IN LESS THAN SIX MONTHS America will elect a new President, and the nation isn’t even close to having a debate that meets the gravity of this moment. Of the many serious questions going unanswered by the candidates, the most impor­tant one is: How?

How would you, as President, bring the country together around a common vision for where Americans need to go and how they get there?

Without a good answer to this question—and people have yet to hear one—candi­dates are selling little more than a fantasy, a wish list of things they would do if they were king or queen for a day. But America doesn’t do monarchy, and people can’t afford any more wishful thinking. What they need from their aspiring political leaders is recognition of two stark realities.

The first is that neither party is likely to have enough power to get everything it wants anytime soon. For the foreseeable future, Demo­crats and Republicans in Washington will have to find a way to work together.

If they don’t, they and the country will fail together, because the second reality is that America is running out of time. For the past few years people have benefited from an unearned dividend. Global investors poured money into the currency and companies, not because the U.S. looked so great, but because the rest of the world looked so bad. This won’t last forever. America’s problems— ranging from growing debt to incompre­hensible tax and regulatory systems—are deadly serious.