President Biden's and the Nation's Lost Opportunity--Restoring the "Soul of America"

Whatever the future brings, we must never forget the eternal debt we owe President Biden. He enabled our country, as only he at the time could have, to avoid the damage and scourge which another four years of Donald Trump would have inflicted on our Nation and the world. And with the confidence foreign leaders had in him,  President Biden has brought together an allied front to thwart Russia's invasion of Ukraine as few if any other leader could have done. And there is much more he will be recognized for in the retrospect of history, including the bi-partisan infrastructure bill which has been too little celebrated and expanded health care. 

But it could have been so much more!

Biden campaigned under the banner of  restoring the "Soul of America". There was never any doubt he meant it; that he intended to do it. Nor was there any doubt how urgent is was to do just that. Yet that vision of restoring a unified view of what we aspire to as a Nation is more distant today than perhaps any time in my 80+ year life. And that makes me very sad. 

I don't know if was possible to have made progress against that vision. It was certainly an uphill battle from the start, given the Republican election deniers, led by Trump himself,  asserting in the face of all the facts that Trump should be President. And, equally, given those countless Republicans who knew better, like Rob Portman of Ohio and so many others, who failed to step up publicly, emphatically and repeatedly to assert the truth. 

Still, recognizing all those realities and I could cite many more, I don't believe President Biden gave it his best shot. I attribute this to two things.

1. He moved forward immediately with an agenda which was too varied and revolutionary; an agenda which failed to recognize the very slim Democratic majorities in Congress; an agenda which was too beholden to the interests of the Left wing of the Democratic party and which did not benefit from and reflect sufficient consultation with the middle of the Republican party. Again, I am not sure such consultation would have resulted in a better outcome. But I am convinced it should have been tried. 

I argued from the start that Biden should have appointed some Republicans to the Cabinet and Senior Adviser positions, as Lincoln did in 1860 and as Churchill did in 1940 and as FDR did as well. I argued from the start that Biden should have started his Administration on Day 1, by bringing the Congressional leaders together in the Oval Office to start to define the key issues (economy, immigration, Covid, health care, etc) that needed to be tackled and how he hoped they would work together to make progress to resolve them.

2. He has failed to address the Nation as OUR PRESIDENT, not just as the head of a political party or strong advocate of specific issues such as abortion, the integrity of the Supreme Court, gun control, immigration, etc. To be sure any President must speak out and advocate strongly for the specific measures he or she believes are essential to the future of the nation's citizens. But they must do more if they are are to have any hope of bringing the country together, of building confidence, of "restoring the Soul of America". 

They need to speak to the American public as THEIR PRESIDENT. They need to explain the state of the Nation, realistically, warts and all. They need to articulate a coherent and non-partisan vision of where we want to be.They need to recognize the polarization of views objectively without demonizing either side  (even while not agreeing with them). They should try to explain the origins of this polarization and what each of us can to to address it. They need to put key issues, like inflation and crime and immigration in context and relate them to a common vision for the country. 

I am under no illusion. Done as well as possible this will not result in some golden era of all people being together. There will always be outliers. But we dare not allow this fact to deter us from pursuing a bold uniting vision. A majority of people, perhaps a vast majority will unite behind a leader who they are confident has a vision worthy and befitting the nation we love, a credible set of prioiites to achieve that and who above all knows and believes that it will require ALL of us working together and respecting one another to achieve it. 

I write thinking of the future not simply to lament missed past opportunities. I write this  continuing to be convinced that President Biden has it in his mind and heart to lead this way. It will undoubtedly be even harder to lead this way in the next two years given the likely Republican leadership of the House and maybe Senate after the mid-terms only ten days away. But I hope he will try. He still is our President. Like no one else, he can bring people together. He can speak in a different way to the Nation; "fire side"chat conversations if you will. He can act as the People's President. 

Our nation desperately needs this. Of that I am sure.

John Pepper

Confronting the Risk of This Precarious Moment

 Over the course of the last nine months, I have posted several blogs related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The first dealing with the threat of that invasion was on January 27; title:  Whether Ukraine.  I expressed the deep belief then that it was in no one’s interest, including not Russia’s, for Putin to invade Ukraine. 

 A month later, he did exactly that, in what I went on to describe 8 months later, in September, as a “cruel, tragic and misbegotten war.” 

I believe Putin's misguided and misinformed decision will go down in the annals of history as one of the worst decisions ever made by the leader of a major country. 

 

The killing continues.  Coverage of this war today has faded some, but it’s still a “top of the news” item, as it should be.  However, I find that it is being reported on now almost like it is a football game.  It secures its space among coverage of the baseball playoffs, discussion of inflation and the upcoming mid-term elections in the United States. 

 

On October 15, a Wall Street Journal article written by Peggy Noonan echoes what I have been saying for some months. 

 “As the stakes got higher, leaders have become all too casual—unserious and sloppy.  Part of it is social media, on which the whole world is hooked.  Ambassadors launch taunting tweets like rockets and getting high-fives. What is needed is a serious, weighty, textured document that reflects the gravity of the moment we are in; a full Oval Office address that doesn’t emote but speaks rationally to a nation of thoughtful people.  A big definitional statement.  Where are we?  Are we communicating with the Kremlin?  How should the American people be thinking about all this?”

 

Almost every columnist now is comparing the current moment to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And rightly so.  Yet Noonan aptly writes, “We are not addressing this the way JFK did.  When JFK spoke, it was in a studied, careful way and to the entire nation.”

 

I fear that leaders, including our leaders, are failing to give enough attention to the consequences here.  I don’t think Putin is.  I’m not sure Biden is.  I hope I am wrong. I hope we have serious back-channel, quiet discussions going on. 

 

 As Noonan writes, “There are times in life and diplomacy when silence must be maintained as circumstances evolve and new options emerge.  But we’re not maintaining silence.  I ask for the efficiency of thoughtfulness, sometimes it can cool things down or slow them down.  If we’re traveling toward Armageddon, the slow route is best.”

 

I pray for the kind of wisdom that prevailed with Nikita Khrushchev and JFK at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  They thought of options with imagination and with an eyes-wide-open, realistic view of the consequences of making the wrong decision.  Leaders need to do that today.

What Walter Lippman Has to Teach Us Today

 The more I read about Walter Lippman, the more I like him.   Old-time values, though you have to take his arrogance and his self-serving nature with his value-based prescriptions.  Writing over 75 years ago, he grieved that the ancient solidities of religious faith were in decline.  He wrote about this with passion and pessimism, especially after Hitler had conquered all of Western Europe.  

There is much that can produce similar pessimism today but we cannot allow this to conquer us. 

Lippman had the tendency to blame all of America’s troubles on its enemies, illuminating the  tendency of each of us is to look down on those who disagree with us.  He thought our salvation lay within ourselves and could not be achieved by looking elsewhere.

“Our civilization can be maintained and restored,” he wrote in 1940, “only by remembering and rediscovering the truths, and by reestablishing the virtuous habits on which it was founded.  There is no use looking into the blank future for some new and fancy revelation of what man needs in order to live.  The elemental principles of work and sacrifice and duty—and the transcendent criteria of truth, justice and righteousness—and the grace of love and charity are the things which have made men free…only in this profound, this stern, in this tested wisdom shall we find once more the light and the courage we need.”  

Surely, words for today, words for this moment, words for eternity. 

 

What’s the role of religion in all of this, I ask.  Is it an essential requirement for one to lead a moral life?  I wouldn’t say that.  I know people, a couple of my children among them, who are leading moral lives and yet they would not call themselves religious.  But they do believe there are higher values that stem from something outside themselves.  For me, religion has played that role.  Not alone.  A deep appreciation of nature, of humanity at its best leads me to the same conviction in the imperative of certain moral values.  But religion, as I’ve understood and tried to practice it, has played a bigger role than anything.

  

Timeless wisdom from Walter Lippman “Those in high places are more than the administrators of government bureaus.  They are more than the writers of laws.  They are the custodians of the nation’s ideals, of its permanent hopes, of the faith that makes a nation out of the mere aggregation of individuals.” 

 

 A message for leaders in every walk of life today and forever.