Category: Leadership

POLITICIANS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS; THEY NEED TO STOP

Comparing Ted Cruz to a vampire  is out; comparing Hilary Clinton to the anti-Christ is in. Saying that Susan Collins is ignorant is out; saying that Rachel Maddow looks like Justin Bieber and should wear a necklace is in. Calling Mitch McConnell Lord Voldemort is out; calling Mitt Romney a pompous ass is in. Yes indeed, the hierarchy of vituperation has been reordered by those mavens of interpersonal communication known as the United States Senate.

Those outs came from Neera Tanden, the vanquished Biden nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. The ins were from the mouths and Twitter fingers of, in the first two instances, Trump cabinet nominees confirmed by the Senate and, in the “pompous ass” example, from Trump himself, without a modicum of senatorial concern over decorum. 

All of those phrases exemplify disparagement through invective.  Such quips among like-minded folks may help reduce stress and win laughs. Viewed more widely, however, most linguists and conflict resolution experts will tell you that they are not conducive to crafting agreement among various factions (here, here and here).

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the Tanden confirmation battle totally evaded a serious – and long overdue – discussion about the role of civil discourse in governance. Instead, we got a Don Rickles cage fight over whose insults were the worst. 

Conservatives insisted that Tanden’s abrasive tweets disqualified her for the job because she insulted so many congressional leaders. Liberals trotted out a database of Trump’s 10,000 insults, along with impertinent slams from the former president’s cabinet nominees blessed by the Senate.  

Although she may well have been less offensive than her Republican counterparts, Tanden lost her confirmation battle over the slings and arrows of a churlish Twitter feed. In terms of distributive justice, the outcome was less than fair.  Others have said far worse and suffered no penalty.  

Yet, the saddest part of this whole episode is that it ended without any discussion, or even recognition, of the rampant degradation of political speech.  When our leaders routinely go for the jugular and deny or demean the humanity of partisan adversaries, they set the stage for the rest of the country.  That’s why, according to recent polling, 93 percent of respondents think incivility is a problem, and 68 percent see it as a crisis.  

The problem reaches far beyond the beltway.  A Democratic state legislator in New York tweeted this to a Republican staffer during the week before Christmas:  “Kill yourself.”  A  Republican official in Kansas took out over an American Indian running for Congress with this Facebook post: “Your radical socialist kick boxing lesbian Indian will be sent back packing to the reservation.”  

Then there is this tweet, from a Democrat running for Congress in North Carolina: “Screw they go low, we go high bullshit. When (GOP) extremists go low, we stomp their scrawny pasty necks with our heels and once you hear the sound of a crisp snap you grind you heel hard and twist it slowly side to side for good measure. He needs to know who whupped his ass.”

Apologists for this kind of toxic invective by political leaders are quick to note that the tradition dates back to the early days of the republic.  Thomas Jefferson reportedly called John Adams a “repulsive pedant” and a “hideous hermaphroditical character.”  Adams supposedly called Jefferson “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” However, without social media or cable television, Jefferson and Adams could hack away at each other all day without the rest of the country knowing about it. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, a diabolical insult needs to be heard in order to do damage. 

And that is precisely what is happening now. Incivility, according to numerous studies, is contagious (here, here and here). Many otherwise genteel folks hear and read the gushing vitriol of their leaders, and then slowly amp up their own tone and volume when talking about politics.  Suddenly Thanksgiving dinner turns into a verbal Battle of the Bulge.  

Even more insidious, however, is that vitriolic political rhetoric is seen by many experts as a serious threat to our democracy.  Jeremy Frimer is a University of Winnipeg professor who studies the weaponization of incivility in politics.  Here’s what he wrote: “Incivility can create a sense that subjugating the rights of a political party is both justified and necessary, and thus leads to democratic collapse.”

Think back on the political messages floating around this past year.  How many times have Republican leaders used the term “socialist” to describe Democrats?  How many times have Democratic leaders used the term “racist” to describe Republicans?  In our world of endless metrics, it is remarkable nobody kept track.  Yet, a pollster tried to measure the impact of those pitches.  The result?  Eight of ten Republicans believe the Democratic party has been taken over by socialists, while 8 in 10 Democrats believe the GOP has been taken over by racists.  Add to that a “stolen election”, one imaginary and the other attempted-but-real, and you will have the perfect case study of how incivility can take us to the brink of insurrection.  

That’s why one-third of Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ objectives.  That’s why our Capitol is currently surrounded by National Guard troops and razor wire-topped fencing.

I have no doubt that Neera Tanden would have made an excellent OMB director. Her apologies for the mean tweets were sincere and unqualified, (an object lesson for Andrew Cuomo). Pardon my wishful thinking, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if this whole sad episode turned into one of those infrequent aha moments? There are, of course, far better reasons for our leaders to lay off the name-calling. But if losing out on a Cabinet-level position gets some pols to dial it back a bit, so be it. Whatever it takes. Inertia is a potent force, but we Americans have changed directions many times in our history.  It’s time to do it again.

Before it’s too late. 

OUT OF CRISIS AND CHAOS COMES A RARE SHOT AT MEANINGFUL CHANGE

As the aspirational glow of the Biden-Harris inauguration begins to recede, there remains a residue of hope that we are entering a period of significant metamorphous.  This optimism reaches beyond a mere change of presidents.  

After all, the toxic division in this country wasn’t invented by Donald Trump. He just exploited and deepened it.  Similarly, it won’t be eliminated by Joe Biden, although he is likely to reduce and mitigate it. 

Cultures rarely experience rapid and profound change. There are, however, exceptions, unique times when stasis suddenly succumbs to transformation. A strong case can be made that we are now in one of those moments. 

The Atlantic’s George Packer recently dug out an old nugget of thought on this subject from the late German philosopher Gershom Scholem. There are, Scholem wrote, “crucial moments when it is possible to act. If you move then, something happens.”  He called such periods “plastic hours,” and said they occur very rarely.  Based on Scholem’s work, Packer wrote that plastic hours require a major crisis and the “right alignment” of public opinion.

Clearly, we can check the crisis box on this prerequisite form. For a year now, we’ve been stacking crises on top of each other:  a deadly pandemic, an economic collapse for the middle and working class, a racial injustice reckoning and a violent insurrection by white supremacists and nationalists.  

Collectively and individually, these events have already altered the status quo and recalibrated the rhythms of our lives.  From the workplace to the schoolhouse, from renaming athletic teams to using a capital “B” when writing about Black people, our culture – in large ways and small – has been in a perpetual sea change since early 2020. 

Based on the theory articulated by Packer and Scholem, these multiple crises have knocked inertia on its rear end, leaving us in a state of flux and fertile ground for substantial change, provided that the other box of the plastic hours’ test can be checked:  the right alignment of public opinion.

At first glance, it might seem dubious to think that a deeply divided electorate could produce such an alignment.  Political scientists have referred to America as a “49 percent nation,” based on the relatively close results of presidential elections in this century.  George Washington University professor Lara Brown put it this way: “As there is no sort of long-term winner, the fighting gets fiercer.”

Yet, our perpetual partisan divide masks a robust consensus on some of our most pressing issues. Substantial majorities of Americans want some form of universal health care. They believe much more should be done to combat climate change.  They want the rich to pay higher taxes. They see racial inequality as a significant problem. They support the right of workers to join unions. They hold positive views of immigration.  As Packer noted in his Atlantic piece, these majorities have been there for some time.  What’s new, he says, is an environment conducive to change.  Rather than a return to normal, the pain, turmoil and chaos of the past year may well be a launching pad for a shot at something far better than the old normal.

If this all sounds a bit obtuse, think of it this way:  For years, you’ve wanted to make changes in your house, knock out a wall and go for the open kitchen concept, attach a screened porch, upgrade the windows.  But life’s inertia and routine dominated, and none of it ever got done.  Then along comes a tornado. The house is destroyed.  A devastating trauma to be sure, but also a rebuilding opportunity that will finally execute those long-ignored design changes.  Welcome to the plastic hours.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet used a different term to describe this dynamic. “I think we are at a hinge moment in history; it’s one of those moments that arises every 50 years or so,” he said. “We have the opportunity to set the stage for decades of progressive work that can improve the lives of tens of millions of Americans.”

There is, of course, nothing automatic about hinge moments or plastic hours. Dramatic change isn’t driven by a clock or a calendar. It takes smart, strategic leaders to seize those opportunities, to tap into a profoundly evolving environment in order to do what once couldn’t be done. There are strong signs that we are now in such an environment. The  crises of the past year – particularly the events in recent weeks – have left our normally static body politic in a rare state of flux.

For example:

  • Political Action Committees of most major corporations, including AT&T, Nike, Marriott, General Electric, Honeywell, Comcast and Verizon, have cut off all contributions to the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the presidential election.
  • Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, after four years of marching in lockstep with Donald Trump, has broken with him and is reportedly working to block the former president from playing any role in the party.
  • Former top Trump administration officials are quietly lobbying for Trump’s impeachment.
  • Many leaders of the pro-Trump Capitol riot have disavowed their hero on social media because he eventually criticized their violence and did not pardon them.
  • QAnon, a bizarre, conspiracy-loving contingent in Trump’s base, was left morose and crestfallen when Biden became president because the Qs had been assured that that the Bidens, Obamas and Clintons would be executed at the last minute during Wednesday’s inauguration, somehow allowing Trump to get one more term.

That may not be exactly what Bob Dylan had in mind when he wrote The Times They Are A-Changin’.  Yet, for a demon leader, who since 2017, reigned supreme over his base and most Congressional Republicans, it’s a major transformation. 

This window of rebuilding from the twister of the past four years will not remain open long. Now is the time to act, with focused determination and agile grace. And with respectful compromise that retains the essence of the agenda for meaningful change. 

In other words, and with apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Between the dark of then and the light ahead,

When changes emerge to alter the power,

Comes a pause in our rhythmic thread,

That is known as the Plastic Hour.

BIDEN’S VP LIST: A WHO’S WHO OF HIGHLY SKILLED WOMEN LEADERS

Joe Biden’s commitment to name a woman as his running mate has drained the boredom out of one of the more unremarkable rituals in our quadrennial election pageantry.  Instead of filling the summer with coy no-comments from a predictable cast of ambitious white guys, Biden has introduced us to an ever-growing list of strong, accomplished women generally unknown outside of their states or districts.

Critics of this women-only selection process have pontificated about the evils of filling such an important job on the basis of gender. How silly is that? For the past 231 years, all of our presidents and vice presidents have been men. The argument is vanquished by its own speciousness. Biden’s veepstakes are expanding, not limiting, our notion of what presidential looks like.

Other than Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Kamala Harris (CA), who competed alongside Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, most of the potential veep names bandied about are those of female leaders whose skillsets have been hiding in the shadows of national obscurity. 

They include:  Senators Tammy Baldwin (WI), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH); Congresswomen Val Demings (FL) and Karen Bass (CA); Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico; former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano; Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; former Georgia legislative leader and candidate for governor Stacey Abrams; and former national security advisor Susan Rice. 

These candidates have been the subject of considerable news coverage these past few months. Most of them went from a Google trending flatline of zero to the top of the search metric within days of being identified as a possible vice presidential nominee.  Never has there been so much focus on highly skilled women leaders. Of course, in a government dominated by white men, there hasn’t been a lot of competition for that distinction.  After all, we’re talking about a country where women account for less than 25 percent of the Congress and 18 percent of the governorships.

Yet, this protracted national conversation about the comparative skills and backgrounds of a dozen or more top notch women leaders doesn’t, in itself, bend the aging arc of patriarchy into a magic wand of gender parity.  But it’s a much needed start, particularly compared to where we were at the conclusion of this year’s Democratic primary process.  

Only months ago, the Dems were rightly boasting about their unprecedentedly diverse cast of presidential candidates. They were male and female; young and old; gay and straight; white, black, Latino and Asian. Yet, when the dust settled, Joe Biden,  a 77-year-old icon of the white male establishment, assumed the mantle of the party’s presumptive nominee. 

So when Biden announced in March that “there are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow,” and that he would select one as his running mate, eyes were understandably rolling in many feminist circles. After all, the guy had just kept the glass ceiling intact by securing four more years of a “Men Only” sign for the oval office.  There was no mood to break into a round of the Hallelujah Chorus for the veep consolation.

The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse perfectly captured this sentiment when she adroitly wrote: “Most feminist voters I know don’t want ‘a woman’ in the White House just because an older man announced in advance that he’d earmarked a special lady-slot for someone wearing a pantsuit.” 

We are now four months past Hesse’s touché moment.  Biden’s lady-slot move seems to be having a sustained positive impact on actually getting to know the strengths and skills these women bring to the table.  Until recently, most of them were seen first as representatives of their gender, and secondarily – if at all – as serious thought leaders. 

Social and organizational scientists have been tracking this phenomenon for decades (here and here).  Those who are the demographically few among the many in any organizational setting have a difficult time freeing themselves from their gender, race, or other identity status. They find it much harder to be taken seriously by the many, typically a male majority.  

For example, we knew Rep. Demings was the “black woman” named as a Trump impeachment manager. Now we know her background as a social-worker-turned-cop who served as Orlando’s police chief. We also know her ideas about dealing with the ongoing issue of police violence in the black community.  The same goes for every name on Biden’s list.  The news these past few months has been filled with stories about their backgrounds, including details of their accomplishments and policies they have supported.  

Think back four years ago. Who were the women Hillary Clinton considered for her running mate? There was only one: Elizabeth Warren. The other eight were men. How about Barak Obama in 2008? Again, only one woman: Kathleen Sebelius, then governor of Kansas. The other seven on his short list were men. Warren and Sebelius were both the few among the many, and neither received serious or substantive attention as a possible veep pick. 

As cheesy and patronizing as Biden’s no-men-allowed standard might have looked in March, the process nevertheless delivered a stunning antidote to the perverse leadership numbers game that has kept the national spotlight away from the few women among the many men.  When it comes to “Joe’s List,” women have gone from the few to the only. For the first time in their careers, most of them have appeared on the Sunday talk shows and have written op eds for the New York Times. Freed from being tokens of their gender, we get to know them for their character and substance.

The openness with which these women have approached their vice presidential candidacies stands in sharp contrast to the annoying male norm of publicly feigning interest while jockeying for the job behind the scenes.  Stacey Abrams captured the reason for such an assertive, straight-forward approach when she told the New York Times: “We know extrapolations are made from single moments,” she said. “Part of my directness in answering the question about V.P. is that I don’t want anyone” — whether a Southerner, an African-American, a woman, or all of the above — “to ever look at my answer and say, ‘Well, if she can’t say it, then I can’t think it.’”

The Biden project is by no means a cure-all for gender disparity in our political system. But it’s a worthy first shot at leveling the playing field.  If it gets more people to completely reimagine what a president or vice president looks like, to apprehend that they don’t have to come in pin-striped power suits and red ties, it will have been a step well worth taking. 

TALE OF TWO DISASTERS: THE VIRUS AND TRUMP’S WAR AGAINST IT

As the superman of divisive politics, Donald Trump is faster than a seething bullet point. He emits more steam than a powerful locomotive, and is able to leap over truth, justice and science in a single bound. 

The good news?  COVID-19 may well be his kryptonite. The man who wormed his way into the White House on the premise that “I alone” can solve America’s problems, has choked badly and publicly at the pandemic’s every turn.  

Up until now, the singular distinction of this misbegotten 45th presidency has been Trump’s Houdini-like escape work in separating himself from the shackles of his many vile, dastardly deeds.  He grabbed pussies, caged children, praised neo-Nazis, paid hush money, sought election interference, told endless lies. With each repugnant move, we waited for him to fall, as did mere mortals before him for acts far more benign. Yet, he not only carried on, he became more brazen in his odiousness.

Then came the novel coronavirus, radically and permanently altering the terrain and architecture of our lives. Everything changed. The rhythms of our days. The sleep quality of our nights. Our thoughts, emotions, plans, uncertainties.   Sometime between early and late March, life was scrambled, turned on its head and, for far too many people, ended.   

The uniqueness of this fragile and perplexing moment is that we are all experiencing the adversity together in, as the cliché goes, real time. To be sure, our pain levels vary depending on circumstance. Yet we share the agonizing sense of loss, of grief, whether over a COVID death, job loss, separation from those we love, decimated retirement accounts or the inability to envision better days ahead. 

Against that backdrop, Donald Trump trotted out his old theatrical, make-it-up-as-you-go routine designed to cast himself in the best possible light. The virus, he said, was no big deal and would soon disappear. As infections increased exponentially, he changed character and became our “war-time president,” pledging to eradicate the enemy.  As the death rate surpassed 1,000 a day and the economy began to tank, he waved the white flag and said it was time for the country to get back to business.  

There have been dozens of role changes since then. One day he was the all-powerful Oz who would tell the governors what to do. The next day, it was all up to the governors, with Trump blasting them on Twitter if he didn’t like what they did. He even managed to encourage and embrace protesters fighting social distancing guidelines issued by his own administration.  Then came his death-defying Mr. Science act with Clorox Bleach, and pill-popping an anti-malarial drug the FDA says can result in death. 

The fact that The Donald was acting erratically and doing dumb stuff wasn’t new. His schtick hasn’t changed in years. What changed was us, his audience.  Most of us had acquired a pre-COVID immunity to his verbal regurgitations. Sure, he told us Mexico would pay for the wall and that his call to the Ukrainian president was perfect. We might roll our eyes and create a meme, but we didn’t lose sleep over it.  

We are now in a whole new ballgame, the worst crisis in a century. We’re holed up at home while this plague ravages the country. For the first time in more than three years, many of us looked at this president through the lens of neither the resistance nor MAGA. We simply wanted him to lead us out of this mess.  Instead, he failed miserably, day in and day out, on national television, where his ratings were high but his leadership nonexistent.  

As the president performed in his daily televised briefings, these were the stats weighing on his audience:   COVID deaths, nearly 100,000; infections, 1.6 million; jobs lost, 38.6 million; families with young children that don’t have enough to eat, 40 percent; increase in cases of serious mental illness since start of pandemic, 300 percent. 

But hark, comes now President Donald John Trump to address the American people on the crisis that has paralyzed our lives.  He looks directly into the Klieg lights and pauses a bit for effect before uttering his momentous declaration:  “We have met the moment, and we prevailed.” 

PREVAILED! Really? Never in the history of the English language has a word been so tortured, so drained of meaning.  Our country is overcome with massive deaths, infections, unemployment and hunger. And this guy takes a victory lap.  Sure, Trump and truth have had a difficult relationship. He said Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a fraud, that Meryl Streep is over-rated and that his IQ is one of the highest. We’ve grown accustomed to his lies.  But this is different. 

We are all feeling the pain of this pandemic. Trump’s claim that he has “prevailed” over it, is a profane rejection of our experience. So is his campaign’s rant about the virus being a political ploy to make him look bad.  This president, based on recent polling (here, here and here), has made himself look bad. About 75 percent of us remain vigilant about social distancing and hold tight to our anxiety over falling victim to this disease. Add to that the fact that Trump’s approval ratings have reached new lows and that Joe Biden is out-polling him. There is every reason to believe that most Americans know full well that the only thing this president has prevailed over is his total diminishment and failure as a leader. 

It would be foolish, of course, to count Trump out for reelection.  We know from 2016 that he is a master of grievance politics, adroit at igniting the passions of those intent on clinging to the unsung glory of white male privilege. 

Still, his cataclysm in dealing with this pandemic leaves us with hope. Some of his softer votes four years ago came from folks who were fed up with both political parties and took a chance on Trump because of his aura of a rich business leader; a guy who could get things done.  That illusion has now been laid bare.  While tens of thousands died, while millions lost their jobs, while families went hungry, Donald Trump worked desperately to protect only himself. The I-alone-can-fix-it guy completely blew it. 

In order to turn the corner on our dual disaster, we need two things in 2021:  a vaccine and a new president.

SEARCHING FOR HOPE IN A PANDEMIC

I was drunk through most of the 1970s. As I twelve-stepped my way into sobriety 40 years ago, I severed all ties with pessimism.  Granted, there wasn’t much about the ‘70s to get all giddy and gaga about, unless you really adored leisure suits. My negativity and cynicism mixed much better with a beer and a bump than it did with AA meetings and bad coffee. The lesson learned was that we can’t always control the events in our lives, but we can chose how to react to them.  So I’ve been a registered optimist since 1980 and, as a result, a lot happier.  

These past couple of months, however, have posed the single largest challenge to that world view since my conversion to hopefulness. With apologies to Thomas Paine, these are the times that try the optimist’s soul. 

How do you find even a thin ray of light in the darkness of our new existence? The soaring numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths are baked into the daily metrics of our lives, like the pollen count and chances of measurable precipitation. More than 26 million American jobs have been lost. Economists predict that 21 million of us will be pulled into poverty.  Food bank waiting lines stretch for miles throughout the country.  Not exactly the kind of stuff that lends itself to an optimistic spin.

The basic contours of any crisis are pollenated with an abundance of pessimism.  Yet, with effective, focused, purposeful leadership, we can optimistically and hopefully work our way out of the abyss. On a national level, however, those were not the cards we were dealt.  Instead, 2020 will forever be known as the confluence of two hideous events: the most deadly pandemic in a century, and the reign of our most unhinged and incompetent president ever.  

Donald Trump addresses the crisis in protracted daily news conferences.  I challenge you to find even the tiniest needle of genuine hope in his haystack of delusions, reversals, fabrications and other cognitive constipations he brings to the table.  The diabolical intersection between Trump and this pandemic was on full display Thursday when, on that single day, our country’s COVID-19 body count surpassed 50,000, and warnings rang out to ignore the president’s soliloquy on injecting bleach. 

It’s not just his crisis management incompetence that clouds any path to optimism. Trump failed miserably at what should have been his easiest task: pulling this fractured and wounded nation together, united – despite political differences – in the singular goal of working together to survive this virus.  History offers an abundance of precedence for that approach. For most of us, a threat to our survival outranks partisan and policy differences. Our humanity, in the broadest sense of the word, becomes our loadstar.  

Donald Trump, however, was born without a humanity gene. Not once has this president showed a modicum of empathy for those who lost their lives or their livelihoods in this pandemic.   The closest he comes to expressing grief is when he ruminates about the loss of an economy he thought would buy him reelection. 

It’s the same old story. Unable to pivot, Transactional Donald sticks with the schtick that brought him to the party: an unnatural enthrallment with himself, and intense grievances with everyone not wearing a MAGA hat.  Although the virus infects without regard to party affiliation, the national response is all tangled up in red and blue.   To mask or not to mask became a political litmus test as soon as Trump announced he wouldn’t wear one.

Given all that doom and gloom, you may be wondering whether I have abandoned my vow of optimism.  No, not even close.  The optimistic viewpoint is not a snapshot in time. It’s not looking at a train wreck and calling it “fantastic,” (as Trump might if he thought it would get him votes).  That’s being delusional, not optimistic. Optimism is being hopeful that the horror of now can eventually be converted into a better place.  No successful movement for change has ever been propelled by the hopelessness of pessimism. 

The most hopeful sign lies in the answer to this constantly asked question:  When will we get back to normal?  Never.  When normalcy left us, it did not buy a return ticket. It’s not coming back. And that is very good news.  What is happening to us right now is so deep and pervasive that it will change us in profound ways, and give us a unique opportunity to create a brand new normal. 

Those New Deal programs of the 1930s that lifted up millions of poor and working class Americans didn’t just serendipitously appear one day.  They evolved as the new normal from out of the ashes of the Great Depression, a disaster every bit as devastating and painful and game-changing as this pandemic.  Then, like now, the crisis dramatically identified the cracks, strictures and gaping holes in our body politic.  There was no going back to normal again.

Through the audacity of pain, this pandemic has drawn us a road map for change. Things like wealth redistribution, universal health insurance, paid sick and family leave for workers were mocked as “socialist tropes” by many on the right just months ago. Yet, the multiple trillion dollar relief bills passed by Congress recently made strides in all of those directions. Even some Republicans are pushing the Trump administration to confront the pandemic’s disparate impact on people of color and to address racial disparities in health care. As we eventually attempt a reset on normal, it’s hard not to see momentum on those issues continuing.  

There is something else to be guardedly hopeful about.  For the first time in his presidency, Trump is struggling – really struggling – to shake off his brazen ineptness and idiotic stumbles. This is decidedly not normal.  This is the man who boasted about sexually assaulting women. He put children in cages. He colluded with Russia. He obstructed justice. He tried to force foreign countries to help him win reelection. He was even impeached, and then acquitted.  Through it all, his approval ratings, although low, were relatively constant.  Recent polling shows that the president is rapidly losing the public’s confidence in handling the pandemic.  

Just think about that: The guy who says he could get by shooting someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue is politically done in by a virus he said would be gone by April.  That’s the meaning of – that’s the beauty of – optimism. 

AMERICA THE UNEXCEPTIONAL

As we bury our COVID-19 dead, let us dig the deepest grave of all for the only victim that deserved to die:  American exceptionalism.  

For more than 200 years, we have clung to the dangerously delusional notion that our country is vastly superior to all other nations. The myth of American exceptionalism has found its way into every Fourth of July parade, every Veterans Day memorial, every politician’s rhetorical flourish.

Ronald Reagan called America a “shining city on a hill.”  Thomas Jefferson referred to it as the world’s “empire of liberty.”  Abraham Lincoln said it was the “last best hope of earth.” 

And then came the Great Trump Pandemic of 2020.  The president spent months dismissing the approaching plague as a “Chinese virus” that would pose no problem for Americans.  Despite his rosy, it’s-nothing-to-worry-about prognosis, the White House, according to the New York Times, knew in January that the coronavirus would strike us so hard that the death toll could hit 500,000.  

Trump’s administration was also aware that the country seriously lacked sufficient medical equipment and gear to deal with the pandemic’s magnitude.  Yet, it did nothing in January or February to prepare for the coming avalanche.  By late March, the only sign of American exceptionalism was that the United States had more cases of the deadly virus than any other country in the world. On Saturday, it also claimed the trophy for the most COVID-19 deaths. 

The concept of America as innately superior and exceptional has long been a deeply embedded national illusion. The dynamic is reminiscent of George and Martha’s imaginary child in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf. On some level we knew it wasn’t true, but like Albee’s quarreling protagonists, the more we pretended that it was, the better we felt, and the more real it seemed.  

In a deliciously ironic twist, the term American exceptionalism was coined quite sardonically in 1929 by Joseph Stalin. American communist leaders had argued that the country’s unique brand of capitalism was an exception to universal Marxist laws.  Stalin’s response was to condemn the “heresy of American exceptionalism” and expel the U.S. delegation from the Communist International.  

As the years passed, however, American exceptionalism was thoroughly drained of any trace of Stalin’s sarcasm.  Instead, it reflected a deeply held – if misguided – belief that our country was somehow divinely inspired to be the very best the world has to offer. A 2017 Pew Research poll showed that only 14 percent of Americans believe there are countries better than ours. Obviously, this view that America is and always has been superbly exceptional, ignores a number of ignoble chapters in America’s story. To name just a few: massacres of native Americans, slavery, Jim Crow Laws and rampant, ongoing discrimination on the basis of race, sex and national origin. 

Even before the Trump pandemic, the data consistently refuted the claim of American exceptionalism. According to a variety of studies, America ranks 33rd for political freedom, 19th for happiness, 13th in quality of life, 45th in infant mortality, 46th in maternal mortality, 36th in life expectancy, 27th in healthcare and education and 48th for protecting press freedom. Of the G7 nations (U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK), America’s income inequality is the highest. 

Whatever lingering doubt there may have been about America’s status as the world’s shining city on a hill was decisively resolved by our country’s despicable bungling of the biggest crisis in our lifetime.  Many other nations, with far fewer resources, have totally out-shown the United States in marshalling a response to the pandemic.  For example, to name just a few, the governments of South Korea, Germany, Finland, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada and Denmark have far and away surpassed the U.S. in battling this virus (here and here).

Amazingly, the United States had as much if not more information about the Coronavirus as those other countries.  They succeeded because they acted quickly and decisively based only on the scientific data, not on the political optics of a leader’s reelection campaign. Donald Trump, on the other hand, spent more than two months ignoring that data and rejecting repeated warnings to prepare for what would be the plague of the century.

As a result, one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, is still scrounging around for ventilators, personal protective equipment, hospital beds and body bags.  The president performs on his daily reality television show, spewing forth false information, mixed messages, and nauseating self-promotion. Anxiety-stricken Americans tune into this spectacle looking for guidance on this terror that has gripped our lives. Instead, they see a president insulting his political opponents, accusing hospital employees of stealing protective equipment, and boasting about his television ratings. 

Hardly American exceptionalism.  Yet, America used to do some exceptional things.  At the very start of the Ebola crisis in 2014, the Obama administration sent thousands of medical workers to fight the disease at its epicenter in West Africa, an effort that not only slowed the disease in that country, but blocked its spread to the U.S.  

Not surprisingly, Trump has done just the opposite.  Not only has he failed to establish a cohesive national plan to combat the virus, the president has avoided any effort to coordinate with other countries, preferring instead to slam doors in their faces.  He tried – unsuccessfully – to buy a German company working on a Coronavirus vaccine so that the U.S. could horde the medication.  He ordered companies making masks and ventilators not to comply with contracts to deliver some equipment to other countries.  One of those countries was Canada, which has been sending medical personnel from Windsor, Ontario into Detroit to help care for COVID patients.

No country is inherently and permanently bad or good.  Like people, nations are mixed bags, package deals, the contents of which depend on all sorts of variables, like polices, resources and leadership.  The notion that we as a nation are exceptional, that we are the best, blocks our ability to grow, to become better, to learn from other countries. 

As our 45th president has so ably demonstrated, the narcissistic illusion of perfection is a virus of the soul that disposes of the need to change.  Until we come up with a vaccine, let’s keep our social distance from American exceptionalism. 

BEWARE OF UNWISE MEN BEARING SIMPLISTIC IDEAS

A long time ago, in what now seems like a galaxy far, far away, conservatives possessed an intellectual rigor that drove their vision of laissez-faire government, individual liberty and a free market economy. Although not my cup of tea, this political philosophy reflected an honest, rational and structured approach to governance.   That’s all gone now, replaced by the impulses of angry, feeble thinkers whose approach to leadership is vastly inferior to that of a gaggle of drunken sailors.  

Surely conservative giants like Barry Goldwater, William Buckley and Milton Friedman are spinning in their graves – to the right of course – as their movement devolves into a frantic rush toward foolish, simplistic and jingoistic responses to complicated problems. Whether it’s Brexit in Europe or Trump’s wall at the Mexican border, we are living in an age of political thoughtlessness.  It’s as if that crazy uncle who delights in listing the inane things he’d do if only he were king, was suddenly wearing a crown.  

Yes, conventional conservatives like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, rank high on the nuisance scale with their trickle-down shell games and burning desire to raid Social Security.  But at least they had the cognitive wherewithal to come up with specific, detailed plans that would further their objectives, as onerous as they be to many of us.  This new breed of right wing populism seems to be propelled by non-ideas.  Instead of concrete plans, we get metaphoric images that whip up the base but offer not the slightest hint of an actual solution.

Donald Trump was jubilant this week over a federal judge’s decision striking down the entire Affordable Care Act, also known – particularly  by Trump rally fans – as  Obamacare.  If the ruling survives appellate review, the president insisted there will be “great healthcare results for Americans!”  The Donald and his disciples have been railing, ranting and raging over Obamacare since the Republican primaries nearly three years ago.  Not once – during the primaries, the general election campaign or his first two years as president – has Trump ever offered the slightest hint of what he thinks “great healthcare” would consist of.  He has never had anything resembling a constructive thought about healthcare. It was all about capturing the adulation of the Obama-haters, with no regard to what happens to people who lose their insurance.  To Trump and his minions, “Abolish Obamacare” was as void of meaning as “Lock Her Up”. The juices of anger flowed, but there wasn’t a single policy thought to be had.

This is the same kind of thought-deprived leadership that has thrown the United Kingdom into a perpetual state of crisis. Just as America-first Trumpism was gaining steam in 2016, conservative populism roared through the UK, emotionally propelled by the simplistic notion that life could be made great again with a one-word plan: LEAVE.  By a 52 percent margin, the Brits voted in a national referendum to secede from the European Union.  Zero thought was given to the practical policy implications of secession, and Parliament, after two painful years of trying to come up with a divorce decree, is nowhere close to an agreement.  That means the separation may well occur in March without a single plan on how to handle such details as trade, taxes, financial payments and immigration policy. The Bank of England has warned of a “deep and damaging recession with worse consequences for the UK economy than the 2008 financial crisis.”  LEAVE made for a powerful chant, but it was completely content-free, void of any details about how the breakup would affect people’s lives.

Back home, Trump has threatened to end the week with a partial government shutdown over another of his one-word campaigns. Like a toddler pleading for a favorite toy, the president has been yammering for his WALL, his “big, beautiful” wall, a magical wall that will restore America’s greatness by keeping people with brown skin out of the country.  

There are few public policy issues more complex and involved than immigration, which is one reason Congress has been unable to tackle the issue in a satisfactory manner for more than 30 years.  And then along comes Trump and his one-word fix.  “Build the WALL”, is at or near the top of the charts for his campaign rally chants. As if architecture could solve one of the world’s thorniest problems.  

As of last year, nearly 60 million people have been forced by violence and conflict to flee their homes. More than half of all refugees are under 18.  According to the United Nations, if all those asylum-seekers and refugees were a country, it would be the twenty-first most populous nation in the world. In the U.N.’s view this crisis is the worst it has been since World War II and will steadily become worse as violent conflicts grow and climate change wreaks havoc. Yet, the alleged leader of the free world directs none of the vast resources at his disposal to find meaningful responses to these problems. Instead, he yaps incessantly about his wall as the magical cure for a broken immigration system.  And on climate change, he offers a rake.

The only upside to the right’s cataclysmic populism, is that it is difficult to envision a scenario where it has staying power. By definition, simplistic solutions to complicated problems fail. The essence of their brief life span lies in the visceral illusion of workability.  Cracks are already bringing to show. Polls track a steady approval increase for the elements of the Affordable Care Act, even among those who disliked Obama.  They don’t want to lose their insurance.  Faced with potentially severe consequences of leaving the E.U., many Brexit supporters have expressed buyers’ remorse. That’s not to say there won’t be serious fallout from this politics of mindlessness. It is merely a reminder of the governing principle that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

FORGET GOOD AND BAD, WE’RE ALL PACKAGE DEALS

A week of eulogies and retrospectives on the life of John McCain gave us a long-overdue lesson on how to evaluate our leaders. What we saw, with apologies to Charles Dickens, was a Tale of Two Senators. John McCain was our best of times, and our worst of times. He represented the age of wisdom, and the age of foolishness, the epoch of belief, and the epoch of incredulity. His was the season of Light, and the season of Darkness, the spring of hope, the winter of despair.

In less Dickensian prose, the late Arizona senator was, like all of us, a package deal, a complicated amalgam of good and bad, of decency and chicanery, of success and failure. He was a man of honor and principle. He was also a man of political expediency. He had moments of greatness and moments of shame.

Death has a way of triggering a contemplative introspection in the living. It’s an opportunity to hold a mirror to our lives and thought processes, with an eye toward making necessary adjustments. An adjustment is precisely what we need right now. We are living in a pathologically polarized moment, right smack in the middle of a highly charged civil war of deeply held values. It’s us against them, and we’re playing for keeps. As many noted psychologists (here and here) have observed, that kind of tribalism gives way to rigid, binary thinking. We see people as good or bad, either with us or against us. It’s a deeply skewed and destructive perception. To build and sustain the kind of political movement that can take us to a better place, we need to look beyond what we want to see in order to know what is really there.

Minutes after McCain died, my Facebook feed was filled with reactions. He was described with words like: honorable, brave, decent, compassionate and honest. He was praised for being against discrimination and reasonable on immigration Within an hour, the rebuttals appeared. They were from those who came to bury the senator, not to praise him. Their counterpoints? McCain cheated on his first wife, was deeply involved in an influence peddling scandal, opposed to making Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday, cast a deciding vote upholding a presidential veto of the 1990 Civil Rights Act, and referred to his North Vietnamese captors as “gooks”.

What appeared as two factions fighting over an epitaph was an illusion. They were both right. John McCain was good and bad. Or, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet told Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “. . . nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” And “thinking” can be distorted by passionately held beliefs that filter people and events so that we see what we want to see.

McCain was the posterchild of the package deal approach to evaluating people. More than any of his contemporaries, he both owned his mistakes and had no problem abandoning fealty to partisan dogma when it suited his purposes. His death – as well as our reaction to it – offers a reminder that binary, black-or-white, either-or thinking, as tempting as it might be, is not a helpful way of understanding our world. Our desire to label people as heroes and villains, although understandable, is a fool’s errand.

Take Pope Francis, for example. Until last week, even I, as a recovering Methodist, was ready to nominate him for sainthood. “Who am I to judge”, he said of the Church’s position on gays. He focused on problems like poverty, climate change and corporate wrongdoing with an abiding intensity. He advocated for women’s equality and expressed an openness to allowing priests to marry. Then came the seemingly credible accusation that Francis had covered up a cardinal’s history of sexual abuse and pedophilia, triggering calls for his resignation. Do we move him from the good column into the bad? No. The amazing gifts this pope brought to his believers – and the rest of us – coexist with his human fallibility, one that may well have succumbed to a malignancy that seems to have permeated the culture of his church’s hierarchy. It’s a package deal. It’s important to see the entire package.

Every historical figure we’ve ever placed on a pedestal is a mere Google search removed from their warts. Mother Teresa, who became a saint last year, was accused of gross mismanagement and providing negligent medical care. Martin Luther King was found to have plagiarized portions of his doctoral dissertation. Mohandas Gandhi is said to have been openly racist toward blacks in South Africa and frequently shared a bed with his 17-year-old great-niece. The great emancipator himself, Abe Lincoln, was responsible for the country’s largest mass execution. In 1862, he ordered the hanging of 38 Dakota Sioux tribal members in Minnesota. Package deals, all of them.

The moral of this story is that we need to look at the whole package, and see all of its parts, in order to have anything close to an accurate understanding. The alternative is what organizational communication experts call a “frozen evaluation”. That means we lock in our assessment of someone – or something – and see only that which is consistent with our frozen evaluation. To ignore the fact that we are all complicated works-in-progress is to miss opportunities for meaningful, constructive connection.

Our current toxic environment of dark, deeply divided and angry discourse will not last forever. The McCain memorials laid bare our longing for harmony, or at least decency, in our politics. Our behavior can take us there. We can begin that journey by not writing everybody off who disagrees with us. As the late senator said in his farewell letter, “We weaken (America’s greatness) when we hide behind walls rather than tear them down. . .” There are many kinds of walls, including the ones we build around others who don’t share our views. To escape our current quagmire, we need to replace those walls with bridges. We will not reach everyone, but somewhere in all those package deals out there lies an opportunity to connect. Real change will not happen until we seize that opportunity.

ODE TO A HERO WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE MY WIFE

Melissa Nelson is retiring this week as director of collective bargaining for The NewsGuild-CWA, the union representing media employees and other workers. In the infamous words of Joe Biden – as cleansed by the AP – that’s a big f—ing deal. So big, in fact, that this space is giving a temporary pass to the inanity and profanity of national politics, in order to pay tribute to a genuine hero.

So as to avoid being Sean Hannityized, let me disclose a potential conflict of interest: I have a spousal relationship with Melissa. But I also spent 31 years working for the same union, and copiously followed her amazing journey, drawing more and more awe with every step she took. In other words, I’m an expert witness. This is my testimony:

When I met her, Melissa was an advertising artist at the Hearst paper in Albany, NY. The labor movement really needs to build a monument to the Hearst Corporation. If that outfit hadn’t paid its women artists considerably less than their male counterparts, the NewsGuild would be without one of its greatest legends. Worse, I would still be single. Fortunately, the injustice of pay inequity ignited a passion in Melissa that propelled her into the calling of union activism. It was an all-consuming tour of duty that went from rank-and-file agitator, to local president, to full-time Guild staffer in Philadelphia, to directing the national union’s collective bargaining operation in Washington, DC.

That last sentence, particularly for those who don’t know her, is opaquely encyclopedic. Every union has activists and staff. What Melissa brought to the table was a unique package of style, substance, class, and grace, all served with a special sauce of forceful and respectful advocacy.

Melissa Nelson teaches new Guild leaders about collective bargaining.

To me, Melissa’s breakout moment came about 25 years ago. This is when I knew for sure that she was destined to play a key leadership role in the union. It started as an ordinary exchange at the bargaining table. She was making a pitch for one of our proposals. A boorish, over-testosteroned management guy, accustomed to the centuries-old rooster game of one-upmanship through interruption, tried to cut her off. Melissa was in mid-sentence when he flashed a sneering smirk and said, “Well, that isn’t true . . . “ Without skipping a beat, Melissa leaned across the table to face her adversary. In a quiet, calm-but stern voice, she said, “No, no, no. Do not interrupt me. I wasn’t finished. You need to listen to what I am saying, and then it will be your turn to talk.”

I braced myself for a major explosion. I had verbally dueled with this troll many times and knew he was not easily quieted. There was a momentary silence, the two of them leaning deeply into their respective sides of the table, just staring at each other. Finally, the management guy spoke, using a tone that reflected a meekness and contrition I’d have sworn was not in him: “I’m sorry, Melissa, please continue.” Damn! I later asked the troll about the exchange. He called it a “flashback to elementary school”, adding that he almost said, “Yes, teacher.” It was an amazing moment.

The anecdote perfectly captures Melissa and her rare and immensely effective communication style, one that is firm, assertive and honest, yet delivered totally free of threat or hostility. The volume is low, the tone pleasant, and the verbiage tight and succinct. The result is a message laced with respect, thus inviting respect in return. When it comes to managing conflict, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Melissa has spent decades using that style to make life better for so many people: victims of sexual harassment, unequal pay, unjust discipline, discrimination and mistreatment; employees in search of better pay and working conditions, dignity and respect. Her voice, so carefully crafted in her estimable manner, has carried with it all the voices of the workers she represents.

But that’s not all, not by a long shot. Melissa’s real gift – her legacy – to this union is her uncanny ability to connect with members, local leaders and staff in a way that amps them up, makes them stronger, better, more confident. She has spent years perpetually plugged into the lives of Guild activists from coast to coast. She knows their strengths and weaknesses, the content of their contracts, their management’s every quirk and idiosyncrasy. She also knows the names and ages of their children, their family vacation plans and how their parents are doing. To her, leadership is, at its core, relational.

Somehow, without the use of a single algorithm, Melissa has spent the past decade using all of that instinctively processed data to guide, mentor and advise an entire national union, one person at a time. We’re in the middle of dinner, and someone from Kenosha calls in a panic over contract negotiations. Or a bankruptcy in Boston. Or more massive layoffs in Denver. Or the sale of the paper in Akron. And in each case, I smile with wonder and pride as Melissa calmly and confidently listens, reassures, offers needed information and counsel, and then guides the caller to land the plane safely. Each time that happens, the union grows a little stronger because the folks on the other end of those phone calls are learning and building confidence, secure in the knowledge that they are not alone.

This has not happened without taking a toll on Melissa. The stress has been enormous, and its chief cause has been the exponential increase in the demand for help, and an insufficient number of hours in a day to provide it. As a result, her voicemail and email inboxes are perpetually jammed by cries for help. How do you triage all that? Is a layoff more critical than a bankruptcy? Which do you take first, the pay cuts call or the pension freeze? This has been her life. And despite the stress, it has brought her enormous satisfaction from knowing that she has made a difference.

Through it all, Melissa never once unplugged – not from her phone, her email, or any other form of engagement. She is constitutionally incapable of disconnecting. She knew that most of the people reaching out to her had workloads every bit as hectic as her own. They were counting on her. There is no way she wouldn’t be there for them. That’s because Melissa saw her work, not as a job, but as part of a movement. For the movement to succeed, leaders need to keep on moving. And that’s just what she did. As a result, she can retire now fully assured that the movement she nourished with every ounce of energy she had will keep right on moving. After all, those movers learned from the best.

THE CURTAIN NEEDS TO FALL ON TRUMP’S ONE-MAN SHOW

The unprecedented mass exodus of presidential appointees is no surprise. After all, the Donald made clear from the outset that he was prepared to go it alone. Remember that line from his Republican convention acceptance speech? “I alone can fix it,” he said. Trump is reportedly exhilarated by all the staff churn and turmoil. Those vanquished cabinet members and senior advisors were merely awkward stagehands, fools who got in his way and stole his scenes. They didn’t understand that this administration is a one-man show.

Donald Trump is absolutely certain that he doesn’t need a merry band of experts telling him how to run this country. As he likes to remind us, President 45 has a power greater than any font of knowledge, an unassailable force guaranteed to lead us to greatness: his instincts. “I rely on myself very much,” he once said. “I just think you have to have an instinct and you go with it.”

A Google search of “Trump instincts” turns up more than 800,000 entries. He points to a passage in a book he wrote in 1999 about Osama Bin Laden being a “shadowy figure,” as evidence of an “instinct” that predicted the 2001 terrorist attacks. He told Bloomberg News that he did no research on immigration but made the issue a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign because he “. . . just knew instinctively that our borders are a mess.” The New York Times reported this week that Trump has told confidants that he’d rather rely on his superior instinct than on advice from his cabinet.

This is, of course, a gigantic load of bunk. Instinct is not a mysterious psychic power. It is a byproduct of our experience, offering a conscious assessment based on patterns instantly detected, and subconsciously based on stored memory. An MIT report suggests a person needs at least 10 years of “domain specific experience” in order to make good instinctive decisions. That means Trump may have a well-honed instinct for real estate transactions, but that power hardly transfers to dealing with Congress or a North Korean dictator.

The president has an alliterative confusion over two approaches to decision making. His is impulse, not instinct. Instinct aligns a pending decision with rhythms drawn from a deep well of experience. Impulse is utterly without cognition and is driven by a lust for immediate pleasure. Trump’s “stable genius” mind is not performing a rapid review of past experiences in search of a pattern that would trigger an instinct. He simply acts on a child-like impulse to say or do whatever he believes makes him look the best in that particular moment, with zero regard for what that choice may reap for him in a future moment.

If the events of the past couple weeks had unfolded in any other administration, it would be meaningful to ask these questions: What’s the strategic game plan behind Trump’s decision to meet with Kim Jong Un? How does a new Secretary of State affect the administration’s approach to diplomacy? Will threats to impose tariffs on South Korea and Japan have an impact on seeking the denuclearization of North Korea? Where is the White House headed on gun control, or relief for young DACA-covered immigrants?

Yet, those and similar questions are predicated on a foundation of deep thought and serious contemplation that is totally foreign to this president. Unless you’re talking about trying to keep a porn star quiet, this is a White House free of strategic planning.

Instead, Trump:

SHOCKED every foreign diplomat and his own advisors by agreeing on the spot to meet with the North Korean dictator, and then rushed to the White House pressroom to alert the media he so despises that a big announcement was about to be made. The Donald’s narrative was that his hard line on Kim has brought the tyrant to his knees, all without a clue as to where to go from there.

INSISTED, days after the Florida school shooting, that now is the time to challenge the NRA and enact meaningful gun control legislation. After basking in self-adoration for such courage, he reversed course and retreated to the NRA party-line.

TOOK at least 14 different positions on protection for the Dreamers, young immigrants who grew up in America, all based on who talked to him last, and/or on the audience he was trying to please at the time.

ANNOUNCED stiff new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, saying “trade wars are good”, just after his Treasury Secretary reassured allies that “We’re not looking to get into trade wars.”

In his bizarrely quixotic campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump repeatedly complained about how all of his predecessors were so weak that other countries were “laughing at us”. Only he, alone, could win America’s respect back, or so the campaign line went. Well, that’s not happening anytime soon. Trump, and his make-every-moment-all-about-me operating system, has heads shaking all over the globe. As one South Korean newspaper editorial recently noted, “His style of governing, marked by disconnectedness and arrogance, is just mind-blowing.”

The trajectory of this presidency keeps heading for new lows every day. We are long past the point of writing off his fumbles to a mere lack of experience. Like a monster in a bad science fiction movie, Trump grows worse and more out of control with the passage of time. Rather than sensing his inadequacies and failings, and seeking guidance from those with expertise and experience, the president seems almost emboldened by an incompetency he can’t or won’t see.

If a beloved family member had that level of disconnect from reality, we’d be looking for a well-staffed protective care place for them. Unfortunately, the “family” in this case is a congressional Republican majority pathologically adverse to dealing with this delusional head of household, unless and until he gets much worse. Sadly, that time will come. Let us pray that this country is still intact when it does.