A few years ago, a study from the University of Queensland in Australia suggested that drinking coffee makes people more open to different points of view. Apparently, coffee makes you more engaged, more alert and thus more open to new ways of thinking. It's an ideal metaphor, I think, for what our country needs and hasn't been getting.

Instead of new ways of thinking, we've been offered extremes. The Tea Partyers are extreme minimalists, the Latte Democrats are extreme spenders, and the Beer Republicans are extreme naysayers.

A Coffee Party would shun the extremes. Its ideology would be, "Let's do what works." It would steal from everyone to find optimal solutions. Branded by the hard-working, no-nonsense symbol of black coffee, the party would roll up its sleeves and work in a nonpartisan way to get the country out of its mess. It would bring passion to reason.

More important, it would treat us like grown-ups. If taxes need to be raised to reduce horrendous deficits, it would tell us. If entitlements need to be reformed to avoid bankrupting future generations, it would tell us that, too. If we could save the country $100 billion a year in health-care costs by reducing cigarette smoking and leading healthier lifestyles, it would call on us to do so. If bloated institutions have to be trimmed and reinvented to make America competitive again and create new jobs, it would make those hard decisions. If we each had to sacrifice a little to make our country more energy independent, it would ask us to step up.

In other words, it wouldn't be afraid to look America in the eye and tell it like it is. It would tell us not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear.

Maybe I'm dreaming, but I think in today's climate, a "coalition of candid candidates" could catch on. There's so much revulsion out there with our pandering and failing political class that brutal honesty might be the perfect tonic for our times. When things are falling apart, voters -- especially centrist and independent voters -- look for competence and real solutions, not empty promises or ideological grandstanding.

Unfortunately, our leaders today are great at haggling over ideology and party politics but terrible at crafting real solutions. Maybe that's why trust in Congress is at an all-time low. The Tea Party movement may be one big primal scream without serious solutions, but its phenomenal success is a sign that America is desperate for something different.

The Coffee Party -- the party of reason, urgency and tough love -- can be that something different. It would be as if a bloated and sluggish America hired a personal trainer to whip it into shape. "Hope and change" was a sleeping pill compared to this triple espresso.

I can already see the campaign slogan: "America's wake-up call."

David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine and OLAM.org. You can read his daily blog at suissablog.com and e-mail him at suissa@olam.org.