The moment was vivid. I have written about it before, so apologies if this is your second time through.

The year, 1986. The President: Ronald Reagan. On the other side of the table, Secretary of Commerce, Malcom  Baldrige. Me, well I was talking to the Secretary about coming to work for him heading the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (they didn’t get advice from a naming consultant).

The first question from Secretary Baldrige: “Al, Washington is a god-damn tough town. Everybody is after a piece of your ass. How do you rate yourself for aggressiveness?” Over time I learned what he meant, but this is about a condition in our capitol city, not me.

There is a finality to government. Sure you can appeal a decision but if your appeal is through the courts check your bank and patience accounts and if it is a legislative solution you are seeking, good luck with that. Laws with national reach are a big deal.

One of the laughable characteristics of the white hot feud between President Donald J Trump and Elon Musk is that for months they have been playing each others cheerleader. And the praise can be summarized with this word: GREATEST! So here we are, in a brief period of time they went from greatest to worst. From “Greatest of All Time” (GOAT) to “Terrible on Any Day” (TOAD).

President Trump has proved to have an uncanny sense of timing and themes. Make America Great Again (MAGA) wins the theme contest moving ahead of The New Frontier and New Deal. And generally Republicans have not done well with political themes. In the case of Ronald Reagan he was the theme riding in from his ranch to catch the bad guys.

In the case of Donald Trump his political life began on an escalator not a horse or maybe as the all-knowing judge of talent on The Apprentice. Regardless, he is in his second term—as politics go that is a winner. And now the Democrats are trying to figure out their future.

Had I engaged in this kind of urine contest both my grandparents and parents would have sent me to my room. I use this generational reference point as both Trump and Musk are acting like how Trump is said to have characterized Musk (50% genius and 50% boy). Both are acting like teenage boys.

My difficulty with the Trump/Musk partnership is simple: conflict of interest. It is said that Musk has given Trump something over $250 million to chase his political ambitions, and some of Musk’s businesses’ biggest clients are government agencies.

As I type, people who make money writing columns and the like are choosing winners and losers in this contest of invectives. Let me join in. The loser is the United States of America and its position in the world. We are making democracy look like a fractious car auction.

But of course, the game is which of the two will come out better. The overwhelming answer is Trump. Certainly, Musk has a lot to lose. For example his Tesla stock lost 14% of its value on Thursday. Although it appears by the end of Friday’s trading day that most, if not all, of the loss will be recovered. Reuters attributes the bounce back to the cooling of the dispute.

Indeed, maybe that is a useful measure—the market value of a stock. Or the polling numbers of a politician. Maybe that is where our democracy is at the current moment.

So here is my short-term take. Musk is the loser as his favored status as a businessman close to the President has taken a hit. The President in that limited sense comes out better but as time goes on maybe he loses support as a percentage of supporters wonder about his judgment in letting Musk roam through the White House as if he was the First Lady.

Back ever so briefly to Secretary Malcolm Baldrige. He would be aghast; he was a real patriot.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

Churchill, Jan. 20, 1940: “Only Finland—superb, nay, sublime in the jaws of peril—Finland shows what free men can do….Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and proves it base and abominable in war.”

America still has the single most valuable 21st-century ally in the world—Ukraine.

Ukraine has had to be both stalwart and entrepreneurial in combating Russian aggression. If, in the aftermath of the attack by Ukraine on Russian military assets, the Trump Administration does not revitalize American support for Ukraine, it will be an irreducible stain. Ukraine has demonstrated the importance of courage and adaptive learning. It represents the biblical story Americans love—David versus Goliath.

My admittedly superficial review of pluses and minuses is not in any way intended to be comprehensive, but a starting point for questions. In other words, the attack by Ukraine on Russia yesterday is an event filled with lessons.

First rank military prowess can be measured by money spent, technology and manufacturing controlled, strategic ground occupied and in my view realism understood. North Korea, for example, has impressive assets but is in a fog of autocratic vanity.

Ukraine has perhaps the leading asset of military strength. It has been fighting a much bigger foe on the terrain of technology transformation. It doesn’t really have an air force unless you count its drone inventory. And most importantly, consider its drone manufacturing prowess and experience-based utilization. And those assets not only count, but are potentially the most important in the rapidly transforming world.

President Trump values Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and apparently we have an agreement for their mutual exploitation. What the President should add to this bargain is the more consequential one—active alliance.

Yes, I understand that Trump doesn’t like Vladimir Zelensky. He even let his spear carrier, Vice-President Vance, dress him down in the White House with the cameras rolling. Historians will note this vain estrangement and I believe will count it as a low point in the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

But now Trump has additional facts for his analysis and I hope a reset. I would simply say to the President, effective leaders are often opportunists and now is your chance to recognize Ukraine as an ally not a nuisance.

America’s greatness is often measured by our international leadership grounded by moral principles.  We should reassert our leadership in a new alliance with Ukraine.  Hoorah for courage and for demonstrating the trajectory of obsolescence of what much of the world still counts as military strength. America has much to learn from Ukraine.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

Who knew that the 21st Century would offer ambitious politicians a dull and inattentive version of the governed? Yes, you and me.

Or, perhaps we are simply a more forgiving generation—not confused or inattentive, just generous. Or forgetful. Or maybe simply comfortable with outsourcing what the law says is our responsibility.

The political party of Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) and Bill Clinton allowed a small coterie of politicians to maintain a fiction: Joe Biden was equal to a second term. “Cancel the primaries,” Biden’s spear carriers said, “let’s have a coronation.” The elders went along at the expense of the nation and their Party.

Or, the political party of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan nominating a person whose transparent behavior revealed a self-aggrandizing narcissist claiming he would make America great again.

Truth is Biden and Trump were co-dependents. Biden in his shrunken condition acting like FDR while Trump was covering up his many deficiencies with bombastic slogans  aimed at exploiting our biases.

So what is it about us? Are we so distracted by our anxieties and indulgences that we no longer have time to govern? Are we so oblivious, that having our national credit degraded is just another 24 hour headline without impact? Our elected representatives promise to lower the debt; cycles come and go and the debt balloons. Oh well we will pass it on to our kids.

Are conservatives no longer conservative? Populism is never conservative. It is opportunism dressed up as regard. Sure there are both popular and rational arguments that pair but it is not a philosophy of governance. And when New York Times writers and others speak of various populous exclamations as “hard right” or “far right”, they are revealing bias not intelligence.

On the other side of the jagged line is the Left. I wonder whether identity politics is more important than unity politics? Giving way to the outer edges of pressure groups (sometimes misnamed as “progressives”) inevitably leads to countervailing estrangement. Severe cleavages create chasms that are spectacular in nature but result in ugly gaps in society.

Let me repeat: Governance. With a capital G. Governance that balances revenue and expenditures. Governance that  can manage weapons of mass destruction. Governance that is operationally strong. Governance that must reconcile ardent advocacy to gain majority support from a diverse electorate.

Regarding President Trump, maybe his cleverness cancels our common sense. For example, tariffs are on and then they are off. They penalize Canada more than enemy nations. And when the CEO of Walmart suggests he might have to pass some of the taxes on goods along, the President threatens him.

In the meantime he concentrates on the petroleum kingdoms of the Middle East whose Oligarchs, understanding his interior needs, lavish praise and do deals.

President Donald J Trump will make history in one category: the amount written about him while in office.

Blah, blah, blah! Attack, defend. Often written by people with attitude not experience. I get that, as people with experience often give the benefit of the doubt to people in the big jobs. The jobs are tough; they know that. They are more likely to use long-term measuring sticks.

Let me repeat that the jobs are not easy. The mission is important or it would not be done collectively (all together). There is generally a law behind it. Its origin is a finding that a State-by-State solution will not work. How, for example, could we defend our nation if all of our defense assets were in State national guards? And Maryland’s health is inextricably tied to Missouri’s.

Beyond the President here are some others that hold big jobs. The Secretaries of Defense, State, and the Department of Justice. They face almost minute-by-minute competing claims—do more, do less and here are the reasons why. “Hold the line, I just got call from the White House.” Or the Congress. “Cancel the meeting so I can prepare for a hearing.” In the meantime what does the data say; yeah, for example, flight patterns in and out of Newark’s airport.

In last Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan’s column, Declarations, was titled: “Broken Windows at the White House”. “Broken Windows” was the title of a theory that said if you don’t keep up your building’s appearance, you risk being caught up in a spiral of bad things. Generally the description was used to characterize failing neighborhoods in big cities.  As Noonan noted, “The neighborhood will deteriorate, and crime will spread.”

She went on to note a lot of “broken windows in the Trump administration”. I need not list them; anybody who reads just the headlines is aware. But I want to go back to big jobs and their occupants and the Congressional vacuum.

Elon Musk’s DOGE spent the first three months of the Trump Administration rampaging through the operational parts of the national government. Daily the operational side of government would be declared broken and/or corrupt. It is hard to imagine the demoralization that resulted.

While Musk was on the move, the US Senate was quizzing Trump nominees to head various departments of government. The cast of characters came from people whose main service to Trump had been to massage his ego. Go down the list: Hegseth, Kennedy, Gabbard, etc.

This is a broken windows cast. They are not seasoned managers of difficult organizations or circumstances. Hold on.

My hope, perhaps unrealistic, is that at some point enough Members of Congress, in the President’s own Party will wake up to the facts at hand, operationally, fiscally and beyond. There is some evidence of pushback in the Republican House Caucus on spending; my advice: stand up to the President. Do not fold. If it causes you to lose the next election, so be it. Better a patriot than a fool. And, for sure, that goes for both political parties.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

It is hard to know where to start, so let me do so with a warning. My thoughts include a promotion. A promotion to look beyond the obvious.

My part-time work in high school included a gig helping a Disc Jockey at the local radio station—specifically KSIM at 1400 on the AM dial in Sikeston, Missouri. My last two jobs were navigating the analog/digital divide in government and business.

My high school job was to retrieve records during a call-in record show. Now, of course, databases dictate what is played—the human factor is collectivized. Or, you bypass radio altogether and go directly to Spotify, where you have curated (the word of the day that has lost its meaning) your own playlist. And I suspect today if you engage on radio you don’t call, you text. Pardon the interruption.

But, now that is the way the world works—technology creates, destroys, and often stands in between. How many of you rent movies from Blockbuster or get movies in the mail from Netflix? Or watch the movie of the week on network TV?

How many of you rely on broadcasting with attendant radio and TV networks for your distractions? Incidentally, in the old days if you wanted to listen to music on the radio, you had to listen to a news segment. It was required as a part of the broadcast license.

Much of the media business is the distraction business. And today when relationships drift toward being  distractions their replacements become primary. Implications?

So let me dress up as a distraction. News distracts us from our daily routine. It generally happens elsewhere and is rarely all that good. News is a good distraction in a democracy but in recent years it has been largely replaced by political themes. Podcasters discover bias, program to it, and call it news delivering it to various electronic devices we carry around.

Create and destroy. Maybe one day probing newscasts delivered by real journalists will reappear. One can hope. In the meantime, much of the creative community who want to use their talents in unbiased news coverage find demand for their talents diminishing by the day.

If you watch news on TV, it is likely you are overwhelmed with products for, let me say, older people. And try finding a real newspaper that covers your community. The metaverse took over classified advertising and newspapers began to deteriorate and then die.

I could go on and will. I have a Chesapeake Forum gig in early June and am looking forward to going through the “looking glass” to discuss the social and cultural implications of destruction and replacement.

Topics will include the implications of society’s device fixation. And, social media and texting replacing conversation and much else.

And, as noted, the replacement of the media we grew up with. Encyclopedias have been replaced by accumulations that change minute by minute. The disappearance of editing as news is a tweet away.

And not wanting to leave anything out of this tease, think about databases—the stuff of the cloud. How do we protect ourselves and how does our government protect us from being found out or shut down? Or the ubiquity of porn? Or the addiction of games?

And I will throw in “free speech” and its constitutional protection. Exceptions needed for the new world?

I suspect most of you will just stay home. Understandable. Existential questions interfere with sleep and defy remedy. And maybe artificial intelligence will decide what human reasoning cannot. Talk about “through the looking glass.”

Regardless, the world is changing, and horror of horrors: it’s hard to turn off this fact.

If you want to learn more and participate further in this discussion, join me with Chesapeake Forum lifelong learners.  You can learn more and register for the course here.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

To

Mea Culpa. I was at least partially wrong when I titled my book, circa 2019, Culture Leads Leaders Follow.

A central point in the book: people who run for important elective office organize their brains and rhetoric around what is culturally acceptable. Or to put it another way, marketers of one sort or another and performing artists, not elected officials are primary influencers.

Successful candidates for the big elective offices begin by raising enormous sums of money. A high percentage of the cash is then spent on a polling firm to tell them what is or is not popular. If their budget is big enough, they will hire a marketing team of political specialists who prepare speeches, advertising videos and talking points for interviews. Mostly these are the steps of wannabes not leaders.

An overriding question is what has happened to America’s leadership class? What are the forces that have often turned it classless? Why are we now, the voters (judges) yelling at each other? Is dispassionately discussing public affairs even possible?

Cultural and political forces today often push toward the performative. How do you get above the noise of the day? Every candidate must cope with this reality and many of the most promising choose not to—performative politics as predation.

Enter President Donald J Trump. He knew, intuitively, that he had to push the line, all lines. The successes of his business and TV career bore his name. He was the brand and his brand bore no relationship to conventional politicians who generally earn their reputations by giving speeches, winning elections and holding offices. Trump to the political world, “you’re fired”.

Trump’s only questions related to how far he could go and to what extent he could create the narrative for his various campaign promises. The narrative choice was brilliant: Make American Great Again (MAGA). And he began.

In his most recent election, he used President Biden’s carelessness at our southern border to rebrand immigrants. Through the generations, immigrants enjoyed a favorable image of striving for the betterment of their new home. Now Trump was rebranding them as toxic. He appropriated the worst, drug dealers for example, and accused the powers that be of facilitating their drug pushing.

Job frustrations? It’s not your fault the foreigners are taking your jobs. Or, if you are a white male, you are the target of discrimination. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), an awkward attempt to make up for past sins, became today’s sin.

Wealth? It is reported that 10% of the adult population owns 50% of America’s wealth. Trump, sensing an underlying anger promised no taxes on tips or social security income and recommended tariffs on foreign goods to win back jobs.

Sex? The high priests of the culture had decided to normalize and promote conduct many think is wrong. He skipped across the political perils of abortion while using sexual apostasy as a targeted weapon.

And on and on. And while he got a lot of the facts wrong his receptive audience did not go to the library to check his references. Fact-checking that should matter, seems a remnant of an earlier era.

Plus, what Trump called the Mainstream or Lamestream Media was vocally nonplussed by his antics, and they often performed as if he had scripted them. After all they were perceived as pushing open borders and sexual immorality. They became the opposition.

What followed were attempts by Institutionalists to criminalize his conduct. While there were grounds for impeachment, his loyal base saw him as a victim of an attempted coup. While hard to pinpoint, it is clear that a tipping point had been reached—politics as we had known it was over.

In the Republican Party that became clearer as two institutionalists, Niki Haley and Ron DeSantis, were defeated. In the broader electorate, Trump was sufficiently popular for the electoral math to work. He was, of course, aided by a Democratic Party leadership class that was so fearful of “next” that a low-functioning incumbent President controlled much of the nominating apparatus.

And here we are. America has a President who takes pleasure in making his opponents livid while calling them “lunatics”. We are more than a hundred days out and while many voiced 100 day report cards, I simply worry about how Trump has affected both the social and political culture because yelling at each other across hardened barriers is not characteristic of a healthy democracy. I have never been part of a significant success that was not collaborative.

I am not a sociologist, but I have been working at the intersection of government and business for more years than I would prefer to count. I keep trying to see a new way forward, but in my mind it is hard to find. A catastrophe of some sort might be the only enabler; and who knows what it will enable.

Warren Buffet, the supremely successful founder and leader of Berkshire Hathaway, understanding the importance of his company’s successful culture, chose Greg Abel as his replacement. According to the late Charles Munger, Buffet’s longtime partner: “Greg knows the companies culture.” Indeed. Success is maintained by a healthy culture.

So what is it about our political culture? We now have a President who disdains collaboration. Here are some questions I think we should engage:

1- Has what I will call Trumpism become our political culture?

2- Have Judeo-Christian values lost their force?

3- What about organized religion? Has it become disparate affinity clubs attracting fewer and fewer as many of its leaders prove to be power seekers not healers?

4- Has language lost its influence? Do intemperate words and uses make any difference? Was America great or at least better when the F—word was not the defining adjective?

5- Who do we believe in a world defined by detachment? Artificial Intelligence? Algorithms? Neighbors?

We are lost. Who will we be when we are found again?

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, Founder of Russia’s Wagner Group
June 1, 1961 to August 23, 2023
Cause of Death: Hand Grenade Detonated in Airplane

Dear President Trump,

“There was a time when my name would still be vivid. Not today. Events happen, splashes occur, and then the world moves on. I was once Page 1, now you have to go to Wikipedia to get the story.  Courage has a long life; manipulation, well, it is quickly forgotten.

I failed to move boundaries. I reached for fame but came up short. In the end, Vladimir, yes, that one, had the juice. Putin’s aim was singular. Move over, Peter, here comes Vladimir, Vladimir the Great!

Once I was a key part of Vladimir’s script. And then I wasn’t. First, he needed the Wagner Group, our well-trained military; and then, well, the North Koreans were ready to be supplicants. My knee didn’t bend enough.

But the real head turner was when you, Donald J Trump, decided to join the North Koreans. Donald, you must remember, I once was crucial and now speak from the grave. Look over your shoulder, my death in August of 2023 is not that far back.

Vladimir has bet his place in history on the backs of Russian soldiers, indeed all Russians. He has murdered, no this is war, he has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians as well, toward a singular end: victory over Ukraine. Only the US has the weight to push back—to lead the Allies. Putin is counting on you to stand down.

Donald, as you feint, he will parry and back and forth. His ambition demands subservience—I doubt the MAGA crowd wants you to be supine. Just remember this letter reaches you from the grave. I couldn’t join with the victims; you can.

Yours Truly,

Yevgeny

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

Business markets are unsentimental. Leading investors don’t wear the hats of partisans. And they certainly don’t wear a MAGA hat—an adornment of emotion until President Trump pivots. Risk is measured, rated, and informs real-time investing and relatedly our various accounts of wealth.

President Donald J Trump has decided to restructure international markets for goods and services according to how he prefers them. Because he is President of the United States, he has great influence, and the markets pay attention and at times are frighteningly unstable.

However, there is a crucial “but”. When any powerful entity decides to manipulate wealth markets, they cannot choose the starting point; the overarching markets are shaped by a complex range of forces that were years in the making.

Most international business has for decades been organized around what is generally a free trading framework. Sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, transportation and legal arrangements have been organized around this expansive framework and have generated immense investments and returns for one reason—open markets work. The sum of our buying and selling points the way forward. People who make things listen to people who buy things.

So here we are. The United States has a President who thinks we run trade deficits because we have been treated unfairly. The truth is that on balance our deficits in goods and services bought and sold are fueled by consumption and related debt. Lets face it, we are a consumer-based economy; we buy what we want to buy and often borrow money to do it.

But, and this is the central point. If we choose to protect, we must do so with strategic precision. Countries that retreat into protectionism do not lead anything and especially economic prosperity.

President Bill Clinton’s key political strategist, James Carville, upon assessing the distribution of political power during the Clinton Administration quipped, “I want to come back as the bond market.” When the bond markets raise the cost of borrowing, as is happening in our country, a downward shift is beginning. And political power as Carville noted derives from economic success.

We are 18 months away from a new election and while sentiment in November, 2026 will elect a new House of Representatives, until then watch the bond market. It will be ever attentive, and its signals will not be made up by a clutch of grasping politicians. Fortunately, even so weighty a person as President Donald J Trump, will be forced to pay attention. Political power most frequently derives from economic success.

In the meantime, watch how Republican leaders who control both Houses of Congress deal with our federal debt. If they persist in reducing tax revenue more than expenditures, you will know the Republican Party is not a serious political movement any longer.

Lisa Murkowski

“I am sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking from our Allies and embracing Putin, a threat to democracy and US values around the world.”

“We are all afraid.…But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been before…..And I’ll tell you, I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that is just not right.” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, Alaska

Due to her opposition to some of his initiatives, former President Donald Trump pledged in June 2020 to support a Republican challenger to Murkowski, saying: “Get any candidate ready, good or bad, I don’t care. I’m endorsing. If you have a pulse, I’m with you!”

History tells us the Trump candidate will need more than a pulse. Senator Murkowski was challenged in the Republican primary in her home state of Alaska in 2010 and lost. She then ran as a write-in candidate in the general election that year and won. In short, the Senator did not yield to intimidation and was rewarded.

Maybe, just maybe, the crowd that has gravitated to the Republican Party should be attracted to individual courage and independence. They were certainly frontier values.

We always live in times of challenge; that is in the nature of things. But today’s challenges, domestically and internationally, are of a different kind. And many of the most serious ones are technology driven—defined by algorithms most politicians do not understand.  Just in case the electorate, regardless of Party identification, wants to navigate successfully the challenges of the day, America needs more than leaders with a pulse.

Gil Maurer

When I departed Washington and government work in 1993, I left behind a world filled with emotion. Governments are led by people who are on missions of one sort or another.

I remember vividly an exchange between two Senators and a government executive on an appropriation to build low-end housing. The question to the housing executive, “how much new housing is needed”—the Senator sitting close by quipped, “how high is up?” This was the kind of exchange that would have resulted in a quiet but knowing chuckle from Gil Maurer.

Gil was a good friend who died recently. The art world, in particular has recognized his passing—he was an artist, collector and leader of arts organizations.

Our work together was at The Hearst Corporation. We were beginning to invest in the rapidly emerging digital media world. This was/is the technology force that has upended much of the analog media world—think newspapers, magazines, broadcast networks and on and on. The adaptive approach Hearst took required answers to very difficult questions: where are the markets going and how long before they disrupt our businesses or worse?

Gil believed in an adaptive strategy. Test your theories, but don’t bet the company. Listen to what the market says about your tests, investments, and move on adaptively.

Gil Maurer was a quiet but deeply insightful presence and I was fortunate to have enjoyed his company and penetrating questions.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

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Thursday was vivid; the sun unburdened. The trees were flowering—what a beautiful moment. Would that it would have lingered but life can move from Spring to Winter quickly and that happened to Marty and me. Deep winter.

Until yesterday we had our 5th edition of a black Labrador named Jazz and then we didn’t. We got the report mid-afternoon from the Vet. Jazz had a urinary track blockage that could not be repaired. And now she is gone. The sun was eclipsed and now I am struggling to retrieve memories—to hold on.

As we drove home from the Vet my wife and I recounted our joys and from time to time, what are now sad memories, turned poignant. None more vivid than our trip to the Vet in the New York Catskills with Jazz having been involuntarily festooned with porcupine quills. She was stoic; well what choice did she have? I suspect the scent lingered in her memory. It was her last encounter with the spiny beast.

Jazz, maybe instructed by the porcupine, liked people more than her four legged peers. At dog parks she made an inerrant path for those whose love would be reciprocated.

And boy did she love the Fall. I suspect most thick coated dogs are happy when the summer has given way. She loved trips in the field to be followed by our time together in a duck blind. The Fall’s temperatures were inviting and her eyes didn’t hesitate to go skyward as the waterfowl migration gathered force.

I’ll be telling Jazz stories until, well, I am done telling stories. She is gone but the memories will remain vivid. Expressions of love are like that!

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

In advance of Easter and Christmas I reflect on my own faith with pen in hand.

We all know what a mystery is and we are certainly drawn to a good one. The characters draw us in and the circumstances puzzle us. And a talented writer often surprises us at the end. Life is like that; there is often some distance between our plans and realities.

If we are at all reflective, we find ourselves from-time-to-time thinking about an unsolvable mystery — one that confounds and frustrates the scientists and philosophers who choose to take on the deepest mystery — how did life begin.

At the risk of brevity, let me begin with Ecclesiastes 3:11, it frames the inquiry:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

It’s that “eternity in the human heart” phrase that pulls me in. What does it mean? What does the heart have to do with it? Can we put the eternity thing aside? I can’t get the questions out of my mind. They are the most important part of the mystery in my view.

I say the most important part because it is pivotal as our life unfolds. It is something we are said to carry around. Of course if we dismiss any relationship to eternity then we do not start with Ecclesiastes. If we start there what kind of claim does eternity have on us? Conversely, if eternity is “set” in our heart, shouldn’t we try to pay attention to its voice.

Eternity’s voice is more easily comprehended as family history. We all know at least something about our family tree and we speculate on where we got our blue eyes or height or even temperament or whatever.

It is hard to think about what is in our heart without going back to the beginning and not just the beginning of my family.

I was raised in the church. Or maybe more accurately, by parents who went to the church service after they dropped me off at Sunday School. And at some point along the way I began to connect “eternity” with the here and now – today, this minute. We were urged to and I tried. Or, drawing on Ecclesiastes, “eternity in the human heart” — my heart.

In this construct, eternity had to be transcendent. No eternity, no God. And, of course, no God no transcendent benchmarks. No God; we are in charge and where do we get our inspiration? What is the source of our “soul food” if we dismiss soul?

But before going further, I want to go back to Sunday School, at least as I recall it. Decades after the fact, I wonder: was this just an indoctrination exercise drawing on the works of ancient “A” type personalities who were good at insistences? Or was I being taught lessons from God, entwined in Biblical narratives?

Now, let me fast-forward from biblical times to present time and the song “Looking For Love In All the Wrong Places,” which is a song about our time.

It begins:

Well, I spent a lifetime lookin’ for you
Single bars and good time lovers were never true
Playing a fools game, hoping’ to win
And tellin’ those sweet lies and losing’ again
I was lookin’ for love in all the wrong places
Lookin’ for love in too many faces
Searching’ their eyes
Lookin’ for traces of what I’m dreaming of
Hoping to find a friend and a lover
I’ll bless the day I discover another heart
Lookin’ for love

“I’d bless the day I discover another heart looking for love”! An abiding question is whether there is any of the eternal in our earthly adventures? Is love, for example, all passion or should we be looking for qualities that foster a deeper, lasting relationship? And I am talking about all love not just the romantic version.

Mark Twain observed that “No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” Is perfect love possible?  Love in its several relationships is a puzzle. As is our comprehension of the eternal.

But, one thing seems clear to me. The eternal dimension— “eternity on our heart”—will not be a serious exploration if God is left out of the equation. To me, that is the reason I believe God exists.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

“Walking around money”, it was called. I was twelve years old and helping my Dad run for a seat on Sikeston, Missouri’s Board of Aldermen. In plain sight, I saw money being given to voters. I was told that it was not uncommon to pay somebody to go vote, and the amount of money was generally used to buy a half-pint of whiskey. Whiskey was the pegged commodity, but I suspect the quality was wanting.

The vote transaction was secured by a “driver” who would pick up the voter and take him/her to the polling place. Fast forward 70 years and you have the world’s richest man joined by other very rich Americans, left and right, supplying “walking around money”. In the just concluded election in Wisconsin it didn’t work—hoorah! Elon Musk—politics is not your sweet spot.

Wading into trying to control political spending is self-abuse. One of my heroes, John McCain, fought the good fight to control it and ultimately lost. But, this is an important intersection where our forms of government and business compete.

If I were trying to minimize money in politics, I would use artificial intelligence.  Every check written to help a candidate or cause would need to bear some sort of algorithmic signature. Beyond that there would be some upper limit, a ceiling, that could not directly or indirectly be exceeded.

The law can be written and technology can secure transparency without having hundreds of thousands of clerks checking, combining and publishing reams of paper. If I were to research how to keep track of donations so that voters could keep track of who was giving to whom, I would start at The Federal Reserve. Computer technology would, in the ultimate sense, supply the answer.

And while working toward the goal of transparency, I would consult with the best constitutional attorneys to make sure a constitutionally tight law was enacted. Money is speech and given speech’s protection great care will be needed.

The problem with money as speech is that money is allocated by a range of factors that twist and turn with economic cycles and good fortune that bears scant relationship to merit. If our system of wealth distribution, ultimately requiring societal buy-in, results in handing out billion-dollar merit badges, does Elon Musk deserve an estimated 342 of them?

But of course the bigger story is that the President and richest man in the world were not able to team up and buy or bully a win. The result in Wisconsin was a win for America.

And it is going to get worse for President Trump if he continues his erratic attempts to drum up prosperity using the tools and rhetoric of tariffs. But, one thing to keep in mind. Tariffs, to many, represent an obscure economic policy that can be made to sound rational. Forcing Canada to become America’s 51st state is simply irrational without a costume.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.