Fortunately my exposure was brief. I don’t have TV at a cabin my wife and I enjoy in the Catskills. I did, however, read the news coverage of the debate times two in several electronic newspapers. I can’t help myself.

Shrill voices punctuated a normally quiet early morning cup of coffee as the steeply angled sun shone in. The only clouds hung over my iPad.

Now before you conclude that my comfort is what is wrong with America, grant me a few minutes of reflection. Fifty years divided between government service and building companies offer some puzzle pieces, with a barely visible picture.

Since President Trump’s public feud with Congressman Elijah Cummings, arguments have tended to use Baltimore illustratively. But, most big cities would qualify. Trump figures he can take on Baltimore since he has no chance of winning Maryland. Too bad that once again Trump chose ad hominem language rather than reason. Division is his calling card.

Big city leaders, Baltimore included, have deployed political tools at a dangerous scale. Small cities don’t provide as much tax revenue, and their citizens (closer to the elected) tend to concentrate on the fundamentals — clean water, safe neighborhoods and timely dispatch of potholes.

In many of our largest cities, on top of out-sized promises, Mayors and its Councils have given public employees ever bigger paychecks. Well why not. Better pension benefits. Check. And if teachers wanted protection from those irritating charter schools, well okay. The teachers union is a part of the political coalition.

The end result: a coalition of interest groups that voice concern for those challenged by life’s circumstances, but whose principal interest is their tenure, checkbook and retirement.

Many big cities became employment agencies that protected the employed — monopolies enabled by a political monopoly—in City after City, the Democratic Party.

Only New York City, surprisingly, elected several GOP mayors. I lived there while first Giuliani and then Bloomberg were mayors. Neither brought Nirvana, but that is not on offer anywhere. They did, however, achieve dramatic reductions in crime and enabled school choice for many. The latter put creative pressure on traditional public schools, while the former gave most neighborhoods security. Not bad — but the point is that political monopolies do not work.

So forgive me if I greet the promise that if we just envelop humanity with larger government programs, with their attendant lifetime employment, all will be well. Count me a skeptic.

The truth is we need to pay our government’s bills, not just issue more debt. We need to introduce choice throughout public education for all families and their children. We need to harmonize pension obligations with cold-eyed projections of future revenue. And, in my view, we need to further enable State and Local governments to resolve issues that will, if left unchecked, consume our politics and attention spans. America is at her best when we work hard at avoiding private and public concentration of power and spread the ingenuity that results from competitive engagement in both private and public enterprise.

Enough, it is a very pleasant day—I am going outside.

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. 

“People speak of “the environment.” They don’t know what they’re talking about. “The environment” refers to no place in particular. We’re alive only in some place in particular.”
Wendell Berry, The New Yorker, 7/14/19

Climate change and its causes are too big — not unimportant, just too big. We have to get closer to home. We have to reflect on human intrusions and the consequences, up-close. If we don’t understand our neighborhood, how can we get our mind around the world?

There is, of course, a big picture, but it started with one stroke or pixel or note. We have to understand the beginnings — what we can see or touch or feel.

For those of us who live on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, water is our most frequent picture window. In the broadest sense, we think of the Bay as an important element in a larger design. It is good to have that perspective — we need it.

But, let me take you back to high school chemistry. I was fascinated by the chemistry laboratory experiments that transformed liquids, even causing minor explosions.

The formulas seeped from my brain decades ago. But the fact of transformation did not. We, homo sapiens, are engaged in daily experiments. We change the chemistry of the air, water and soil — this is not theory, it can be measured. And, in the aggregate, these experiments go global.

We have radically changed the diversity and balance of flora and fauna. Again, this is not theory. But, to a degree, we have formulated theories about how we can compensate for our intrusions by heavy equipment, chain saws and herbicides.

I look at my neighborhood, in part, informed by bees — both imported and indigenous. Before becoming a beekeeper, I was, to put it charitably, under-informed. I could expound on international environmental issues, but didn’t understand the yard around my home. Or, my neighbors’ yards or fields.

Now, I can hear you saying “what is there to know that I can’t observe on the push end of a lawnmower?” And, that is the point. We have all suffered from a lack of curiosity; we are no longer eager students in a chemistry laboratory. To one degree or another we have been victimized by images conjured up by Scotts fertilizer ads. Most homeowners have become enamored with lawns that look like a golf course, while yard chemists labor away striving to improve the survive/kill ratio of grasses and clover.

When I became a beekeeper, clover became important — in a yard setting it is one of the few sources of pollen and nectar. Yet, one day I asked an employee working in Lowe’s garden section where I could find clover seed. She exclaimed, “We don’t sell it, we sell things that kill it.”

Have you ever seen a Monarch Butterfly gathering nutrition from a lawn? Or, a Damsel Fly? Or, a pollinator of any description? Nope, lawns are fly-over zones — in the aggregate, huge fly-over zones.

Now, if I were a botanist, academic words and phrases would follow. And, most of you would quit reading. But, I think we can all, on a visceral level, understand how our predispositions affect our neighborhood and how, writ large, they affect the planet.

We have not made a conscious decision to shut out or shut down pollinators. Or, degrade our soil. But, like it or not, we have implicitly decided that the cost-side of chemically re-engineering the earth’s surface is not our concern. We are seduced by pictures that create a universe that satisfies us and a company’s bottom line.

I would simply say: BRIDGE CLOSED! PERIL AHEAD! The bridge — the pathways that connect all of us — flora, fauna and human beings alike are flashing red lights. Life’s design is in trouble.

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. 

Bring in the Clowns—Whoops They Are Here

Trump sows dissent, it spreads. Farmers are envious. 

Trump smiles and tweets.

The dissenters lash out at Pelosi and then Biden. They miniaturize the sane.

Where is Amy of Minnesota? Well she is at the end of the debate line trying to avoid the spittle of de Blasio of New York.

Trump smiles and tweets.

Amash of Michigan offers up a principled withdrawal—a revolt of one—Trump smiles.

Fringe is in. Outrage, the new black or is it orange?

Cable channels, the new Arbiters, with their breaking wisdom,

Yes, “the levee is dry”.

Those who offer to work across the aisle find the aisle congested with clowns. Forgive me, not meaning to disparage clowns.

Racism. Well it should be a serious subject but, Biden and Pelosi racists? Or, any white men, period?

Civility? Who takes the first step? It should not require new profiles in courage.

Plastic is out; no it’s in, its MAGA man. Leaders can’t find space among the carnival barkers. 

Trump smiles and tweets.

by 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. 

My wife and I spend a few weeks each year at a cabin on the Beaverkill River in the Catskills of New York. We are in our 22nd year and our cabin, in a quiet rural area, has given us a window on the changes we frequently read about.

Overall, the beauty of the Catskills with it’s legendary trout streams provides a modest economic base built around tourism and second home dwellings. But, tourists and part-time dwellers do not provide volunteers for fire protection or regular church goers.

When we arrived there were two churches several miles apart; both were struggling. Neither had full-time pastors and both occupied old but classic New England style church buildings.

One lacked community leadership and is now closed. One is the center of a small community and is open in the summer with special events during other times of the year. And to say that the church is defined by its community is an understatement. The community does it all.

One feature that I find particularly interesting is a rotation of church members who deliver the Sunday message. Last year I became one of those.

Faith has many expressions. The Bible chronicles the first church and its many leaders. The epistles of Paul are filled with messages to the leaders in Corinth, Ephesus and beyond. He was framing first century theology and urging their devotion. We have to assume that these first communities of the newly faithful came together often and were led by persons who struggled with what to say. Undoubtedly they were thrilled to receive letters from Paul, but when it came to sustaining the church they were on the frontlines and on their own.

Today we read about shuttered churches, declining numbers of the ordained and falling church attendance. In a recent Wall Street Journal article about expanding suburbs, the writer noted a church in rapidly expanding Apex, North Carolina. There is a Catholic Church in Apex called St. Mary Magdalene. Father Donald Staib observed that in their new sanctuary there were eight stained-glass window panels from two closed churches in upstate New York.

My wife and I have heard a number of church messages presented by speakers at our small Catskill church. We find them insightful and often inspiring. And, it is not uncommon to find half the congregation participating in the service in one way or another. Maybe doctrinal elements are under emphasized, but expressions of how faith works in individual lives is more than an adequate substitute.

Now, this is not a message aimed at the ordained. Gifted religious professionals are crucially important. But, I do believe that churches should engage more lay people in the content of services. I know that preparing a message engages me well beyond commentary on the week’s news.

The churches in the Beaverkill Valley were once Methodist and I am told that the presiding Bishop did not make the transition to non-denominational status easy. I can imagine that regardless of the denomination, the powers that be don’t want to turn in reports showing fewer churches.

My limited research does not reveal an organization that encourages and facilitates congregation take-overs. I hope there are many faithful communities helping to reverse the downward slide and while doing so enriching their spiritual life.

One final thought. Today headlines and commentary rage about court battles over religious freedom. Most deal in one way or another with government actions. Forcing The Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception insurance coverage is probably the most memorable of recent years.

My concern, however, turns more on faithful communities and less on the latest outrage. In fact, I think that when politics is fused with religious doctrine, faith suffers. But when the faithful reach out and touch those in need, even the jaded are forced to pay attention.

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. 

Politics and the Supreme Court, intentionally, have a tense relationship. Indeed Franklin Roosevelt, when President, attempted to expand its membership so it would find more of his programs constitutional. The Court has the final say and its jurists enjoy lifetime tenure.

Beyond the structural differences, I can recall arguments in my constitutional law classes regarding the extent to which popular opinion influenced decision-making. Purists preferred to think the Court, being supreme, sits well to the north of the grubby fights about the legal way forward. Most know, however, that politics play a role in the appointments, confirmations and even considerations. Most Americans hope, however, that lifetime tenure invites wisdom.

But, let me leave the classroom and turn to the court’s complicity in what are fraught times.

I believe Roe v. Wade (the decision that discovered a constitutional right for abortion) was wrongly decided but decided it was and that occurred in 1973 on a 7 to 2 vote. The opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackman, an appointee of President Richard Nixon; the Chief Justice was Warren Burger, also appointed by Nixon. Both identified as Republicans. One of the dissenting justices, a Democrat, Byron White, was appointed by President John F Kennedy. Politics is inevitably part of the court’s history.

But, when politics seems to overwhelm the court’s deliberations, its authoritative position deteriorates. Indeed it has led the current Chief Justice, John Roberts, to give multiple speeches on the need to elevate Supreme Court decision-making.

The Boston Globe reported that “Roberts has been on a mission to convince the public that if the court is ideologically split, it is about law, not politics.

‘‘We do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle, we do not caucus in separate rooms, we do not serve one party or one interest, we serve one nation,’’ Roberts told an audience at the University of Minnesota in October.”

Today political parties divide along sharper edges than in 1973. Presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns often turn on Supreme Court appointments or issues. And today’s socio-political divisions often turn on the Roe decision.

We need clarity, if the Supreme Court wishes to step back from the raw edge of politics. It needs to hear a case on abortion restrictions that will result in a decision that answers rather than raises questions. It should not choose a case that leads to a minimalist decision that ducks the core issue. America needs to know when a woman’s right to an abortion is protected and when the States are allowed to restrict that right.

I say “when the right to an abortion” is legally protected because conservative jurisprudence honors precedence and the Roe decision was decided 46 years ago and the decision was not a partisan one decided by the slimmest of majorities.  

Yet, my concern is not so much the jurisprudence, but the social and political unrest that persists because the Court has chosen not to settle the constitutional issue. The failure to define the scope of the 1973 decision has led to toxic battles in State after State.

Also, the Supreme Court seems increasingly tethered to Presidential elections. The President will always appoint, but this power should not be the pivotal influence in voting decisions. If Justice Roberts wants to return the Court to a revered institution, he should guide it toward resolving the abortion issue. Indeed, now seems to be just the right time because the Court is still closely divided and the Chief Justice has both stated and shown an interest in decoupling the Court from the overwrought politics of the day.

Law students for generations will study and debate the Roe V. Wade decision. But, the health of our Supreme Court must be restored. Justice Roberts has diagnosed the problem. Only decisive action by a largely unified court will re-elevate the judicial seats each jurist occupy.

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. 

Identity politics! Let’s see, I am pro-choice or pro-life and therefore a Democrat or Republican. Unstated: I am willing to suspend disbelief as long as I identify with a candidate or a Party on a visceral level. And today, there is nothing more visceral than the legal boundaries of abortion law.

Political parties respond. Data lists are accumulated, rationalized and then the separation occurs. Data becomes real people and they are targeted. Hot buttons are lit up.

Identities: Evangelicals, LBGTQ, Ethnicity, Rural, Urban, Degreed, and on and on. Can an evangelical vote for somebody who is in the LBGTQ community? What if the two persons share points of view on most issues?

What does United mean? What does E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many One) mean? Our nation’s founding was inspired by unitedness. The politics of the day are defined by division. Can you define by division and then act unitedly?

Is there room, in the 21st Century, when communication is often instantaneous, targeted, emotional, and commercial, for quiet, patient relationships and decisions? Is it possible to step back from our political identity groups?

I have a lot of questions about our attempts at successful self-government. And, by nature, I am not reluctant to offer answers, by way of opinions. But, I must admit that I am stumped. While it is relatively easy to look ahead to medical breakthroughs, transformations in travel, and the like, it is maddeningly difficult to anticipate uniting answers. It is even increasingly difficult to follow facts where they take you. Failing this, how is good policy created?

Here is what I do know. Politics is attracting fewer and fewer idealists and/or realists and more and more manipulators. While idealists can get it wrong, manipulators work against the grain of unity—wrong defines their work. The Russians were able to use outlandish claims in Facebook ads because it fit a pre-existing pattern. Political parties and candidates are busily targeting their opponents with half-truths or worse. The Russians joined in.

Indeed half-truths now, largely inform politics. Candidates call for balanced budget amendments to our Constitution, but vote regularly for unbalanced budgets. Candidates and Advocates fly here and there to give speeches on freeing the atmosphere of carbon. Hypocrisy is not new, but a “take no prisoners” approach to identity politics makes it more egregious—cynicism sure to follow. And as regular politicians, those who come from more conventional backgrounds, attack Trump for his irregularity, it makes his base support even stronger.

A path-breaking journalist died on May 15, her name: Georgie Anne Geyer. A Wall Street Journal reflection on her career noted, “In the beginning she “operated in a virtually all-male world.”  She became a columnist after more than a decade on the road. After the Cold War, she watched with distress as the U.S. descended into identity politics. “The grievance activists,” she wrote, “create sovereignties that compete with the sovereignty of the nation.” In one of her last articles, she argued that America needed to “develop a renewed sense of common purpose.”

Sovereignty. Have we yielded our own sovereignty? Have we become actors in emotionalized morality plays directed by the manipulators? I gave to a candidate recently and now get almost daily emotional appeals to give more. I can recall many years ago a campaign in which the candidate I worked for rejected a pro-life ad that featured a fetus in a bottle of formaldehyde. How many today reject incendiary ads?

We are now in a long, long campaign period as 24 Democrats campaign against each other and Trump. The actual election of a new President will not occur for about seventeen months. And, most assuredly, in the age of Trump, this will be a demolition derby. The car, or should I say survivor, will not look pretty.

My closing thought recalls the words of the sergeant from Hill Street Blues, a 1980s TV show. Each morning, he urged the police officers to “be careful out there.” Only careful voters will insist on truth. Only truth will restore our great experiment (yes, experiment) in self-governance. And, to those who should feel honored to be called journalists, truth should be your North Star.

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. 

Charles Krauthammer, in a Washington Post OpEd, summarized a series of Executive Orders by President Obama which created law, unauthorized by Congress. (The Lawless Presidency, August 16, 2013). He then observed:

“Yet this president is not only untroubled by what he’s doing but open and rather proud. As he tells cheering crowds on his never-ending campaign-style tours: I am going to do such-and-such and I’m not going to wait for Congress.

That’s caudillo talk. That’s banana republic stuff. In this country, the president is required to win the consent of Congress first.

At stake is not some institutional curlicue. At stake is whether the laws are the law. And whether presidents get to write their own.”

President Trump meet President Obama. His leadership appears to have been infectious.

Charles Krauthammer, now deceased, was a constitutionalist with a pen but not a vote. Those with a vote — 535 to be exact — have miniaturized themselves. There are few institutionalists on either side of the aisle. Too bad. The Congress, constitutionally, is expected to lead, not just follow.

Both Obama and Trump, but especially the latter, have elevated the Judiciary, as members of Congress spend their time raising money and tribal fever for the next election. The Judiciary is now paired with what has become the fourth branch of government, a wide spectrum of special interest litigators. Today’s sequence: provocative tweets, executive orders, special interest suits to block the order, often nationwide injunctions by District Courts and then of course, judicial appeal. Members of Congress react like performance artists.

Congress’s enfeeblement enables sound and fury and sows confusion and cynicism. And, it is damnably difficult to discern a series of events, or able and winsome leaders, that in combination can restore institutional balance. But, I cannot conclude with the phrase institutional balance. I sound like a political scientist who doesn’t have a clue and retreats to his doctoral thesis for a conclusion.

I use the phrase because absent an intentional partnership between the White House and Congress, autocratic governments like China win. Distilled into the world of business, companies fail when ownership, Boards and CEOs fail to work both in tension and harmony.

Tension is good. Finding the best way forward across a wide range of issues is not easy. Ideas are inherently competitive, yet at no time in our history have we had better analytical tools to help reach objective conclusions.

President Obama’s edicts have been largely reversed by President Trump. Autocratic leadership is an oxymoron — elections and courts erase.

If America fails, it will be because democracy has failed. And democracy’s health is wholly contingent on one thing — a well-informed citizenry that insists Members of Congress work together to shoulder their responsibility. Are you optimistic?

How would you like to be a contestant in a game show? Well, all you have to do is participate in the Presidential nomination contest to choose the Democrat, presumably to run against Donald Trump, himself boosted by a game show.

As of now you are on the clock. There are twenty-four choices and several clues. Debates start soon and voting begins a few weeks into the new year.

Polls suggest Joe Biden will prevail. Many commentators point to Bernie Sander’s advantage – passionate supporters. Still others can’t believe that the end-game will be down to two late 70s white males going head-to-head.

I tend to agree with the “it’s time for a new generation” crowd, although as of this minute I do not vote in Democratic primaries. I did, however, mail a check to Seth Moulton, a U.S. Congressman, after watching an interview. And, there are several other thoughtful leaders in the wide field. Amy Klobuchar, for example, has an impressive record as a legislative leader.

Lanes have become the chosen metaphor as analysts seek to order their analysis. The Left lane is led by Bernie Sanders, who is said to be the inspiration for candidates who are not allergic to being called socialists. The Center lane is led by Joe Biden. I believe there should be a leadership lane; most decisions Presidents face do not fit neatly into ideological predispositions. I would put Moulton in the leadership lane.

For example, what happens when one of our foreign adversaries becomes aggressive, militarily? What should we do when our elections are attacked or our electrical grid? And maybe the election winner can deal with health care by eliminating the private version, but I suspect the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis will alone, change the path to a revised health care law. U.S. debt narrows policy options across the board.

In an interview, Moulton characterized Trump as a weak Commander and Chief. I agree. Moulton has standing to criticize. He earned the Bronze Star and the Commendation Medal and has been “uncomfortable calling attention to his own awards out of respect to many others who did heroic things and received no awards at all.”

He also recommended a program that ties national service and financial support for college or vocational education. A 21st Century GI bill, if you will. Good idea.

My assessment of Trump as Commander and Chief is somewhat different from Moulton; Moulton stressed his lack of service. My concern: his vanity. Global leadership must, in most cases, leave room for the adversary to save face at home. Chairman Xi, to resolve trade disputes with Trump, has to lose face. Trump scolds China and then pronounces that he will win the trade dispute and, of course, that it will be the greatest win ever.

The truth is that President Trump is weak. He is a lame duck; voting begins ten months from now. His Party lost the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections. And the poll numbers, according to Fox News, has him trailing in a matchup with Joe Biden by 12 points. And beyond that, he can only proceed by Executive Order on any policy initiative because the Congress is certainly not going to give him a win.

Now let me return briefly to the game board and leadership. Most of the candidates have been in Washington for years. Their leadership training was there. As my Washington service stretched on to seven years I became convinced that the magnetic field is created by interests that target weakness—hyper-partisanship, fawning lobbyists, and the non-stop lure of ambition. Spending time in Washington is helpful, but spending too much time is debilitating—its influence subordinates knowledge, instinct and integrity.

Seth Moulton has only been in the race for four weeks and needs to receive donations from 65,000 persons to be included in the debates; that is why I sent him a donation.
America needs a leader who can cross all of the lines that civil disharmony has created. And one of the most important and currently impregnable lines is in the Congress. Moulton was recognized to be “the most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New England.”

I have highlighted Seth Moulton, because of debate qualifications. But, I can’t pass up a quote from Walter Mondale about Amy Klobuchar. He quipped that “She has done better in that miserable Senate than most people there.” She also deserves to be in the leadership lane.

The game’s clock is not yet in countdown mode, but early evidence of success is essential. So to my Democrat friends who will argue I have no standing and to my Republican ones who will regard me as treasonous, I simply say, this is our country not a game show.

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.