Leach traced many of the problems confronting the political system to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision, which granted corporations and other private entities the First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence public elections and prohibited any election laws that would regulate their spending.

He said Iowa has a “fantastic” progressive tradition and that he hopes Iowans play a lead role in forging a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United and undo many of the bad effects that have put political parties ahead of the nation’s interests.

“It’s going to take a populist movement to bring this sort of thing to pass,” Leach told the lunchtime gathering. “Getting big money out of politics is a mission that nobody in this country should shy away from.

“Everybody knows that something’s gone haywire. Everybody knows something’s not working,” he added. “Never has a country been more divided for less reason. This is all correctable.”

Leach offered a list of model guidelines he referred to as his “Ten Commandments” to re-empower American citizenship.

The “commandments” call for more civility, less polarization and for making a “hate-free” nation “our common goal.”