26 February 2014 - 

An Every-Day Morning in Houston

This morning, my wife suggested gently that spending some time out of the house would blunt my desire to write a political screed and would put me in a better mood. 

OK.  So, I donned my best Hawaiian shirt, tucked it into a clean pair of cargo pants, and chose good black socks to go with my fifteen-dollar tennis shoes; just right for a couple of hours at WalMart. Friends often meet for conversation at the McDonald’s there, and I looked forward to their enlightening me about the issues of the day. And, I would pick up some things for the house.   My wife gave me a short list of groceries, kissed me quickly, and I was out the door.

The late winter drizzle and fog clouded the windshield, but not enough to keep the wipers on all the time.   What's more, everybody was driving too fast.  There ought to be a law.  It reminded me of summers in Belgium; low clouds and fog and mist and little direct sun. No wonder the bars there open at nine in the morning. 

The eight miles passed without incident, and I pulled into the WalMart parking lot.

None of my friends were sitting in McDonalds.  I thanked the greeter for the proffered shopping cart, pulled out my grocery list, and started on my chore.   I needed milk, cereal, and romaine lettuce.  That was the easy part.  With plenty of time left, I also figured that a couple bars of deluxe chocolate would probably improve my standing at home. After discussing the merits of various chocolates with two WalMart associates, I threw a dark chocolate bar and a black currant chocolate bar into the shopping cart and left the aisle. My wife would be impressed with the classier-than-milk dark chocolate.

In the cracker and cookie aisle, I passed another old guy in a Hawaiian shirt and tennis shoes. His shirttail was out, and he was wearing white socks. No class at all.  There ought to be a law.  I chose some cookies my wife likes—double stuffed Oreos—and some Ritz crackers for me.  Cookies are always a good bet,and adding a fourth or fifth box of my favorite crackers is a prudent thing to do in case of an emergency.

As I cruised the remaining food aisles, I realized that I was just about at the median age for shoppers early on a Monday morning. There also were a number of young mothers, each pushing a cart with one small child.  One of the little girls even smiled and reached out to me.  We talked and laughed for a minute.   There also were two women and a man in motorized carts navigating the aisles. Everything seemed normal in grocery-town U.S.A.

There was much more to see.  But, by then, the women’s clothing section was between me and the rest of the store; so, I decided to forego further shopping.  On the way to the check-out counter, I grabbed two bottles of cranberry juice and a 42oz. bag of M & Ms. They used to sell 56oz. bags for about the same price. Now, we get 30% less. Outrageous!  There ought to be a law.

Walking past McDonalds as I left, I saw that my friends’ and my table had been taken over by three mothers, with their babies in huge baby strollers.  They all seemed to be speaking at once.  I’ve seen this phenomenon many times: an estrogen mist descends on the table and excludes everything male.   My old-guy friends will understand when I tell them.   Then, we will pull out pictures of our grandkids and admire them. 

It cost $36.83 for the milk, cereal, and romaine lettuce.  And the cookies and crackers.  And the juice.  And the chocolate.  On the drive home, I realized that I’d bought enough stuff to pay a lot of money, but not enough stuff to eliminate the need to make another trip to the grocery store this week. Oops!

At home, the chocolate and cookies were well received. The fact that I was gone only two hours was, well… less well received.  I figured I could salvage the day by spending the afternoon upstairs: writing, reading, and looking for a legitimate day job.

Maybe this is the way politicians get started: spending the morning talking with and judging people, trying to make up for their ineptitude with largesse, and spending a lot of money in the process.

19 February 2014 – 

What You Do, What You Are  

There are two kinds of people in the world:  those who break rules, feel remorse, and vow not to break them again; and, those who break rules, figure out how to break them again, and feel remorse  only when they get caught.  A corollary truth:  most people are good, but not very.

 

An orderly society requires good leaders chosen from the first group.  

       

I learned this as an Air Force officer.  Now, as then, ordinary people are required to become extraordinary Airmen, working in a rigid bureaucracy where individual efforts are subordinate to the success of the organization.   They need commanders and senior non-commissioned officers who uphold the rules of the organization, and who champion the guiding principles upon which the rules rest.  Airmen become extraordinary when they follow leaders who enforce the rules and sacrifice their personal desires to the needs of the Air Force. 

    

When a squadron commander breaks the rules, or puts his own success before that of his organization and of those he commands, good order and discipline soon collapse.  Airmen quickly see that their commander is nothing more than ordinary, and many revert to breaking rules and being ordinary themselves.  The organization then soon becomes a government-funded collection of self-serving individuals and groups.  Money and effort are wasted in an ineptly-run organization.    Only a new commander can rejuvenate such a squadron, and only through reestablishing adherence to the rules and to the organization.  

There are strong parallels between a bad Air Force squadron commander and today’s federal government leaders.  We elected members of Congress and the President.  For the nation to thrive, these leaders must follow the rules.  They must demonstrate primary allegiance to the nation’s fundamental laws embodied in the Constitution.  They must also be prepared to sacrifice personal or political goals for the greater good of the people and the nation. 

Our leaders’ allegiances appear to be far from where they should be.  These leaders reek of the ordinary. 

For five years the President and members of the Senate have refused to submit, pass, and sign a Constitutionally-mandated budget.  Last month’s huge spending bill was only a stopgap, passed in order to postpone the next budget fight until after the November elections.  Our extraordinary Founders knew that there is no accountability where there is no budget.  Our leaders are putting party and personal desires ahead of Constitutional mandates.  Meanwhile, they suffer none of the consequences of their actions.  Are the leaders who control the White House and the Senate so ordinary that not one of them will speak out for obeying the rules?  

Congress legislates; the President implements.   Extraordinary leaders accept that.  Ordinary politicians ignore it. 

The President’s legacy legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was passed through both houses of Congress without a single Republican vote.  So be it; legislators followed the rules.  But, the ACA also is the most poorly-designed and poorly-implemented piece of major legislation in our lifetime.  Even Democrat Congressmen and Senators are now speaking out against the circus that is Obamacare.  Their actions may be the understandable moves of ordinary politicians whose districts are full of increasingly upset constituents.  Or maybe they’re demonstrating the beginnings of pragmatic leadership over partisanship.  We can only hope.

The President, however, consistently actually breaks the rules of the Constitution -- which he claims to understand -- by unilaterally delaying implementation of critical parts of the ACA.  And he shows no signs of stopping.   

Finally, myriad federal agencies are charting their own paths under current national leadership. These agencies don’t need guidance to be self-serving.  If left untended, bureaucracies naturally expand, conceal their corruption, and resist threats to their accrued power.  Bureaucracies breed natural enemies to the Constitution and to the liberties of a sovereign country.   IRS scandals, the State Department’s action and inaction surrounding Benghazi, the Department of Justice’s aggressive opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision that parts of the 1965 Civil Rights Voting Act no longer apply today.  These are the acts of ordinary partisan agency and department heads who, with no extraordinary and honorable examples to follow, have been left to their own devices. 

The rise of the bureaucratic state should demand that leaders in Congress clearly define agencies’ missions and fund them carefully.  Even more, this rise must demand that the President show more allegiance to the Constitution than to his pen and telephone.   

Anything short of that type of leadership does not befit a squadron commander and certainly does not befit those who should be running this country. 

6 February 2014 – 

Are You Sure That’s What You Want to Say?

Thirty-five years ago, the Air Force told me I was going to be an intelligence officer.  I filled out a mountain of paperwork in order to get a top secret, special compartmented intelligence clearance upon entering active duty.  Not being in control of my life’s story started that day. 

I was required to list every place I had lived, what I did when I was there, and provide the names of people who knew me at the time.  A special investigator asked me about my lifestyle, if I had a criminal record, used drugs, or associated with subversive groups. He also delved into my spending habits.  My answers were simple.  Boring lifestyle, no criminal record, nothing more subversive than the Eagles Lodge in my hometown, and I think I had smelled marijuana once.  Nothing to hide.  I flippantly added that I was a married student with two children; I had no money to spend. 

The investigator glared at me. Everybody has something to hide, he said.  It would be best to tell him all my secrets because if he were to find something later that I had failed to disclose, I might not receive a clearance and might not even be commissioned.  Trust had to be established at the beginning or it never would be established, he warned.  I told him I would remember his advice, but that I simply had nothing else to tell him.  

I’ve never forgotten that interview.

Every five years for the next thirty years of my Air Force career I had to update my security clearance and answer the same questions.  My life’s story, the narrative of who I am and what I do, has long been captured and held by somebody else.  The Air Force regularly verified every aspect of my life before it, as an organization, continued to trust me with classified information and with the authority to act in its name.  As long as I stayed honest and accurate with my narrative, I remained the Air Force’s trusted agent.  Looking back, I am as proud of maintaining the Air Force’s trust as I am of any impressive or exciting thing I may have done in uniform. 

Establishing and maintaining trust with those whom we serve should be the dominant standard for all who want to be elected to political office as well.  Our narrative should be precise and truthful; it’s the only sure way to be believed.  That doesn’t mean a politician’s life won’t include difficult moments or occasions of less-than-stellar decision-making.  Nobody’s perfect.  But when the truth is obscured, reworked, or sidestepped, somebody’s going to pay.

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, a gubernatorial hopeful, learned this painful lesson when she stre-e-etched her personal narrative.  She was indeed a young, divorced mother who persevered and succeeded in school and politics.  It’s a compelling story.  But, she stretched the dates of her early years of marriage and divorce in order to gain emotional support from her constituents.  And, she got caught.  Accurate marriage and divorce dates, combined with an explanation of who paid for her elite schooling and when he paid for it, now present the narrative of an apparent self-serving gold digger who would do pretty much anything and abandon even her children to get what she wanted.  Somehow, Ms. Davis missed the important advice that false narratives are fodder for political opponents who revel in exposing them.  These opponents knew, as Wendy Davis apparently did not, that if you do not tell the truth about your own life, somebody else will.

A particularly sobering warning in the Information Age is that now, more than ever, embellishments and lies will be discovered and displayed.  All e-mails, tweets, phone calls, and written communications eventually find themselves in some data base somewhere.  The opposition party will lead the effort to find these damaging secrets; that is what opposition parties do.  Then, when the moment is most advantageous, the opposition will make the lies public and try to destroy the liar.  Even war is more polite than politics.

Here’s the question:  should voters trust anything a politician says or does in political life if he has already shown he lied about his life’s narrative?  I suggest that we trust him at our peril.   A career in the business of political/military secrets has convinced me that trustworthiness is the greatest virtue one needs to rise from politician to statesman.  Heaven knows we need such statesmen as leaders right now.