The case against Glenn Youngkin, the Governor-Elect of Virginia: he didn’t denounce Trump. The case for: he didn’t denounce Trump. I would make the latter case. Perhaps a strange position for me; I certainly didn’t support Donald J Trump.

Candidates for the future have to get to the future. Republican candidates who denounce Trump, for the predictable future, will be footnotes. Trump’s populist edge still cuts.

Youngkin is the kind of candidate that can help rebuild the Republican Party, a personality cult Party is weak. His Wikipedia profile does not start with election to some political office. And, he has not, as have so many Republican office holders, felt a need to lavish praise on Trump. While not denouncing him, he kept him at arm’s length.

And unlike former Governor Terry McAuliffe he campaigned on Virginia issues. McAuliffe, forgetting that the Republican Party is the conservative one, not simply the one former Democrat Trump affixed his name to, condescended. He essentially told Virginians that you should trust me because the other guy is in Trump’s pocket.

In my experience most races for Governor turn on state not national issues. McAuliffe, failing to nationalize the campaign lost. Virginians, like Marylanders when they turned to Republican Larry Hogan, will get a more representative government. States that are dominated by a single Party get less and less representative government. Hoorah for two-party governance.

Glenn Youngkin succeeded in business and his first outing as a candidate was a good one. Now, can he be a successful Governor? Given his meteoric beginning, if he is successful his appeal will be nationalized. Best, however, that his focus stay at home.

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. 

My wife and I recently came back from a road trip in Missouri to visit friends and family. As much as I like back roads we did travel some on Interstates 44 and 70 and that is where this column began. We saw billboard sign after sign promoting medical marijuana (M&M). And, at the risk of understatement, billboards are a strange medical information medium. These boards were often paired with a number of others targeting, shall we say, trucker’s hormones.

One of the friends we visited has an investment in a “medical marijuana” dispensary. I asked whether I could walk in and buy some gummy bears laced with THC (short for tetrahydrocannabinol) the main psychoactive compound in marijuana that produces a “high” sensation. He said the dispensary would put me in touch with a doctor who would have me fill out a form and that qualifying to receive a medical marijuana card was a “no-brainer” (my favorite).

Several weeks before, I had seen similar signs in both New York and Pennsylvania. Maybe Covid 19 vaccine advice has relegated this new therapeutic to the outskirts of media advertising. I suspect the dispensaries like it there.

On reflection I found myself wondering why, with the proliferation of drugstores, we need new dispensaries to dispense marijuana (a product derived from the plant Cannabis sativa) in medical form. Wouldn’t it be better to take advantage of a trained pharmacist to advise prospective patients if more conventional doctors are going to be circumvented? Keep in mind, M&M (not to be confused with the chocolate candy) comes in many shapes, sizes and doses.

Perhaps the different treatment is to be found, in part, in a seductive description. Eighteen States and the District of Columbia have legalized “recreational marijuana”. Recreational?  Should it be added to YMCA activities? We certainly don’t go to drugstores to buy recreational drugs. 

So what about the medical version? Are we so entangled in the cultural context that we are unable to rationalize the laws on the books?

If you are as confused as I am, here is what the federal government says about marijuana: “Marijuana is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning that it has a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.” 

Yet, as the Wall Street Journal reported “The FDA has approved a cannabinoid derived drug for the treatment of certain seizure disorders and cannabis-related medications for the treatment of weight loss in people with AIDs or nausea due to cancer treatment.”

While I have an aversion to studying chemical compounds, this approved drug seems to derive some of its therapeutic qualities from CBD, an active element in the cannabis plant that “significantly reduces the frequency and severity of seizures. It also reduces or even eliminates nausea associated with several conditions…..”

So stay with me for a minute. What about new laws? How about a law that recognizes the potential of marijuana or cannabis extracts to be used therapeutically? What about a law that breaks down any barriers to drugstores distributing medical marijuana?

And should the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) look into pairing the use of marijuana with the word recreation. Is this truth in labeling? Or does marijuana interfere with recreation? I suspect the marijuana lobby will make sure this doesn’t make the FTC docket.

In short, let’s concede that what now populates highway billboards and is branded for recreational use deserves our serious attention. And, if marijuana is to occupy our imagination as somehow paired with recreation, we need to better understand the consequences.

But, back to medical claims. The federal government spends billions of dollars on drug research. I would suggest that Congressman/doctor Andy Harris find a sliver of what is spent, to conclude more definitive studies on this plant with it’s over 400 chemical properties and sort out, legally, its marketing and distribution. 

We have a Food and Drug Administration, a Center for Disease Control and a Federal Trade Commission. Should they be leading discovery and direction on how marijuana is used and marketed? Science, law and law enforcement are relatively clear about extracts from Poppies (opioids). We need much more clarity on extracts from the Cannabis/Marijuana plant. If there are legitimate uses for these drugs, should they be relegated to billboards? 

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. 

 

As a child I built little dams along ditches that channeled runoff from rain and then watched as the water built up behind my sticks and stones until it pushed through. Later I became aware of impervious levees along the Mississippi River—home water. The water flow often resulted in flooding downstream. Nature as an enemy is a losing war.

And so it is with climate. Atmospheric science informed by extensive research dating back centuries demonstrates that greenhouse gasses build up in a manner that interrupts natural systems. Humans can do a lot, but nature is one of those irrepressible forces. Our climate is now wheezing and there are no quick fix pills.

Human’s desire for comfort is another of those irrepressible forces. The comfort force will prevail at the ballot box unless people are moved by clarity and given time to adjust.

Global politics compounds the risks, plans and actions. Every political leader whether democrat or autocrat will be looking over his/her shoulders. People have patterns of living derived from what is largely a fossil fuels economy. Asking people to reshape their lives to comply with the Paris Climate Accord or any other multilateral guidance is a high-risk venture. Most politicians are risk-averse. 

Political leaders and their affinity groups need to lead in practical ways. First, we need a plan that stages our withdrawal from the economy as we know it today. And the planners have to be insightful to gain and hold a political majority. Attempts to re-engineer functioning systems that, for an agreeable price, heat, cool, propel, make and the like overnight, will result in failure. Climate change deniers will find an unwitting ally if the activists make temperature more important than people.

Staging a greener future also calls for resilience planning. Unfortunately many climate activists regard resilience planning as giving aid to the enemy.  The real calamity will occur if we fail to stage our reduction of greenhouse gasses, adding to the toxicity of politics. Even the autocratic China has recently revived coal output and usage.

Since much of the climate change agenda is being pushed by those who regard nuclear power as unacceptable, an important tool is removed. It is like saying “you can get by without a wrench, just use a pair of pliers.” Those who block 21st Century nuclear power are mired in 20th Century thought. 

After Germany pulled back from nuclear power, coal replaced it, note: “Germany until March 2011 obtained one-quarter of its electricity from nuclear energy, using 17 reactors. The figure is now about 10% from six reactors, while 35-40% of electricity comes from coal, the majority of that from lignite.” Consumers give little thought to energy sources, but they give a lot of thought to interruptions and price increases. 

A look across the spectrum of audacious political goals demonstrates that there is a favorable tipping point in human attitudes when citizens become a part of the solution. Yet, today’s climate change plans are largely concentrated on trillion dollar investments and world conferences in faraway places. Back home, where the proverbial grass roots sprout, environmental actions on a number of fronts are impressive. America’s climate agenda leaders need to do a much better job translating climate threats into local plans and actions. 

Finally, a thought on resilience planning. If we can’t mitigate sources of damage to humans and their objects (rising tides, for example) then the humans that have chosen to live in harm’s way should bear most of the costs. Insurance is the market instrument for risk evaluation and pricing. The more risk assumed by the public the less resilience. But where there is collective risk, the appropriate authorities should be required to have the equivalent of a depreciation reserve to meet damages and required changes.

One more thing about markets. Incentives to mitigate climate risks through innovation should be a primary goal. It is timely to recall that Thomas Malthus predicted in 1798 that population growth would outstrip food production causing humans to be forced back into subsistence living. Extraordinary gains in knowledge led to innovations in “agriculture, energy, water use, manufacturing, disease control, information management, transport, communications,” that caused food production to meet the growth of population and then some. 

Climate change is real and comes with consequential threats. But, we need leaders who understand that human nature’s preference for comfort is also real. At some point technocratic plans will have to yield to democratic decisions.

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. 

“We lack the courage to take even the smallest step unless we can calculate its effect into the smallest detail.”
Angela Merkel

What an unappealing hash—Covid 19 in an age where too many seek glory in polemics and social media networks facilitate the spread of hearsay, rumor, buzz, gossip—well noise. 

Public health agencies, to successfully shoulder their burden, must cause the public to understand their limitations without dismissing their findings. Science is the tool of curiosity which must be continuous. At any given point science provides insights, but rarely certainty—“here is what we know but our studies will continue.”

We have all been paying some attention to scientific conclusions. This is not a foreign war about which most have long since lost interest. This is personal—death maybe. And this is a subject of opportunity; public health agencies and health care companies get to prove their mettle. The media gets to prove its usefulness. Obscure public health officials are suddenly given a star turn. 

Unfortunately at the beginning of the viral illness was politics. For Donald Trump it was the “Chinese flu” and the need to be front and center daily. He did, however, push a race to a vaccine—science. While the public health people were buffeted by what they couldn’t  know and the rip-tide of media-motivated politics, geneticists were leveraging what America does best—create, invest, adapt, make— swiftly.

The goal, simply stated, was a return to normalcy while saving the vulnerable along the way. If normalcy had been polled, it would have drawn only dissent from the people who make a living dissenting.

America’s preening politicians at times made the autocrats in Asia look good. And their camp followers found new microphones in social media. In seconds you could go from watching a news conference by the Center for Disease Control to posting your own opinion on Twitter or Facebook. 

As we learned, America, indeed the globe, needs more granular measurement. What is an individual’s risk of death or near-death? What circumstances raise or lower that risk? What public interventions in the high risk categories can move the dial in the right direction? In short, how can we live with the reality of a mutating coronavirus?

This is, of course, complicated stuff. As they say “way above my pay grade”, but the technology exists if the will and capability exist to do a lot better in public health.

Many are now predicting the public health policy will evolve to endemic not pandemic rules. Where, we will all want to know, will we be most likely to become infected? And who, at the personal level, is most likely to suffer a fatal or near fatal case? How can we live with it?

I have a close friend who is in his 90’s. Last January before going to a family gathering he got tested and discovered he had an asymptomatic case. Telling everybody from 65 years of age and up that they better avoid family gatherings undermines public confidence.

And how should the media deal with outlier events? We are told young people are very unlikely to have fatal or near-fatal reactions. Then a young person dies of Covid and the headlines make it seem as if you need to pull your child out of school.

We need the tools of risk assessment and discretion. Intuitively we know that immune-compromised persons are at greater risk, but what about people whose medical history is good? Should they shelter in place or go to school or a family gathering or to a concert? Education, families and the arts have often been pandemic fatalities.

And what about being in an interior space with other people who have been vaccinated? Are those circumstances that lead to so-called “breakthrough cases”? And, how dangerous are those cases?

Let me step back. My questions are the tip of the iceberg. But what I think we all know is that scaring the public with generalized data is a losing strategy and one that undermines the progress that we have made. Today there is a dramatic gap between what public health officials say we should be doing and what we are doing. Watch a sporting event, for example, with people packed into stadiums yelling and screaming their enthusiasm. 

Michael Lewis’ new book Premonition features a lively and alarming view of public health. Essentially Lewis finds his heroes outside or on the periphery of government agencies. The outliers he featured used science as a tool to probe ceaselessly and act quickly.

Broadly speaking, the public health mission needs to become more urgent and present. It is hard to attract leaders into a career if adrenalin only pumps once every generation. It’s like guarding a building in a low crime neighborhood.

So here is a thought starter on a more diverse and urgent set of missions. Is crime a public health issue? What about advertising that preys on our weaknesses while undermining our health? What about more personal environmental conditions that lead to a lowering of life expectancy? 

Yes, I know, other agencies will fight any incursion on their turf but if violent deaths and debilitating environments persist, and they do, it seems to me we need some competition.

It is clear that co-morbidities are the hubs of vulnerability. Should public health agencies have a more active role in reducing human inflicted circumstances that weaken resistance? 

Finally, there are and will always be stubborn people who seem to relish the opportunity to say “hell no, I’m not going there.” America allows stubbornness; our Constitution guarantees it. Public health and its private partners need to be stars so that the “hell no” crowd is outmuscled at the ballot box. 

Heroes

Headlines in the last couple of weeks have featured recipients of Nobel Prizes. We celebrate creativity; that is a good thing. But, why aren’t we celebrating the scientific teams that in record time created vaccines.

When a sports team wins it all they come to the White House and are toasted by the President. President Biden, lead America in celebrating the extraordinary accomplishments of a handful of scientists and their historic accomplishment.

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’s rare for me to wake up in the morning thinking about a film I saw the night before. And that has never happened to me when the co-star was a beaver—yes that rather large furry rodent that builds dams and beaver ponds. And the only top of mind film that gave a lavish role to water, was Singing in the Rain.

The movie, Water’s Way: Thinking Like a Watershed was the first shown at the Chesapeake Film Festival as it opened last Friday at The Avalon Theater. Its script writers, photographers, directors and producers are a trio of talented storytellers: Tom Horton, Sandy Cannon Brown, and Dave Harp. 

Seldom has nature and nurture been so beautifully paired. The filmmakers joyfully paired their craft and passions. 

Water is often thought of as a commodity. We take it for granted; it fills our day and penchant for complacency. We worry about a variety of outcomes each day, but for the most part drinkable water is not one of them. We take it for granted and rarely think about its sources. Or its complexity. Or its treatment: “water from natural sources is treated for microorganisms, bacteria, toxic chemicals, viruses and fecal matter.” 

Before we humans sought to control water there were millions of beavers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed that were our allies. They built their dams and ponds along the creeks and streams that fed the rivers that filled the Bay. The beavers slowed the water down and provided nature’s infrastructure that filtered out the impurities. Clarity resulted and its dependents, clams and crabs and grasses and rockfish, thrived. 

Water’s Way guides us along the streams and rivers and the streets and parking lots in a beguiling narrative. The film seduces us with beauty while helping us to understand how water gets started and taking us on its natural journey that for many of us ends in the Chesapeake Bay.

We now build treatment plants and use chemicals to clean up the water that is guided by ditches and culverts that channel water that becomes one with a variety of sediments and pollutants occupying our parking lots, highways and fertilized fields, when not buffered by trees and plant life.

But let me not detract from the 45 minute movie. Water is the star and beavers are co-stars; but we, the audience, are not just passive viewers. In the end we are given a chance to star. My final thought: go to the movies or in this case to the movie which can be viewed by streaming it 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. 

After a recent talk I was asked questions about the future of the Republican Party. The ultimate question seemed to be: is its future in the hands of Donald Trump? My answer was a qualified no.

The Republican Party in the 20th Century was global, fiscally conservative, emphasized military preparedness and was generally skeptical about federal regulation and entitlements. Plus, after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, it became increasingly pro-life. It also had some key leaders in environmental policy including Richard Nixon who, with his pen, created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

Now there is a populist strain in the Party that complicates analysis. For one thing the analysts live well outside populist regions and neighborhoods. And, leaders in both Parties misjudged the effects of Chinese manufacturing and trade predation and technologies’ disruption of patterns of work and living.

Jobs disappeared—breadwinners found themselves in bread lines. Conservative abstractionists told the out-of-work to learn new skills and move to the jobs. Yep, nomads in Washington think tanks had prescriptions, but they didn’t go down well. Many do not want to move away from familiarity, family and friends.

The Left side of the political spectrum echoed some of the same advice, but for the most part seemed more sympathetic with identity politics than policies and politics that might provide jobs in the regions hardest hit.

If you were out of a job and thoroughly frustrated by the lack of prospects, politicians of whatever stated persuasion seemed not just irrelevant, but exploitative.

And then the rich guy showed up; the one who had been dismissing wannabes on The Apprentice for fourteen years. He talked like the guys at the Union halls and  beyond. And while the estranged generally dismissed political slogans, “Make America Great Again” tapped into a rich vein of nostalgia. 

He won, surprising the entire smart set. Indeed they were not just surprised, they were horrified.  But, at the end of the day, politics is about winning and four years later he lost. He, of course, said he won, but recounts, courts, Congress and occupancy told a different story. 

He lost because too many temperate people became offended; there is a slice of demographics—Right, Left and Center—that believe once a retail politician is in the White House he should act Presidential. It was okay for the rich guy to break china on the way in, but not while sleeping there.

Donald Trump, one day in 2016 noted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” This bombast was often believed to be true; it wasn’t. Today both the election results and polls show he has a substantial following in the Republican Party, but that puts his supporters in a position of being a majority of a minority. In short, Trump has power, but not enough to be President again. Re-nominating Trump would be political suicide; winning with the former President would require egregious political stupidity by the other side.

The last two times hard-core political minorities dismissed majority attitudes in the run for the White House was with Republican Barry Goldwater who won six States and Democrat George McGovern who won Massachusetts and DC. 

Today’s Republican Party is defined by what it is against. The politics are so raucous that content is hard to find. And many of Donald Trump’s supporters seem largely animated by Trump’s claim that the election was stolen. They need to reflect on the damage of this claim. Trump’s continuing rat-a-tat-tat on stolen election claims undermines our democracy in fundamental ways. 

Covid 19 should not be left out. There is a libertarian wing in the Party that believes, regardless of viruses not honoring geographical lines, the central government should not be able to make any public health rules. Several Republican Governors, however, tell Mayors and business people what they can or can’t do. This, to say the least, unsettles a large swath of the public.

It is, of course, too early to be definitive about the politics of 2024. In a little over a year we will vote again for what will be a redistricted Congress; 2022 will be a good year for Republicans, the only option to the Party in power. President Joe Biden has been too compliant with his Party’s far Left, made a hash of Afghanistan policy and withdrawal and is going to be held accountable for the tragic circumstances on the Southern border. Plus, conservative-minded people, Republican and Independent alike, are aghast at the multi-trillion dollar proposed tax and spending levels.

I did, of course, say that Donald Trump will not again be President. Forced to make a prediction about 2024 I will turn to hope. I would like to see a veteran elected. The last President who saw combat was George HW Bush who, after assembling an international coalition, kicked the Iraqi’s out of Kuwait and then brought the troops home. Veterans understand sacrifice and know that the only winning strategy is working together.

But, what I hope for is not a basis for prediction, so let me add a political dimension. Reading about public attitudes toward our foundational institutions is discouraging. Almost the only organization that continues to earn the public’s confidence is the military. The next President will be a veteran. 

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. 

Several weeks ago tweets were sent out before President Biden arrived at Dover Air Force Base to honor the thirteen soldiers who were killed at the Afghan airport. The tweets said Biden had failed to show and CNN said they were sent by conservatives. Perhaps, but who knows. Could they have been sent by Russians posing as conservatives? Or, is there a 5th Column in the United States that either wittingly or unwittingly uses partisan vitriol amplified by digital manipulation? Maybe several 5th Columns.

Encyclopedia Britannica describes a 5th column, “as a clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal. A cardinal technique of the 5th column is the infiltration of sympathizers into the entire fabric of the nation under attack……….”

America has become radically schismatic. Our enemies are gleeful.  It is quite clear that foreign adversaries want our differences to grow in both number and severity. Gleefully they watch and react as political performances become increasingly kinetic. How did Portland, Oregon turn into a stage set for violent demonstrations?  I’ll tell you when, when exploitation was found to be politically useful. By the Americans?  Russians? North Koreans?  Or, well who knows. 

Each day, internationally and domestically, agents of divisiveness plow through the day’s news looking for hosts to attach toxic viruses. And when they are successful the toxicity becomes the news. The agents are doing their job quite effectively.

The most glaring example is reaction to Covid. Since when did the transmission of a virus, its consequences, and protective public health remedies become a political cause? Sometimes I wonder if discernment is roadkill in the 21st Century because we are too lazy or preoccupied or stupid to discern fact from fiction or common sense from fraud. Sure some public pronouncements were clearly wrong, wrong because the brains behind the voices didn’t know. Coronavirus means novel virus: “In medicine, “novel” usually refers to a virus or bacterial strain that was not previously identified.”

Some decades ago I became familiar with William Wilberforce, a leading reformer in Britain in the mid-19th Century. He was a Member of Parliament and best known for his fierce advocacy against slavery. He led its abolition. A companion mission was his effort to improve what he called “manners.”

I was reminded of Wilberforce while reading an essay by Lance Morrow. Morrow has won the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism and has the distinction of writing more “Man of the Year” articles for Time magazine than any other writer in the magazine’s history. 

Morrow’s recent essay in the Wall Street Journal began:  “Stupidity is one of life’s big mysteries, like evil, like love, an ineffable thing. You cannot exactly define it, but you know it when you see it, as Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography. It takes many forms. Stupidity is entitled to no moral standing whatever, and yet it sits in a place of honor at the tables of the mighty; it blows in their ears and whispers promises.” 

Morrow, who claims to be working on a Unified Field Theory of Stupidity, closed his essay with this assertion:  “The death of manners and privacy, I argue, are profoundly political facts that, combined with other facts, lead, eventually, to an entire civilization of stupidity. It’s a short ride from stupidity to madness. Soon people aren’t quite people anymore; they are cartoons and categories. And “identities.” The media grow feral. Genitals became weirdly public issues; the sexes subdivide into 100 genders. Ideologues extract sunbeams from cucumbers. They engage in what amounts to an oedipal rebellion against reality itself.”  

Morrow went exotic to make a point. Ideologues might be extracting “sunbeams from cucumbers”, but I doubt it. Would that ideologues spend their time on such frivolous pursuits. No, ideologues are organically disdainful, vainly insistent and intensely focused on attracting followers, not sunbeams. 

Historically America’s social health is in part due to a “can do” strain of pragmatism. Americans on balance want to make good things happen. After all, we all arrived here on a ship even if for many the term is metaphorical. We have inherited the let’s make America better gene and in exercising our right to select our leaders we look for candidates who in one way or another point toward a better future. 

So when academic intolerance cancels thinking and expression, send your children and money to colleges that honor thinking and expression. In a dynamic economy that is the only way to succeed. And when the spear carrying elements in the Trump world say fall into line or else, push back.

In a democracy, regardless of how messy politicians and politics, free speech is paired with the secret ballot. The next nationwide ballot counting will occur in November, 2022. Given the stakes for our country it can’t come soon enough.

But, back to 5th Columns. Campaigns and elections are fields of combat. And the field has been transformed. We are now bits in computer clouds accessed algorithmically. Hackers and saboteurs are often one. They will work to destroy threads of unity and the candidates that seek to appeal to our better nature. Push back!

 

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. 

Recently I watched a very impressive Border Collie quickly herd what appeared to be a hundred or so sheep into a pen. A hundred sheep, one dog—compliant behavior dramatized. 

In the Congress the Border Collie is called a Whip. His/her job is to whip colleagues to support the Party position. Whip is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words; it suggests painful consequences for not following the Party line. Maybe the word Persuader would be superior but that would imply some give and take on legislative content. 

The $3.5 trillion package of so-called social infrastructure legislation was cooked up by Senator Bernie Sanders and bought by Joe Biden. And there has been almost no real research by the Congress on this development.

But, let us concede that there are important societal goals in the legislative package, as the package encircles virtually every domestic activity pursued by governments at all levels. Yet, when this package of exceedingly costly initiatives is being covered by the news media the coverage largely involves the vote counting drama. The drama includes arcane Senate rules dealing with budget reconciliation and the tension between the so-called progressive and centrist wings of the Democratic Party. 

The news often distills down to personalities. Reports often characterize this as a contest between Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, and Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema whose support is necessary in the Senate. Pelosi is overseeing the whipping in the House, Senator Chuck Schumer in the Senate and the guessing game is how compliant the two centrist senators will be. 

The Congress, and I’m talking about what is arguably the most important institution in our democracy, is submerged beyond the reach of its snorkel. American adults appear to be largely disillusioned with U.S. federal government institutions; new polling by Gallup showing just 12 percent has confidence in Congress. 

Newsweek, that reported the poll in July of this year, noted: “Although few Americans expressed confidence in most U.S. institutions, the level for Congress was the lowest of all the institutions Gallup asked respondents about.” 

Perhaps it’s just me, but when Members of Congress appear to have forsaken their agency for a package of programs and tax increases amounting to a financial number that is inconceivable to all but supercomputers, the institution is on the edge of an abyss. 

We have all watched as legislators have yielded to Party control to enact some really inane stuff. The Texas abortion law is a recent example. You can be pro-life and find its version of vigilante enforcement to be too clever by half. So nobody expects anything like perfection or just good, but come on, when a nation’s elected representatives can be whipped like sheep responding to a Border Collie, we have trouble as the Music Man would say “right here in River City.”  In this case River City in on the shores of the Potomac River. 

I am left with one overriding question. Are there institutionalists who value the integrity of Congress, who are willing to put their leadership to the test? Returning Congress to a position of strength and respect is, in a democracy, of ultimate importance.

Order is needed; there is a need for legislative sanity—in the Congress this is called Regular Order. Wikipedia sums it up: “Regular order within the context of the United States Congress refers to the semi-strict or strict application of committee and subcommittee processes, including public hearing opportunities and the holding of multiple votes. Said processes are designed to promote consensus-based forms of decision-making, particularly in terms of fostering accommodations for minority viewpoints. In the context of the broader history of the U.S. Congress, regular order is closely associated with bipartisanship.” As the parliamentarian is said to say, “let there be order.” 

Post-9/11

My mind captures the moment, just not the exact date. I think it was two nights after 9/11/01. The place was a Presbyterian church in midtown Manhattan. It is my guess that most of the people at the memorial service for the victims of the bombing of lower-Manhattan were living in New York. Many corridors of transportation remained closed.

My wife and I went to the service with a neighbor who was Jewish. Many faiths were coming together and that is what it was about. We needed to come together. We needed to recall shared humanity and a universality of faith. Faith, not division.

Friends, having found out we were in Manhattan on 9/11, often ask what we remember. For me the day began under a cerulean blue sky and ended in pungent smoke and haze. Evil is like that.

But I recall standing in line to give blood, the humanity of the City and especially the two days after the day when Christians, Jews and Muslims stood together and sang God Bless America. 

And now, take a walk in the neighborhoods of New York’s Boroughs and as you pass the fire stations look for the plaque—the plaque that recognizes the firefighters from that station who died that day to save others. There is just something about the spirit of humans acting beyond their earthly humanity that is especially humbling. 

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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Inquiries and their processes are often bone dry. While in the abstract we might agree that detail is important, most of us aren’t that interested. And when it comes down to politics, as expressed through government action, we are most often tribal and regardless of the detail follow our tribe’s point-of view.

On Sunday August 15th Afghanistan fell; President Biden ordered the removal of the structure and troops that had held off the insurgency. He had long ago decided Americans should leave Afghanistan and his predecessor had made a deal with the Taliban to do just that. He anticipated, perhaps, some sort of bi-partisan ownership of the withdrawal. But, he was seven months into his Presidency and had reversed much of what his predecessor did by executive action and, of course, we don’t live in bi-partisan times.

Authors are now busily researching and beginning books about what the international magazine, The Economist, called “Biden’s Debacle.” Yet, while the interested will buy one or more books that will be disguised as history, at most a million or so books will be bought in the next year or so. We will have moved on.

So at the risk of getting it wrong, this is my skeletal summary.

President Biden wanted out regardless of what former President Trump had done. He had telegraphed that fact many times over the years. His aides knew; indeed they were hired, in part, because they shared his goal. In short, the intelligence process was short-circuited. When the circuits fail, the lights go out.  

America has too often in recent decades elected points-of-view. In each case a man, whose resume would not put them on a top candidates list of an executive search firm, is elected to shoulder the most complicated leadership challenge in the world. The result: Vietnam, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq. We often cite our assets, but “humint” is needed to win the day. Yes, we have the strongest military in the world, a magnetic set of governing principles and are near the top of most economic measurements. What we lack is “humint” in our politics and thus in the White House and crucial national security agencies. 

Humint is shorthand for human intelligence. What is now apparently a word is most frequently used in counter-intelligence. What, intelligence professionals ask, is the “story on the ground?” And what are the human sources of the information, their credibility, the timing of the intelligence and on and on.

If you want to read a compelling book on the subject, I would recommend “The Spymaster of Baghdad” by Margaret Coker. It is not bone dry. Ms. Coker dug deep and writes a harrowing story about how humint turned the war against ISIS for the Iraqi government. 

Retreating to a political scandal in the summer of 1972, the Watergate Hearings began the eventual end of the Richard Nixon presidency. One senator, Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, kept asking of each witness “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

George W. Bush’s strong views on the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein led to war in Iraq to rid the world of its weapons of mass destruction. But when Americans went to Iraq to find the weapons, they didn’t find any.

President Biden, when asked about the his decision on when and how to leave Afghanistan, said the best intelligence suggested the U.S. would have at least a month or more to extract troops and allied Afghans before the Taliban controlled the country. Was this opinion held up to a rigorous debate or did it lean to confirmation bias? Did the President hear what his aides thought he wanted to hear or did he reject their advice because of a hardened and long held point-of-view?

As I write, we struggle to get out. We struggle to repair our historic alliances. And we will find it difficult to reverse an image of international indifference to both alliances and facts on the ground. 

Interestingly two Members of Congress, both war veterans and from opposite parties, just took a trip to Kabul to see for themselves what was going on. The Washington Post headline framed the partisan reaction by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi: “Pelosi assails two lawmakers who made unauthorized trip to Kabul.” She didn’t approve. She wanted to make sure that whatever information the electorate might receive was filtered through the same agencies that misinformed the President. 

Moments of failure are to be expected. We are human. No nation or set of national leaders are without failures. But, when in the months that preceded 9/11 intelligence on the ground didn’t overcome our inability to conceive an attack on the homeland, a very large and quite kinetic domino fell. It is going to take strong and able leadership to reverse this perilous and often self-inflicted cascade. We lost more than citizens and buildings on 9/11.

I do not generally end a column with a parenthetical thought, but I cannot fail to cite the constitutional guarantee of free speech that protects one of our most important institutions—the news media. When the media becomes enraptured by an ideology or a political leader or party, it becomes the unwitting agent of bad decisions. It is the media’s job to add an important and objective layer to what is happening “on the ground.”

Personal Note on Process

Before becoming Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.  I had served as the principal advisor on telecommunications and information policy to the White House. This fact was both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing and the curse had an identical source—I had strongly held views. And, as a practical matter, my key aides either shared my views or were at least not uncomfortable with them.

But, I headed a Commission. Each of the four other Commissioners had also been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They were there to assert themselves and quickly learned that dissenting from my direction brought a lot more attention to them.

In short, there was not a single important decision made by the Commission that was not fully and often publicly vetted. The legislated structure did not assure optimal decisions, but it did assure active thinking, advocacy and eventual reconciliation of views.

Profoundly, Abraham Lincoln understood the importance of engaging different points of view. This was the text of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” Lincoln was faced with the disintegration of America and the need to rid it of slavery. He knew success required a well informed and forceful center of gravity. He brought important political rivals into his cabinet.

But and here is the saddest fact of all. We know this. Lincoln, our most celebrated President and the subject of untold books taught us. So here we are in the 21st Century congratulating ourselves on all the progress we have made when in reality much of our political leadership has regressed. And, in our democracy, that is a bipartisan fact.

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. 

As we get older we experience death in an entirely different way. I can recall the deaths of my grandparents and certainly my parents. I can recall the wrenching loss of a young friend while in my late teens, but those were different. Statistically, I was far from death’s claim. Death was close but faraway—personal yet impersonal.

More recently impending deaths, in particular, have arrived in a whole new context. I have friends across a wide age spectrum; predictably the older ones are more vulnerable. The pandemic warnings have been like a two note instrument; age and infirmities have you on a down elevator. One thing is certain, the pandemic has caused all of us to think more about death and maybe, the possibility of a timeless existence. 

In the post-pandemic period, suicides are up and suicidal living has also trended. One assumes that each story is different even though the statisticians dutifully measure and report. But, what do the statisticians know about death?

Perhaps the younger, those statistically few who seem self-destructive simply accept the likelihood of an infinite slumber—a non-existence—and conclude it will be more enjoyable than their present state of despair. They choose termination while others suffer through the long goodbye, clinging to a painful life perpetuated by chemistry. 

Why do we fight death? If it is merely infinite slumber, why do we endure the sufferings of drugs and severe anxieties to hold on for a few more seconds of infinity? Doubt, perhaps.

Merle Haggard the country lyricist/poet asked that question in his song “How Long”: 

“……………….You live and learn just to die and forget it all. / But as I take these shallow breaths, / And this strong, old heart slows in my chest, / I look back on life with no regrets. / I’m just ready. // How long, Lord, must I lay here / While this old body slowly dies?……………………” 

Okay, I understand, Merle introduced a transcendent being but in a sense that is all too human. We can’t be sure what comes next so ultimate questions crowd in.

In recent years we don’t talk about “death,” we call it “passing.” It must sound better, but then it begs the question passing to what? The question will not go away. We don’t know, we can’t know, so question we must.

You will note that I reach for questions not answers—while I can note ironies, I cannot provide eternal verities. And questions like these are in a personal context, inevitably. Even if I disagree, and I do, that truth is relative, the final truth will come from a deeper place. We can wade in the shallows not confronting eternal questions, or go deep, but only the last breath, our last breath, will be determinative.

Having been at bedsides, so to speak, of those whose lives are slipping away in a blur of pain and pills I know one thing for sure. If ultimate questions need to be asked and answered, do it earlier. If death is now passing, passing to what? 

One last thought. If God made us distinctive—gave us a mind—how can using it on the ultimate questions be anything but God-affirming?

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.