Oh for the chance to have one more back and forth. Too often our intrinsic treasures are only truly treasured when they are gone.

I can recall of course. The union card. Walking on my knees, picking cotton. The adventure in Alaska. So, let me give you a son’s perspective.

Dad wanted, no insisted, that his sons experience life’s needs, not just its wants. The need to work hard for a living and to appreciate those that did so. The need to go well beyond your comfort zone. The need to understand education as a privilege.

William K. Sikes with his son Al Sikes

Thank you, yet only on reflection, for that job at Scott County Milling Company. It was there I learned to plow out boxcars which arrived by rail from grain producing regions; offloading them was part of my job. The grain was converted to feed and I was in the middle of the process—and a dirty, dusty process it was. The dust was so thick that Dad urged me to wear a face mask.

I refused; it was hard enough being a kid among men. On the third day, I didn’t show up for work because of a respiratory infection. On my next day at work I wore a face mask and as I would remove the filters it became apparent to my fellow union workers that they too needed protection. My moist breath had converted dust to a muddy look; not a pretty site. Face masks and filters were required in the next contract.

But, perhaps the perfect fusion occurred when Dad convinced a friend of his to hire me to work in Anchorage, Alaska, at Elmendorf Air Force Base. I drove to Alaska—what a trip, the last thousand plus miles took me on unpaved roads through British Columbia and the Yukon.

Alaska introduced me to homesteaders, jack hammers, tar paper roofs and King salmon. Men, even in their teens, can profit from a Hemingway experience. Yes, I learned to tar paper roofs and handle a jack hammer, but the really important lessons were learned on the Russian River access trails and in the relationships at work.

Today’s summer jobs for youth are often in fast food or staffing camps, or, for those in college, internships that might lead to post-college jobs. On the camping front a recent Wall Street Journal article noted camps to teach young people to invest. Several names: “Camp Millionaire, MoolahU, Financial Investors Club of America and WhizBizKids”.

We need to better understand each other. Yet the military is now volunteer, most summer jobs are clean hands affairs, and frequently that last pre-career summer begins the gap year and foreign travel. And now, camps with financial missions.

Father’s Day is mostly a commercial event. But, I would urge today’s fathers to consider how their sons will recall their relationship–what kind of reflections their sons might have when Father’s Day appears on the calendar. I recall wisdom.

You Give Me Fever

“You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night”

Little Willie John sang the original version of Fever released in 1958. A year later the sensual Peggy Lee did a cover version that skyrocketed into the top ten songs worldwide.

Ordinarily, fever is not a welcome sense—it is often a symptom of illness. But, fever is also characteristic of passion and in today’s overheated political jargon, the swamp.

At the risk of over-extending the metaphor, fever and incoherence are first cousins. Whether it is the fever of a passionate love affair or malaria, it works against reason. Fever and rationality often are at cross-purposes.

In the United States, the election of Donald Trump produced a fever. The news became feverish. Political debate likewise. And nowhere is our feverish behavior more pronounced than the commentary surrounding the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The President has been poked and probed by every imaginable adversary for over two years. First, the Clinton campaign. Then, after his election, the full array of denouncers kicked in—the news media, social media, and the variety of organizations he offended and offensive he has often been. This swirl of investigation and accusation was followed by House and Senate Committees and then the Special Counsel and his staff.

If there is the proverbial smoking gun of criminality, it should have, by now, been revealed. And if Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, is as good as advertised he has certainly had enough time to put together a case. To-date Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and several minor functionaries have been charged and presumably have or will reveal what they know to lessen their penalties. One is left to wonder why Mueller cannot isolate the culpability of the President, announce his findings in that regard, and continue against the minor actors as warranted.

I will not cite the litany of important issues that require minute to minute attention from the White House, but there are a large number. It is time to “fish or cut bait.” As a former Assistant Attorney General in Missouri, I know that a criminal investigation opens up many avenues of inquiry and that it is hard not to prolong an investigation, but we are talking about the President.

We elect each President knowing that we are not electing an angel. One President in my lifetime, Bill Clinton, was impeached by the House of Representatives. Richard Nixon would have been, but he resigned. Another, Lyndon Johnson, stood aside from the nomination battle when his popularity sunk to the basement. And we have a mid-term election coming up which gives voters a chance, if they choose, to make Trump the lamest of lame ducks.

In the meantime, the work of the Special Counsel that deals with the President should be wrapped up in the next sixty days, a report given to the Congress and, of course, the public, and then if warranted action taken.

In 1974, President Gerald Ford, understanding the potential divisiveness of a criminal trial of Richard Nixon, who had resigned under the dark cloud of Watergate, pardoned him. It probably cost Ford the Presidency, yet historians often point to the pardon as the most farsighted and courageous act of his Presidency. They, on reflection, understood how debilitating it is for the nation to be caught up in the incoherence of a fever.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

“If everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore — and rightly so, because lies, by their nature, have to be changed, to be ‘re-lied’, so to speak.”  Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt, born a Jew in Germany in 1906, fled Hitler and the observation above quoted reflected her struggles as her identity was used against her and then denied to her.

I repeat, “……..lies, by their very nature, have to be changed …..” Last Sunday, after watching several interviews about Trump, Comey, Mueller and Giuliani, I recalled this Arendt line. One talking head noted, in reference to the Trump-Giuliani swirl of conflicting statements, “We now see damage control of damage control.”

In the world of damage control, this is not new. To borrow from Ms. Arendt, damage control by its very nature is intended to obfuscate.

But, Trump is President. He is not one more celebrity caught in the wrong bedroom. He is the country’s chief executive who, among other things, is responsible, ultimately, for the nation’s annual operating statement and balance sheet.

And figuratively, we (the voters) are the final signature on the nation’s payment obligations. The nation’s founders, underscoring our importance in spending taxpayer money, placed the exclusive right to begin appropriations in the House of Representatives—each House member must earn our votes every two years.

This is the point in the article when I am supposed to recite our cumulative debt and an array of underfunded “entitlements”. I’ll simply note that we are now on course to add a trillion dollars to that debt each year. America’s youth should become familiar with our unfolding fiscal disaster. My generation will likely skate through to the finish.

Or, are the financial data lies? Statistics are certainly susceptible to being the content of deception. Historically, we have depended on a wide variety of news outlets to keep us informed. Is the truth discoverable? Do reporters have the knowledge and insight to discover the truth?  After all, we are dealing with numbers, not our various programs to reshape the way people act.

Rather than trying your patience, with more detail on our fiscal affairs, let me suggest several questions that should be asked and answered often — truthfully to the extent possible.

1.  Do our growing deficits threaten our international credit rating and foretell rising borrowing costs?
2. Will our growing national debt have a negative effect on the widespread use of the dollar as the most important international currency? Consequences?
3. The national debt is over 100 % of the 2017 gross domestic product (GDP). In the 2018 budget cycle the annual cost of that debt is projected to be $310 billion. What are the debt cost projections for future budget cycles?

It is never a good thing for our nation’s President to be caught up in a house of mirrors. But, our nation’s year to year and decade to decade economic strength is of far greater consequence. Economic strength or weakness translates into jobs, home equity, revenue for public initiatives and the like. We need truth — at least as close as we can get to it.

Final thought. Journalists, with economic training and insight, need to populate more than business media. They need to see their stories each day in the top papers and shows and they need to translate what they know into accessible and interesting stories. Truthful stories.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

This last week is illustrative. Preparation is underway for a summit with Kim Jung Un, Congress appears to be in the final stages of a new banking bill, teachers are on the march from Oklahoma to Kentucky, but everything is about the President. Well not everything, but given the salacious nature of much of the associated content, I would guess that the national conversation is not about budgets or taxes or education or healthcare or much of anything but President Trump.

Generally, I have avoided writing about the President, but the force field is too strong to avoid. The Trump presidency is revealing and not just about his sexual appetites. It reveals a great deal about democracy in America, 2018.

Last week the “breaking news” revolved around James Comey and Michael Cohen, both lawyers with quite different slants. Comey sees himself as the enforcer and Cohen once called himself the “fixer”.

Comey, in an interview, said Trump was bright enough but not moral enough to be President. Moral enough is an interesting phrase. We begin by asking by whose standards?

Certainly, by the standards of Judeo-Christian values, which have been crucial in nurturing America, he is not. Unfortunately, the standards of the marketplace have largely displaced expectations voiced in churches and synagogues. America’s narrative in recent generations has been re-shaped from opportunity to expectation. The overwhelming narrative of mass entertainment and advertising is about acquisition and its purported pleasures. Indeed much of the new media is underwritten by targeted advertising—appealing even more persuasively as data schemes search for and find our weaknesses.

Now, if the dream is to acquire and the economics of acquisition are in some regards highly unequal, what should we expect? Populism. Most in America see themselves as working hard but barely keeping up. The entertainment media is constantly showing the accouterments of outsized wealth and the relatively small percentage of people who enjoy it.

In the last election, Republicans offered up a wealthy man who gleefully broke the china of conventional politics while pledging to lift up those who perceived that their burdens, at least in part, were caused by unfair trade practices and immigrant laborers. And, if you lost your home equity in the recession or your job had been shipped overseas or your community had been ravaged by a disruptive economy, you didn’t pay a lot of attention to intangible values—the tangibles trumped the intangibles.

The Democrats offered up Hillary Clinton who when out of office regularly gave speeches to Wall Street firms for very large sums of money. Bernie Sanders pointed this out. Additionally, she regularly shared her thoughts while Secretary of State using the same unsecured networks that are regularly hacked. Many who normally voted for the Democratic decided they had had enough.

I imagine a great majority would like to have a reset button for our central government’s elected leadership. It is not available. Democracy is messy and hard work. Informed and discerning citizens are needed more than new ways and times to cast ballots. Also, leadership is not a natural fruit of the political party trees. And it is getting harder and harder for more insightful leaders to use the political parties as a necessary vehicle to ultimate success. Indeed President Trump fought his Party; he had the money to do so.

If the Republican Party is to avoid becoming the party of Trump, somebody will have to seize the initiative to move it in another direction. The ensuing electoral battle will be more about leadership than checking ideological boxes. Trump, after all, had often associated with the Democratic Party and had frequently taken positions on such subjects as gun control and abortion that were at odds with Republican orthodoxy.

The Democrats need a leadership contest and it must go beyond the state-of-affairs that led it to forfeit the White House to Trump. A combination of favoring a bigger and bigger government while embracing the most aggressive agendas of its identity groups is not a winning formula.

Today the Republican Party leaders with only a few exceptions have become compliant. This is not the universe from which the challenge to Trump’s supremacy will come. It is also my guess that the Clinton and Sanders wings of the Democratic party will not produce a transformational leader.

My advice to potential candidates, stand apart while articulating new directions—scripted orthodoxies reveal a locked not agile mind. And most importantly, put away the politics of polarization; it might appeal to your base but will ill-serve you and your country.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

Admiration quickly comes to mind. Barbara Bush was a singular personality and much loved by the public. Inside the walls of the White House, I suspect she was given a wide berth. Her mind was quick and razor sharp and always protective of her husband.

My role in President George H. W. Bush’s administration resulted in periodic visits to the White House, but I was well outside of the day-to-day intrigue. But I have one enjoyable memory best told by my wife, Marty.

We were at the White House for a State Reception for the President of Hungary, Arpad Goncz. As we were going through the receiving line, the President pulled me aside to visit with Hungary’s leader as I was leaving the next day on a diplomatic trip that included Hungary.

As I visited with the Presidents, the line stopped as Marty was face-to-face with Barbara. And now my co-writer continues:

When I realized that I was going to be visiting with Mrs. Bush, I was quickly thinking, what we will visit about! Fortunately, a few days prior to this evening, Al and I had been watching the start of the 1990 World Series game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Oakland Athletics. Mrs. Bush was sitting with the owner of the Reds, Marge Schott, who was known for her controversial behavior. We watched Barbara Bush throw out the first pitch.

As we shook hands, I told Mrs. Bush that Al and I had watched her pitch at the opening game of the World Series. She laughed and then said to me: “You know, of course, they first asked George, but he couldn’t do it, so they asked me. It was actually quite interesting because Marge Schott wanted me to take her dog, Schottzie, with me to the pitcher’s mound and I didn’t want to. Mrs. Schott had been drinking and was very insistent and starting to cause a bit of a scene when I finally thought to tell her, I am so sorry Marge, but I just can’t because Millie (the Bush’s dog – famous for the book Mrs. Bush wrote) loves to watch baseball and is watching the game and will be very jealous.”

Mrs. Bush was so easy to visit with; she put me completely at ease, and I smile every time I tell this story. As we are all aware, she was a very special person – very real and down-to-earth and someone everyone could admire.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

It was the beginning, 1994. I was in Dallas for a meeting of magazine editors and publishers and met with Jim Clark who was raising capital for a company called Netscape.

Clark had recruited the technology group headed by Marc Andreessen at the University of Illinois. Andreessen and colleagues had invented the first web browser, and Clark was eager to have “content companies” publish on what was then referred to as the World Wide Web.

My job as President of New Media for the Hearst Corporation aligned with what Clark was doing. I was working on digital expressions of what Hearst did so well in the traditional media world.

Hearst invested in Netscape, achieved a very high return on that investment and became a leading “traditional media” company offering digital content.

Netscape had a short-lived run before being bought by AOL. Netscape depended on users purchasing the right to use its browser. Microsoft launched its own browser and, feeling threatened by Netscape, gave it away. Free won, Microsoft blew up Netscape’s business model.

1994 foretold the future of the Internet. In one sense, the unfolding realities in 1994 paralleled George Orwell’s novel 1984. But the developments of 1994 pointed to dominance by a business oligarchy, while Orwell pointed toward an all-pervasive controlling government.

In 1994 newspapers and magazines sold ink on paper for dollars. Today, Facebook and Google sell information, entertainment and social connection for personal information that they convert to targeted advertising inventory.

If I were to write a book, looking back, the title might well be The Seduction of Free. Free search, social connectivity, customer reviews, shipping.

The founders of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, saw the future and with copious amounts of capital delivered it. Each did what it did very well. Now the seduction is over and the morning after is not without regrets.

Rather than speculate about or repeat the lessons of others, my source will be me. One slice of life we all share is health concerns. I have researched cataracts, lower back pain, knee replacement and orthotics over the last few years. Google has a more complete profile of my health concerns than my doctors.

In this Faustian bargain, Google and its peer companies deliver. To use a marketing term: we find ourselves in a sticky relationship. Businesses love sticky relationships–repeat customers are the best. How many of you are leaving your Facebook friends?

Pre-1994 I was in the regulation business (so to speak) as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. This experience compels me to be wary about regulating Google, Facebook, and Amazon. On the other hand, we should understand what is being asked of us and how the information is used. And we should not be deceived or beaten down by pages of small font legalese.

Each company has brilliant designers of customer user interfaces. Put them to work on an interface that reveals the offer to us and presents options. The number of words used should not exceed one hundred and must be in at least 14 point type.

Also, each company has brilliant chief financial officers. Put them to work on assessing the market value of their unfettered use of our information. Convert this market value into an offer that allows each prospective user to make a choice. The choice: what price privacy—information or dollars.

And finally, the Congress should in one hundred words or less tell the two antitrust agencies that they would like to see a proposal to update our unfair competition laws. Facebook, Amazon, and Google (now Alphabet) began when venture capital was flowing, raising money in public markets was relatively easy and when the steady erosion of privacy was opaque. Scale and network effects now enjoyed by the big three give them an almost unassailable dominance. Dominance inevitably leads to excess.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

An article on the eve of the Never Again march in Washington kept quoting kids observing that the “system is rigged.” A rigged system would deny their right to speech and petition. But, on one level they are right.

Constitutional freedoms that allow marches, posters, and chants also allow people and companies with enormous capital, the same access. Let’s use gun control illustratively.

First the Constitution, in an 18th Century context, protects the right to own a gun. The framers were thinking of the right of people to rise up against concentrated power, as happened in our Revolutionary War.

Now almost 250 years later and generations of gun technology later, an ideology has been successfully shaped by the NRA that has subordinated, implicitly, the freedom to think straight.

Vaclav Havel, the cerebral force behind the Velvet Revolution, showed with absolute clarity how the Soviet system of mind control worked. The Soviets used the phrase “Workers of the World Unite” to give its domination an emotional center. In fact, the Soviets subordinated hundreds of millions to the dominant bureaucracy that ruled the Soviet Union and Warsaw Bloc nations. The last thing the Soviet hierarchy wanted was for the workers of the world to actually unite.

In the United States, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has been no less successful with most Republicans and many Democrats.

The NRA warps the Constitution by insisting that the right to bear arms (virtually any arms) is absolute. Then they supply the necessary political weapons; money and single-issue voters. Regardless of how contorted some of its claims are, millions have signed on for a variety of reasons having little to do with the underlying rationale of protecting Americans from home grown oppressive power.

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in a recent Op-ed, said we need to amend the Constitution’s Second Amendment which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Constitutional amendments are as difficult as reviving a person from cryogenic sleep. What we need are Supreme Court Justices that will yield to common sense, but first, they have to be presented with something that makes sense.

The Second Amendment was not intended to make the use of a 21st Century weapon easier than a smart phone. The latter requires either a digital or biometric password and is indelibly linked to its owner. Nothing is more personal than a smart phone; the same should be true of a gun. Personalizing a gun does not guarantee responsibility, but it links irresponsibility with potentially dire consequences and evidence of culpability.

There was a time when I was an NRA member to support their gun safety program. I am a hunter and know the potential for horrendous accidents when a gun is used carelessly.

I also know that today we provide more protection for waterfowl than we do for humans—a lot more. Legally, waterfowl hunters must plug their gun so that only three shells can be fired without re-loading. And there are game wardens in the field to enforce hunting restrictions.

The emotional dial has been moved by frequent mass shootings and youthful leadership. The NRA notwithstanding, I believe the next three years will bring major changes in gun control. My principal recommendation: personalize gun ownership.

I hope as well that the Hollywood types that were so evident during the marches will bring pressure to stop nihilistic video games (I am not optimistic).

Finally, while I believe the Never Again movement is encouraging, it seems inclined to dismiss efforts at compromise. The NRA successes have been sustained by a bi-partisan coalition. Cycles that favor the right or left will not end; bi-partisan laws have continuity.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

The Lenten season is rich with memories both ancient and contemporary—and what vivid recollections. So with some apprehension, let me take you on a brief journey.

The Lenten season at its simplest is: “an annual season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter,” this year on April 1. Christians are encouraged to prayerfully recall the extraordinary events that led to Jesus being crucified and resurrected.

My most vivid recollections retreat to my childhood and two of Jesus’ parables, the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Both stories made an enormous impression on me, and somewhere in the hierarchy of my brain, they will not let go.

Both stories have an overarching theme—concern, care, forgiveness—in what is often an unforgiving world. The Good Samaritan, while walking along a road, was confronted by an injured man who had been pummeled by robbers. Travelers had passed by without offering help, including a priest and a Levite. The Samaritan stopped and helped the injured man.

Regardless of one’s religious background, almost everyone has some familiarity with the story of the prodigal son. The son had abandoned his father, wasted his inheritance and then, only finding degrading work, asked for and received his father’s forgiveness.

I suspect both stories are well known as they are the essence of so many artistic expressions in the visual and performing arts. One of Rembrandt’s most celebrated paintings captures the distraught son being forgiven by his father.

Acts of grace transcend the news; if they were few, they would receive a lot of attention. Yet these acts co-exist today with civil estrangement. And this estrangement is exacerbated by political candidates and activists looking for an edge. The “other” forms much of our identity politics and the exploitative game.

America has unique and admirable qualities, but continued strength requires more than rhetoric. The eagle on the great seal of the United States holds in its beak a ribbon with the motto, E Pluribus Unum. The motto, which is Latin for “out of many, one,” was adopted by the Founding Fathers in 1782.

It can be argued that the motto is too idealistic. It can also be argued that the Samaritan should not have stopped on the road to Jericho. As the story unfolded, the Samaritan bound up the man’s wounds, took him to an Inn and left money for the Innkeeper to care for him—a sacrificial expression of love.

This story does not offer us an easily applied legal template. The parables often tell very personal stories that encourage personal response. Although in this case, Jesus was talking to a lawyer who was asking “who is my neighbor.”

The parables and similar stories from other religious traditions are aspirational or should be. They have, as one writer noted, formed a “thin tissue” of morality—the law above the law.

Civil estrangement in America preceded President Donald Trump—after all, we fought a Civil War. But, as America, informed by both the Bible and the Enlightenment, guaranteed unparalleled freedom for its citizens, its leaders relied on the recognition and influence of a greater good. Certainly Abraham Lincoln did.

In my lifetime there has not been a moment when the greater good narratives have been more at risk. The political edge has become a hard one—unforgiving, intolerant, and often hubristic. The most egregious development has been so-called evangelical leaders who have yielded to today’s Caesar. They, like all of us who struggle with faith’s calling, need to spend the Lenten season striving to understand the Gospel. They also need to understand that a person cannot be both a political and spiritual leader.

America needs spiritual leaders, not politicians wearing vestments.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.