New year predictions are often general and most unmeasurable. A technology prediction, for example, is advanced—it happens some years later. Prediction or musing?

So I will stick to 2021 and will avoid miraculous technologies and not opine on how the Pandemic will change America as we know it. Except to say—never discount the force of decades-long patterns of living.

Along with the Pandemic, politics was the big story of 2020. In an attempt to be re-elected, President Trump put his “social movement” on steroids and then abused his supporters with his manic need to command the spotlight. And yes, I said social movement.

Trump conceived, with Steve Bannon and others, a social movement orbiting around the notion of the “forgotten man” and “yesterday’s glory”and used a political party that was mired in yesterday’s dogma to gain power. Shrewd.

Social movements are often led by one person who is charismatic, idiosyncratic and sees means as just tools. Ethical boundaries are of no real importance. Movement heads don’t play well with others—except for servants. Ultimately, in America, social movements and political parties cannot co-exist as political parties must be comfortable with distribution of power. When Republican Governors and Secretaries of State and even his Vice-President exercised their rightful power Trump attacked. And then the Capitol, the symbol of institutional strength, was attacked. Absent Trump, there would have been no attack.

The Republican Party is now coming face-to-face one more time with the Trump social movement. Even though he is leaving office, so-called Party leaders cower and retreat. Liz Cheney, an unquestioned stalwart Republican who is in the Congressional leadership, finally had enough, voted for Impeachment and was rebuked by her lessers. To them the movement was first, not the Party.

Equally telling in the movement’s formation was the capitulation of significant elements of the evangelical movement. Trump found transcendence useful and seduced Franklin Graham, Eric Metaxas and other minor evangelical gods with the limelight. They entered some kind of contorting inner sanctum and came out full of personal glory and a pungent substance that is found in pastures. I believe that support will wane.

This strange fusion of institutions with Trump as savior will get sorted out, but on the political front it will probably take multiple election cycles and perhaps Trump’s death (social movements often are monarchical so maybe next up Don Jr. or Ivanka). But for now, the Republican Party’s largest stockholder is the Trump social movement. 

The real power in the body politic belongs to Centrists. The problem: where does the Centrist politician go if he/she wants to be elected President? Is there another Joe Biden on the horizon? At this moment the bases of both political parties are wrenched Left or Right. So my prediction is that “Gangs” of legislators will emerge and their members will be willing to forfeit the long odds of sleeping in the White House for actually making legislative history.

Centrists worked together to shape much of the virus package. They were known as the Gang of Eight and contained some able legislators led by Senators Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney.

But, and this is a very big “but”, polarization and entrenched interests are powerful foes. The Gangs, regardless of how big, will need President Biden to use the powers of the Presidency to persuade and when necessary, punish. President Biden’s opportunity will be to lead the shaping of legislation that will work as he can tell the Left that in an evenly divided Senate, its the only political formula that will work.

Trump’s four years set the table for Biden. He will take advantage of this fact. Biden’s critical mass of support is tired of MAGA parades and the poisoned tweet. Biden will use the tools of moderation. If he uses identity politics in an effort to divide and conquer, he will fail.

So where might he succeed? Job one: an effectual vaccination operation. Ultimately Trump’s erratic response to the challenge of managing a national response to a virus resulted in his defeat. Again, Trump set the table for Biden.

Joe Biden will get off to a good start. But, I predict trouble ahead in 2022. If Biden gains political good will in 2021, it will be very hard to maneuver around the Left of his Party who will want his popularity translated into a Woke Agenda. 

And the Republican Party? Turmoil will persist in 2021. Republicans, not the soon to be sworn in President, will be the biggest allies of the Woke—stridency on one side tends to enable stridency on the other. President Biden will need to keep a firm hand on the tiller.

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. 

Trump, A Martyr?

Joseph Stalin popular? Yes, the respected Levada Center polled Russians aged 18 and above in 137 Russian towns and villages; the result: “51% respect, like or admire Stalin. If you are interested in how many millions of Russian deaths are attributed to Stalin, check out this Wikipedia entry.

Yes, I have gone to an extreme, to another country and to an even deeper strain of nationalism to put the events of 1/6/21 in context. History shows an almost unfathomable fusion of timing, circumstances, decisions, demographics and strong personalities that shape and sear personal memory. Stalin, you might recall, was given credit for defeating the Nazis in the standoff over Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) that began in the summer of 1941 and lasted for 900 days.

In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the Capitol after a rebellious speech by Donald Trump, critics searched the thesaurus for words and phrases to demonize him. The criticisms have been bi-partisan.

Even though his term expires in a few days, forced removal from office is said to be essential. It is also said that the Congress must pass a law to ban him from again holding office. If I were in the U.S. Senate, depending on the articles of impeachment, I would vote to convict. Having said that, I find a certain irony in the rhetorical aggression and a troubling prospect.

Impeachment and conviction are, to strain the comparison, somewhat like a grand jury proceeding. The jury hears evidence, then it chooses to indict or not and if indicted the defendant is given the privileges of the accused in a court of law. My guess is that Right, Left and Center there is agreement in this fair and sensible procedure. There is no way the anticipated impeachment proceedings can comply with that judicious order.

When it comes to barring Trump from running for office, for whose benefit? Republicans are going to have to resolve their internal cleavages and it must be remembered that Trump won just over 74 million votes (many of those votes reflected Right-of-Center preferences). They are going to have to reflect on Trump’s post-election behavior and the fact that he was complicit in the losses in Georgia. This is democracy at work; often it is messy. Recall Kamala Harris’s allegations against Joe Biden and his choice of her to be his running mate.

We should also recall the history of Watergate. President Richard Nixon was almost universally believed to have been complicit in multiple criminal acts. Nixon, of course, resigned (as Trump should) and Gerald Ford, the Vice-President who succeeded to the Presidency, pardoned Nixon. The media and much of the advocacy world was apoplectic. Yet historians now cite Ford’s actions as courageous and far-sighted. Looking back it is clear that the prosecution and trial of Richard Nixon would have placed him in the center ring of a circus with all eyes on that ring. The functions of government would have been sideshows.

And Trump is a performer in ways that Nixon was not; best that his performance is left to the golf course. Censure him and then leave to civil and/or criminal proceedings in courts of law to resolve any civil or criminal charges.

Political parties are profoundly weak. The Republican National Committee met in the aftermath of November’s loss and on the eve of Georgia’s election and re-elected Ronna Romney McDaniel, the Party’s Chair, unanimously.

The Democrat Party concluded its more consequential leadership search this last year. The passion was on the populist Left; had Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren faced off against Trump he would have won notwithstanding his toxic personality and erratic leadership.

It is my hope that President-elect Biden does as he promised, works to unite Americans. If he does he will look for balance—he will govern from the Center. And I want the world and certainly this nation to be fully informed about the directions of our new President. President Biden should not be overshadowed by our appetite for political circus.

As to the Republican Party—while it increased it’s House of Representatives strength in November, it must now contend with the blood-letting on and over 1/6/21. Will Trump’s populism command the future or will some return to basic principles shaped by Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, but updated by 21st Century realities, prevail?

Since the Party hierarchy is powerless, the jockeying for the Presidential nomination, which has already begun, will ultimately define the future. The first two jockeys, Senators Cruz and Hawley, are not off to a promising start or if they are the Republican Party is in deep trouble.

There is no question that Trump put the principles of the Republican Party in play. He used race, the national checkbook and a wide range of free market interventions to breach what turned out to be walls of sandstone, not granite.

And what about the so-called Republican Establishment? There is no Establishment. The world has been disrupted. Technology has redefined communications and privacy. Technology and global supply chains have destroyed millions of jobs. Establishments to prevail in a democracy need some level of stability. Stability no longer exists.

While I could engage in gross speculation, I won’t. The Party is in play; momentum will swing wildly. I will, however, go back to history and would counsel today’s instant prosecutors, judges and juries to be careful. Trump martyrdom would ill-serve America.

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. 

 

Donald J. Trump infamously noted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay.” What happened yesterday is Trump turned the gun on himself — suicide on Fifth Avenue.

Allan Drury would have been amazed. As a high-schooler, I read Advice and Consent, a Washington drama, and was amazed by Drury’s imagination — he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel. Yesterday’s events would have shocked Drury. 

As I scrolled Twitter last night, it became apparent that anger translated was preclusive — no combination of words and phrases written on the day after would suffice. So here is my 16 hours after-the-fact reflection.

Trump had, and perhaps still has, an immovable base. My guess: it has shrunk. But Trump’s seditious conduct has ripped apart the screen that reflected back what many of his followers projected — what they wanted to believe. Their support will be excoriated, but it was based on belief.

Millions of people are hardcore Republicans and Democrats. They are certain to grant the benefit of the doubt to their Party’s revolving door of pretenders and occasional real deals alike. Millions on the Republican side, for example, are Pro-Life — they will swallow extra hard before crossing that line to support a Pro-Choice candidate. I could go on and on with examples in both Party platforms.

But Trump was different. The Ex-Democrat turned Republican was an opportunist who sowed social distemper. We watched: he translated convictions strongly felt into fighting words. Trump insisted that his supporters join him in battle. And many on the Right seethed as the streets of Portland and Seattle devolved into summer combat and calls for defunding the police. And as the less concerned were confronted in the grocery store for not wearing a mask, little media criticism was aimed at the mask-less protests of the summer. Many Republicans saw this as confirming their distrust of what Trump and then they called the lame stream media.

Now 1/6/21 will be remembered along with 9/11/01, except this time it was Americans attacking Americans in our Citadel of Democracy. While polls have not been taken, it is almost certain that well over a majority of Americans would support the removal of the President from office. Better in my view that we understand Trump’s turned the gun on himself and move on. Vice President Pence should be particularly engaged and if necessary preemptive.

President-Elect Biden has artfully used the language of moderation and in less than two weeks will be President. Unwittingly, Trump has rearranged the White House stage set. It features a large round table — one that encourages everybody to take a seat without looking for name tags. There is no need to yell, each participant is only feet away. Indeed those who are inclined to yell should be elsewhere.

America faces very serious challenges. While the pandemic seems the worst, it is not. Finding the key to working together is America’s biggest challenge. Moderation its biggest need.

Soon to be President Biden seems especially gifted in the tones of moderation and we should all, and I mean all, hope he is the key to collaborative leadership.

Finally, the U.S. Senate is an expression of where America stands politically — 50/50. A numerical draw insists on a leader who will command the common ground. Joe Biden’s challenge is not to reconcile the Centrists and Progressives in his own Party, but to strive to lead Americans toward public policy solutions. And when I say Americans, I mean those who believe in America—“Out Of Many One”.

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. 

 

“Ten Years After the Spring,” a commentary in The Economist, looked back — back over the ten years since the beginning of what came to be called the Arab Spring. The trigger was the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor after his fruit cart was confiscated because he wouldn’t pay extortion money to get a permit. His final words, “How do you expect me to make a living?” The final image: Muhammad Bouazizi in flames.

The author notes the region (not Tunisia) is less free today and concludes: “One lesson autocrats learned from the Arab Spring is that any flicker of dissent must be snuffed out fast, lest it spread.” Donald J. Trump’s business and political lives reflect the same lesson. I don’t know where he learned it, but what is apparent is that mere criticism provokes a harsh reaction.

And what is equally apparent is that a high percentage of Republican elected officials bow down. While political Parties are celebrated as being representative, much of today’s Party leadership is subservient and awaits instructions—from Donald J. Trump.

Perhaps the most topical about-face occurred when Georgia Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue reversed course within a week. They were against $2,000 stimulus checks and then after getting the new script from the President were for them. And then there are Party officials who heralded the election of more Republican Members of Congress, while subserviently challenging the integrity of the Presidential line on the same ballot because Trump told them to.

Senator Josh Hawley, who all but wears a blinking neon sign proclaiming his ambition, has decided to challenge the election of Joe Biden on the U.S. Senate floor. I guess he believes his subservience will serve his future ambition to be The Leader. Rarely has ambition been more oxymoronic.

If subservience to autocratic figures was not so serious, we could simply write it off as script writing for Saturday Night Live. But then the complications of today’s world converts the laughable into the lamentable or worse.

While many are toasting a better outlook for 2021, due to brilliance in the world’s pharmaceutical laboratories, I am not so sanguine. Responding to China, technological disruption, health care and climate change imperatives requires creativity, competitive thinking, and thoughtful advocacy. Subservience serves none of the above. Capitalism has produced national wealth because it serves the quick witted, not the prostrate.

Our votes and Party affiliations in a universe of tens of millions means that the vote or opinion of any one person has very little weight or influence. But here is one person, who proudly served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who refuses to await instructions.

There is, at any given moment, debate about levels of government intrusion in our personal and collective lives. Often it distills down into arguments about various strains of capitalism and socialism. But, the most important division in the Republican Party today is structural. Is the Party an autocracy ruled by one man or one that is comfortable with competitive views and leaders? Choose, you still have a choice.

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. 

Can President Joe Biden rescue democracy? Does Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell care? Is rescuing democracy a partisan affair?

Perhaps the questions are overwrought, but the terrain is rough. We face a pandemic of distrust in both political institutions and processes.

Pew Research reports: “Anger and fear are widespread. Majorities of Democrats and Republicans say they feel both sentiments when thinking about the country, though these feelings are more prevalent among Democrats. And just 17% of Americans – including 25% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 10% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – say they feel proud when thinking about the state of the country.”

When was the last time you saw the Congress’s approval level rise above the teens? Since it is said that both Biden and McConnell are institutionalists—take pride in the role and history of the Congress—they should work to find some common causes.

Senator McConnell, in particular, needs to answer the George Will barb: “On January 3, the 117th Congress will convene. It is not clear why.”

Echo Chambers

News consumption, which arguably forms the basis for the public’s attitude about public affairs, is increasingly made up of echo chambers. We, those who inform government through our votes and various kinds of petitions, need to go beyond those with whom we agree. 

An especially vivid moment in my early life was the first day of law school. The new class of law students was being given a tour of the law library. A revered professor, motioning to the stacks of law books in a four floor library said, “When you leave law school you will know only a small fraction of what is in those books, but if successful you will know what questions to ask and where to find the answers.”

Those who teach the humanities need to take a similar approach to life’s questions. Unfortunately students are more likely to be taught what to think, not how to think. 

In all the layers of our national fabric we need to be open to inquiry that is formed around getting it right.

Executive Orders or Congress

Much of what President’s Obama and Trump did was through Executive Orders. Executive Orders are fragile. Courts can reverse them as unlawful or unconstitutional and they mostly don’t survive when the other Party wins the White House. 

At this juncture President Biden has no alternative to attempting to form coalitions that cross partisan divides. If he wants to move climate change legislation, for example, he must pull together a coalition in Congress that considers the risk to the future to be greater than the political risk of the present. Reforming our contorted laws and allocations on health care poses a similar challenge.

A glimmer of hope emerged in the Gang of 8 who largely shaped the coronavirus legislation. I believe the President can find Gangs (not an especially constructive word) on several of the issues that warrant Congressional action.

There were Republicans re-elected in States that voted for Joe Biden and Democrats that were elected in States that voted for Donald Trump. Coalitions can be found that will actually support change that must be legislated.

And while I am on the subject of coalitions, the work of the last week by the Congress was a national embarrassment. There needs to be a large bipartisan coalition for orderly consideration and disposal of coherent legislation. 

In the movies a bad script is rather quickly discarded or if it survives, is panned. The script in politics today is treacherous. It portends an even deeper division. And what is so maddening is its insincerity. Fear of political retribution writes only one script—false.

Theory on Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories whether, as they say on Wall Street, you are a buyer or seller, seem particularly seductive. Why not; they give the imaginative but powerless something to do and they give the anxious and pessimistic something to buy. Unfortunately they also give loudmouths and marginal media something to play with. 

I am not a conspiracy theory historian so I’m not prepared to put my thumb on a generational scale. But it does seem to me that our societal distemper and the importance of the issues we are fighting about make this an especially dangerous time.

And when the most watched news media feature various theories over facts, well it is not hard to see the problem. Donald Trump was not a Russian agent, full stop. Joe Biden did not steal the 2020 election, full stop.  A democracy depends on a critical mass of well-informed not easily manipulated electorate.

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. 

In Sam Kean’s book, Caesar’s Last Breath: The Epic Story of the Air Around Us, he postulates a particularly heady thesis. He notes that in measuring time: the chances are you have already inhaled some of Julius Caesar’s last breath. 

So naturally, and in particular in the season of advent, I turn from Caesar’s death to the moment forty-four years later when Jesus Christ was born. Perhaps a molecule we breathe today will have been on Christ’s breath. 

Now, of course, we wear masks to protect ourselves from other people’s breath. I read that birthday celebrations no longer feature blowing out the candles. 

We know that in reality it is “the spirit of the times” that most often captures our spirit. In this season of our lives, the spirit of the Holy Days (Holidays) is both ascendant and transcendent. The transcendent message is love.

Love’s fascination compels us to watch over and over again Charles Dickens’s, A Christmas Carol. Or the movie, A Wonderful Life written by Jonathan Coe, starring Jimmy Stewart. There is something to this spirit thing, we reflect, as we wipe a tear from our cheek. Where did that come from? Without countervailing love, the stories would begin and end in darkness.

Time of course speeds on. We are breathless. Too often the spiritual moments evaporate with our breath. Well, maybe we reflect ever so briefly on the spiritual as the future is forced into our windows of thought. 

The calendar will soon turn. And it seems that 2021 will eventually give us rest from the irrepressible surge of warnings. But it will not give us rest from the tumultuous world—as new surges replace old ones. Michelle Francl-Donnay observed, “we live balanced on an edge”. Rest is elusive and when it comes is often spiritual.

Since meeting Dr. Francis Collins some years ago, I have been drawn to his willingness to discuss his faith in God in public settings. Dr. Collins is a physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is now the Director of the National Institutes of Health. 

Scientists, not infrequently, are featured speaking on the ultimate question as if science illuminates the answer. Dr. Collin’s mind does not stop with the natural, his spiritual side also seeks answers. As your thoughts and questions turn to the spiritual in this season of Holy Days, I would invite you to engage Dr. Collins’s thoughts in this Public Broadcasting interview. 

On the question of applying reason to faith, Dr. Collins, in the interview, noted: “I don’t believe intellectual argument alone will push someone across that gap, because we are not talking about something which can be measured in the same way that science measures the natural world, and then you decide what is natural truth. This is supernatural truth. And in that regard, the spirit enters into this, not just the mind.”

Breath, whether Caesar’s or Christ’s, is simply an element in the natural world. Dorothy Day reminded us to leave that world, or as she noted, “to leave space to be surprised by God.”

Our interconnectedness, both internal and external, makes it clear that this intangible dimension of our being, our spirit or if you prefer soul, is not the result of impersonal circumstances. Our spirit, the most important seed of our creation, no less than the seeds of the natural world, needs nourishment. My prayer: please help us, Dear God, to spend some time in your world. Lead us into the light.

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 is Monday, December 14th. I check Twitter as a part of my morning catching up. Today there is a tweet from President Donald Trump: “People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary. I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time. Thank you!”

After reading this to my wife, she was quick to say, “Doesn’t sound like the President wrote it”. The tweets content was presidential; the reaction from my wife was why Trump lost.

In the last month we have been burdened with claims and counterclaims about the election results. My wife’s reaction betrayed the answer. The President didn’t win because he asked millions of people to travel, for them, “a road too far”. 

America’s strength, at least in part, results from people on the Right and Left of the political spectrum rejecting “hard”—whether rhetoric from the President or Left wing foolishness insisting that the police be defunded. 

Now let me take a minute to make my Left of Center friends (yes friends) unhappy. President Trump will leave an interesting legacy even as his manic efforts to evade the results of the election will tarnish it.

The most important court, the U.S. Supreme Court, order in this post-election flurry of lawsuits underscored a fact: his appointees rejected the President, 18 State Attorney’s General and 126 members of Congress who asked it to overturn the election results. 

The President’s Supreme Court nominations were scrutinized and stigmatized by Democrats in the U.S. Senate. I was encouraged by their answers, which emphasized the crucial separation of government powers. Basically they said we will not legislate from the judicial bench. And certainly they said with their recent votes, we will not intervene in the State’s exercise of their constitutional authority.

All three jurists are young and now enjoy a lifetime job.

And when it came to China, the Middle East and North Korea, Trump looked at past failures and current imperatives and reversed course. The heavily invested foreign policy establishment howled. Trump paid no attention. While successes or failure in foreign policy rarely submit to scorecard math, at least some of his critics (President-Elect Biden, for example) have given him begrudging credit. 

In a month America will have a new President. Perhaps President Trump will give President-Elect Biden some measure of courtesy. He should recall the courtesy extended by President Obama even though Trump insisted that he was not born in the United States and was therefore an illegitimate President.

Several decades ago I was given one of my favorite visual expressions of political will. It is a poster showing a resolute image of Winston Churchill pointing his forefinger at all that looked on, exclaiming: “Deserve Victory”. 2020’s victory came from American citizens, who whether Right or Left of Center, rejected hard rhetoric and hard turns. Biden won while many Republicans unseated incumbent Democrats—the Center held, deserved victory.

When Ulysses Grant ran for President in 1868, following the Civil War and the destructive presidency of Andrew Johnson, he campaigned from his front porch in Galena, Illinois. His campaign slogan: “Let Us Have Peace”. Biden, who critics said, campaigned from his basement in Wilmington, Delaware, had a similar message and won. The furious should keep this lesson in mind. Peace, in our complex society, is most often found in the Center.

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. 

I am the son of a shopkeeper. His name was Kendall and his shop was a sporting goods store in a small town in southern Missouri. I repeat, in a small town and in a physical store where scale was measured in square feet not bandwidth.

My Dad first felt the tectonic plates move when Walmart began to sell tennis balls at a retail price that was less than he could buy them at a wholesale price. Same tennis balls, same can, same brand, checkmate. 

One of Dad’s top selling brands was Rawlings. Rawlings made much of what it sold in plants that were not that many miles from Dad’s store. Rawlings now makes baseballs in Costa Rica and while it made some custom baseball gloves at a plant in Washington, Missouri, it no longer makes any gloves in the United States. It has been bought and sold several times by a combination of bigger businesses and private equity firms.

Rawlings was particularly strong in baseball. I can still see in my mind’s eye a picture on the store wall with Dad standing next to hall of famers Stan Musial and Warren Spahn. 

Early lessons are deeply embedded. They followed me to the White House one day. I found myself with the Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige, in the cabinet room. Baldrige was arguing with the Treasury Secretary, George Schultz, about forming a semiconductor chip consortium of U.S. companies so they could gain the necessary scale to compete with Far East producers. Schultz argued against what is called “industrial policy” and said the laws of comparative advantage should prevail. Free market orthodoxy prevailed. I was not called on to talk about my Dad’s experiences.

I can just imagine the angst in the right of center think tanks—Donald J Trump took them on and prevailed. My Dad would have never supported Trump—his conduct breached virtually everything Dad taught my brother and me. He would, however, have understood the Trump voter. He understood shopkeepers and women who wound and stitched baseballs in small town plants. 

In the meantime, the global supply chain will not go away and it shouldn’t. The severe disruption caused by the rapid spread of digital technologies will also persist. The stock market pays daily tribute to both and in particular to those companies whose platforms are global. An Economist writer noted: “Their dominant positions in this world of platforms give companies like Facebook and Google powers approaching or surpassing those of many countries.” 

But what about the shopkeepers and the people who make things and provide services to both? While their ethnic origins are diverse, I do know today’s economy discriminates against them. It is not personal or emotional, it just is.

But back to those who make laws not baseballs. The kings and queens of politics are not a humble group and this is particularly true in Washington. Few have been shopkeepers or ever worked on a plant floor. Any? Yet they will spin out theories and manipulate statistics while attacking their opposite number. And as they do, they add another chapter to the accumulating cynicism of America’s voters. A cynicism that Trump exploited and a cynicism that the coastal elites disparage without understanding.

The pandemic has forced schools to pivot to digital technologies. Zoom has become as knowable as recess. Maybe there has been a digital awakening in educational circles about the future and where their students fit in because America must prepare students for the world as it is. If Americans, of whatever ethnicity, cannot hold their own with the Chinese and if the governments cannot figure out how to be both local and global, Americans will be the disrupted, not the disrupters. 

Before I conclude I want to take a minute on fairness. How many small businesses can move their production overseas? Or, select foreign venues for tax purposes? Or, engineer their pay so most of the income is taxed at the lower capital gains rate? 

And for those who have been able to convert elite college degrees to wealth, when you are solicited by your alma mater ask whether you can earmark a gift to help the college work in areas where early childhood education is especially needed. Or maybe give at least a small gift to a community college that is helping to retrain those whose skills have become obsolete.

Digitized globalism is a reality. And an equally important reality is that in America, small business is essential. If capitalism is only for the big, then the small will rebel and should. When laws and regulations are passed, taxes determined, and enforcement set in motion, it must be understood that the attributes of today’s economy discriminate against people who, using their own capital and energy, serve us every day.

Trump

There is a difference between popularity and loyalty. President Trump seems not to understand the fine points. Mostly, popularity determines who wins or loses elections.

The President began almost immediately after his election to diminish his popularity. The result: he lost. Now he has gone to Georgia spewing dissension in his own Party at the considerable risk of losing the U.S. Senate.

President’s Trump’s voice will continue as he terrorizes the ambitious in his Party; but his popularity, even among his loyalists, will fade. He will not hold political office again.

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. 

There is a game called Jenga. It is a game of physical skill created by a British board game designer. Players take turns removing one block at a time from a tower constructed of 54 blocks. Each block removed is then placed on top of the tower, creating a progressively more unstable structure. America’s tower of blocks faces a similar instability.

When is polarization debilitating or maybe when isn’t it? 

When is too much debt, well too much debt?

When does the revenue needed to pay pensions and healthcare benefits to the retired overwhelm the duties and related budgets of educators and police and firefighters to do the job today?

What replaces Judeo-Christian morality? If the Bible is obsolete, what is the alternative narrative that provides moral structure? Or is moral structure obsolete?

Or looking forward, what happens when living in the past defeats the present? When prejudices we thought were behind us are used as fresh fuel to defeat the perceived enemy and future? 

America is not invulnerable. What does “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” mean today—not yesterday but today? The principles have an enduring ring, yet their vibrations failed in 1776 to include Native Americans and Slaves. And the 18th century was patriarchal and agrarian—today we live in an egalitarian society that is increasingly technology-centric.

So that is the back story, now back to the basic questions and those pesky Jenga blocks.

Many of these questions, I suspect, are asked by a fair number of people. Do we call them skeptics? Do they have a political party?  Or, are most voters now so magnetized by identity politics and confirmation bias that they allow their legislative representatives to put aside difficult questions? Or, allow them to shape the answers around short-term interests insisted by dominant special interest groups?

So here we are without a plan that will incrementally wean us from fossil fuels because the Left blocks the potential use of next generation nuclear energy. And military weapons are available to everybody because the Right brain is fused to the 2nd amendment when the available weapon, in 1791 (when the Bill of Rights was ratified), was primarily a musket.

And while public schools in urban and suburban areas are abandoned by parents who can scrape together enough money to exercise choice, choice is denied to persons without the wherewithal because of union interests. Public school leadership would be stronger if it embraced choice, saying “we welcome competition because we can prove we are better.”

It is said that people who occupy center ground in politics—those who ask uncomfortable questions of each party—are squishies, unprincipled. My view is that people who ask questions before and while forming opinions should be applauded. If you check every box of either Parties platform, I would suggest that a reexamination would be timely.

In some ways one of the most distressing absences is margin. We should always want margin so if the other guy wins we can shed a tear and go back to work. 

In the 1950s I was taught to write line-by-line to the margins of the paper to waste as little paper as possible. In the 1960s, as complexity intervened, I began to double space and leave margin. A brief or a memo or later a book and now short essays infrequently ended as they began. I needed to leave room, margin, to answer questions that writing forced me to face.

Today we all risk leaving too little or no margin. It is said by the Right and Left that they must win or the country is going to hell. Political figures, masquerading as the knowing, convert partisan advocacy to certainty as they attempt to demonize their opposite number. 

Let’s face it, we live in a severely split nation where friends and family alike face off. We need margin, we need to be able to wish the winner well because that has been one key to our country’s spiritual and economic prosperity.

So, congratulations President-elect Biden—may history record greatness! And keep in mind that election data show that your electoral margin resulted from ticket-splitters. 

Thanksgiving, 2020, was pinched by illness—perhaps it’s just as well. Families split by politics didn’t have to face-off across the table from one another. And maybe, I hope, we will feel the absence of family and pledge that in 2021 we will spend more time looking for thankfulness.

In the meantime, we should quit pulling out Jenga blocks that are crucial to the future of our 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. 

How are your shoulders holding up? The world on the eve of Thanksgiving, 2020, is heavy. So too was the world of 1621; the world of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag who were trying to cope with their intrusion. Be thankful if you have strong shoulders!

Weight is better when it can be shared. We gather when we lose a loved one to share grief, to recall stories of the good times and, if we are fortunate enough to believe there is a transcendent life, to share hope.

Thanksgiving, 2020 arrives with threats. Do you have loved ones who are old? They are more susceptible to Covid-19’s worst outcomes. Or, do you live in a family that is divided by politics? Or, how hard is the economy—my job—going to be hit in this second wave of the pandemic? And if I own the business, will it survive?

My guess is that thanks are often aligned with the present, with circumstances in our lives. When our lives are going well then we are thankful—so let’s get together and have a party. 

But I, like many of you, keep coming back to Thanksgivings past. I can recall driving my family of five through a snow storm on two lane roads to celebrate with my parents, 220 miles away. We had to pack carefully to leave room for the diaper pail (look it up).  My guess is our risk of trouble was much higher than today’s exposure to Covid-19. I don’t say this to minimize today’s risk, but to add an exclamation point to the essence of Thanksgiving, the need to gather together with family and friends. 

Our family always gave thanks to the transcendent. We thanked God for our blessings—our lives, our loves and the opportunities we enjoyed as Americans. There was, as well, an implicit understanding that as we shared the weight of disappointments and losses our common humanity and hope lessened the burdens. And I can recall the smiles and stories as we passed around photo albums of Thanksgivings past. 

So I would pray for a transcendent Thanksgiving, 2020. That our many customs and traditions would point toward hope for tomorrow. Hopefulness can shoulder a much heavier weight and today we need to lighten the load. Happy Thanksgiving!

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.