to reestablish that success is a good thing. We do this by offering role models who demonstrate that success begins with a bold idea, that it is often created where nothing formerly existed, and that the resulting wealth can spread to every part of the nation. 
 
 Fourth, America needs a new, forward-thinking immigration system that replaces the failed status quo, meets the country's economic needs and honors its immigrant heritage and the rule of law. For the millions who are here illegally, there should be a path to bring them out of the shadows and into legal status. This path could eventually include citizenship, as long as those who have been waiting patiently to enter the country legally receive priority. 
 
 Finally, each of us in the conservative movement needs to recognize the limits of government and the much more powerful influences of parents, churches, charities and role models. There is a political realm and a social realm, and we shouldn't confuse the two. Government should fill potholes. It is our individual duty to fill the holes in the human heart. 
 
 Conservatives can do so much more by setting an example and living by our principles than by merely talking. We need to be out in our communities helping neighbors, mentoring children and demonstrating that generosity, compassion and human potential are immensely more powerful than a thousand government programs. 
 
 There is a path forward as conservatives, and our future is extraordinarily bright. We have within our grasp the means by which our country will reclaim its momentum, leave its indelible imprint on this remarkable century and secure a better future for all. 
 
 Mr. Bush was the Republican governor of Florida from 1997 to 2007. This op-ed is adapted from his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday. 
 
 A version of this article appeared March 16, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Road to Republican Revival.
– David von Drehle begs to differ with fellow Time writer Fareed Zakaria's gloomy view of America's future. These doomsayers have been around since the country was in diapers, and the modern ones love to "cherry-pick dismal statistics from here and there to create an overall image of decline," von Drehle writes in his rebuttal essay. "If you collect enough symptoms, you can make a strong-sounding case that the country is indeed quite sick. But fallen trees don't prove the forest is dying." He calls most of the commonly cited problems "overblown," including income inequality. That's more an "illusion" caused by changes in the tax code than anything else, he argues. Fixing the tax code will help, but not much because "the main force flattening income growth for most Americans" is the massive force of globalization. And "contrary to what you may hear, the US is doing pretty well at riding that whirlwind," he writes. "Wages may have stagnated, but the US hasn't. America's inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, and workers have answered the sudden glut of cheap labor around the world by leading an astonishing revolution in productivity." So let the doomsayers do their thing. But with "further hard work and sacrifice (goaded by the spur of our relentless self-doubt) the US will do just fine in the world it has shaped." Full column here, or click for Zakaria's column here.