My Faith and Hope in Joe Biden

I am counting on Biden. To pull the Nation together. Over the last month,  I  have developed far deeper confidence and faith  in him. In his mind and heart. He is a decent man; a man of character; a man with great experience. I believe he knows what needs to happen. He knows he needs to unite this country. Heal our wounds, bridge our separateness. He has suffered the worst possible personal pain. He has come through it. He has lived his life for this moment. Much as Winton Churchill It is his moment; his responsibility. He knows this. It is why he is running. 

He will be thinking of Beau and a whole lot more that we will never know. He has a loving wife at his side. This was made even more evident by her magnificent reflections during the Democratic Convention.  

Biden's acceptance speech was everything I hoped for.  He was crystal clear on what is at stake in this election—the character or as Biden rightly states "the soul of our Nation", His speech was filled with hope and empathy and the commitment to unify our country. 

 To that end, I hope and pray he includes Cabinet members and other senior advisers who represent diverse views and from across the aisle. Lincoln did that in 1860; Churchill did it too in 1940. 

We have been through worse as a country. We always have depended on great leadership in our most challenging moments. I believe we are about to be graced by such leadership at this critical moment. 

2020 - Confronting Reality and the Demand for Change

2020 – THE YEAR OF CONFRONTING REALITY; THE YEAR THAT OFFERS THE POTENTIAL AND THE DEMAND FOR SIGNIFICANT CHANGE

I’ve just finished reading the book, How to be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi, and watching the movie, 13^th.

In a way, it’s hard to imagine an encounter with a book and a film opening my mind in as significant and challenging a way to my views on racism, having lived this subject and thought about it and labored in it for close to 50 years.  But these two interactions have had that effect.  

For me, it has taken off the table any notion that a “color blind” or “race neutral” approach to confronting the racial divide that exists in this country will be adequate to the challenge.  

The only thing that will make a difference, and this will be very hard, is changes in policy which can happen through the exercise of power—political power, corporate power, grassroots power.  

This is not really a new discovery.  It was only the civil rights laws and the voting rights laws of the 1960s that made a difference, and even that has been only a partial difference and one subject to erosion.

Racial bias is deep and enduring.  It will not go away.

Eyes have been opened as never before to the deep inequities that exist racially.  COVID-19 and the racial protests surrounding George Floyd’s death are doing that.  We are witnessing a rallying of Whites together with Blacks in protesting inequities in policing and criminal conduct that I believe can, if sustained, result in substantive policy change.

The biggest challenge lies in changing the distribution of income and wealth.  This affects the poor, particularly Black, but people of every race and color.

The gulf in income and wealth between the top 20% and 1% and the bottom 50% (pick the percentages as you wish) is growing larger, not smaller.  COVID-19 and its economic consequences will make this gap grow larger, not smaller.  The new administration, which I trust will be led by Joe Biden, is going to have to take decisive steps in income distribution and inheritance policy.  As Kendi summarizes:  “Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals.  But policies determine the success of groups.  And it is racist power that creates the policies that cause racial inequities.”

I drew many points from this book and film which opened my mind and some that challenged me.  In particular:

1. Reassessing my commitment to and call for the integration of Whites and Blacks.  I have sometimes lamented how Blacks separate themselves to be on their own.  I now see this evinces a certain disrespect and lack of appreciation for the natural desire of Blacks to share their culture and friendships with one another.  No one would criticize Whites for getting together as a group, drinking beers after a golf game, at a bar.  To be clear, my motivation for desiring the coming together of Blacks and Whites in sustained relationships is based on my own experience on the best way for White people to come to appreciate the individuality of individuals who happen to be Black.  “Individuality,” including all their personal qualities. I still hold to this view—strongly.  But I have to acknowledge a watch-out in this and it contains an element of racism.

At Yale, as I saw Black students sitting together in dining rooms, I did not see “these spaces,” as Kendi describes them, as ones of  simple and understandable.cultural solidarity.  “Integrationists think about them as a movement away from White people,” Kendi writes.

2. The film, 13^th, presents this remarkable analogy.  A monopoly game that has gone on for almost 500 years.  Blacks were allowed to be at the table for the first 400 years, even as slaves.  But everything they made in the game was not theirs.  It was turned over to their competitor, White people.  Then, during the last years of the game, running up to today, they were allowed to keep something, but less than the White people and too often, when they were successful, they were attacked, as Blacks were in the Tulsa riots in the early part of the 20^th century.  

Now comes the clincher.  Blacks are asked to play Monopoly today.  They’re told they are starting out with the same stakes as the White people.  They’re “free” now, so there is no reason they shouldn’t be able to compete equally.  But no account is taken that their White competitors have, over the course of time, accumulated lots of houses and hotels; they’ve been able to take possession of the key properties like Boardwalk and Park Place.   Some equal opportunity!  

While I think it may be changing at this moment—I hope so—there has been a huge cleavage in opinion between Whites and Blacks in the belief that the country has made the changes needed to give Blacks equal rights with Whites.  For example, in a survey of nearly 8,000 police officers in 2017, nearly all (92%) of White officers agreed with the post-racial idea that “our country has made the changes needed to give Blacks equal rights with Whites.”  Only 6% of White officers agreed with the idea that “our country needs to continue making changes to give Blacks equal rights with Whites” compared to 69% of Black officers.

3. I’ve become even more aware of the burden Black people are asked to play.  You’re expected to exhibit “good Black behavior” in order to make White people “less racist.”  In other words, Blacks feel they have to prove something, not just about themselves but about their race.

At the same time, they carry the burden for exhibiting to their Black friends that they have not left their Black heritage and Black culture behind.  

As I reflect—how often have I looked at an outstanding Black man or woman, and I’ve known so many, and think of them as a model of their race?  Yes, I’ve done that.  

How often, on the other hand, do I look at a White person whom I value and think of them as an outstanding representative of the White race?  Never.

So, a racist lens does affect my view, even at this ripe age of 81.

Kendi concludes with some very important points that I had not thought about in the way he presents them.  

“Moral and educational suasion breeds the assumption that racism minds must be changed before racist policy, ignoring history that says otherwise.  Look at the soaring White support for desegregated schools and neighborhoods decades after the policies changed in the 1950s and 1960s.  Look at the soaring White support for interracial marriage decades after the policy changed in 1967.”

“To fight for mental and moral changes after policy is changed means fighting alongside growing benefits and the dissipation of fears, making it possible for anti-racist power to succeed.  To fight for mental and moral change as a prerequisite for policy changes to fight against growing fears and apathy makes it almost impossible for anti-racist power to succeed.”

“Changing minds is not a movement.  Critiquing racism is not activism.  Changing minds is not activism.  An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change.”

I join this line of reasoning only to a point.  I believe it is important to simultaneously work to change minds even as we change policies. 

When it comes to diversity and inclusion, this is what has always led me to start with the mandate, “Make diversity happen now, in your own circle of influence.”  For it is as it happens that people experience the benefits of diversity they also come to see the rumored dangers that they might have suspected are fables.

Kendi is no Pollyanna optimist.  Nor am I.  He says, and I agree, before we can treat racism, we must “believe in the possibility that we can strive to be anti-racist from this day forward.  Racist power is not godly.  Racist policies are not indestructible.  Racial inequities are not inevitable.”

He makes the point that “race and racism are power constructs of the modern world.  For roughly 200,000 years, before race and racism were constructed in the 15^th century, humans saw color but had not grouped the colors into continental races, did not commonly attack negative and positive characteristics to those colors and rank the races to justify racial inequity, to reinforce racist power and policy.”

He is right, certainly as he talks about institutional slavery and racism.  But there is no mistaking the tendency of the human race, over time and to this current day, to separate ourselves from “others,” defined by race, yes, but defined in other terms—religious beliefs, ethnicity and other differentiators.  In the end, our task is to view every person as an individual, appreciate them for their differences, see the world as best we can through their eyes, recognize that our DNA structures are 99.9% the same and, if we hold to a religious belief, as I do, that we are all children of God.

I close by recommending you consider reading Kendi's book or watching the documentary "13". 

Reflections on Jon Meacham's Biography of Thomas Jefferson

May 21, 2020

JON MEACHAM’S THOMAS JEFFERSON:  THE ART OF POWER

 This magnificent biography ranks among the three or four finest I’ve ever read.  Alongside it I would put Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, David McCullough’s biography of Truman and David Blight’s biography of Frederick Douglass.  

I’m going to break my reflections and excerpts from the book into two groups, the first being new insights and the second being personal beliefs strongly reinforced.  

New Insights

1. Jefferson and many of his peers saw a constant threat to the United States still newly acquired freedom from Britain and, to a lesser extent, from France.  This is the context in which we have to view his life starting in 1765 all the way through to 1815 and the Treaty of Ghent, which concluded the War of 1812.  

The controversies with Britain were many:  impressment of U.S. ships seeking British sailors, alliances which Britain made (or was felt to make) with Native Americans, possible encroachment from British-held Canada and more.  

For most of his political career, Jefferson was tightly aligned to France.  He was there as the country’s emissary in the 1880s.  He loved it.  

2. There was unending enmity between the two parties, the Federalists and Republicans, and their leaders, particularly Adams and Hamilton for the Federalists.  

Jefferson greatly feared the tendencies he saw in Adams to want to re-establish the vestiges of monarchy.  He felt Hamilton, quite correctly, was intent on forming a much stronger central government.  Witness the U.S National Bank.  Jefferson was strongly in favor of popular democracy and while at times pragmatically flexible on the point (e.g., his bold decision to carry out the Louisiana Purchase), he favored states’ rights.  His acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase was carried out through executive order, though it was eventually approved by the Senate.  He had considered calling for a constitutional amendment but correctly saw that this could delay the purchase and that Francie might have second thoughts. 

To amplify on the party and personal divisions.  When they were both members of the cabinet, Jefferson wrote that he and Hamilton were now “daily pitted in the Cabinet like two cocks.”  President Washington lamented this:  “How unfortunate and how much it is to be regretted that, whilst we are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends that internal dissentions should be harrowing and tearing our vitals.”  

Jefferson’s view of the Federalists makes the point:  “their leaders are a hospital of incurables and, as such, entitled to be protected and taken care of as other insane persons are.”

Still, before becoming president, he expressed contemptuousness for politicians who held themselves above party.  “A few individuals of no fixed system at all, governed by the pack or the prowess of the moment, flap as the breeze blows against the Republican or the aristocratic bodies and give to the one or the other a preponderance entirely accidental.”   That changed when he entered the presidency.   He hoped he could achieve political unity.  “Nothing shall be spared on my part to obliterate the traces of party and consolidate the nation, if it can be done without abandonment of principle.”

But a few years later, he had to write:  “The attempted reconciliation was honorably pursued for us for a year or two and spurned by them.”  As Meacham writes, “As Jefferson well knew, in practice the best he could (hope for was a) truce between himself and his opponents, not a permanent peace.  Political divisions were intrinsic; what mattered most was how a president managed these divisions.”

3. The conflict between Jefferson’s notions and ideals of freedom and his continued willingness to live alongside slavery, in his own family and with his own bedmate, are vividly portrayed.  He firmly believed that whites could not live with blacks, not at least as far out as he could see.  He was willing to “kick the can down the road,” so to speak in finding a way, if there was to be found one, where blacks would be free and actually integrate with white society. Prior to his presidency, Jefferson would write:  “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.  Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”

Jefferson’s cohabitating with Sally Hemmings was well known.  He coolly recorded the birth of Hemmings’ children in his farm book along with other details of the lives of his slaves and of the fates of his crops.  “A multi-racial society was beyond Jefferson’s imagination,” Meacham writes, “except it was not beyond his experience, since he had created just such a society at Monticello.  Mixed-race children such as those he had with Sally Hemmings suffered, in his general view, from an intrinsic “degradation” produced by the “amalgamation of white and black.”  How is it possible to explain the disorienting contradiction between his harsh view of “amalgamation” and his own paternity of such children Meacham asks.  He speculates that the human products of “amalgamation,” to use his term, were thought to be sources of chaos in the road behind his own mountain.  

Meacham correctly points out that rendering moral judgments in retrospect can be hazardous.  Yet also correctly he points out that it’s possible to assess a man’s view on a moral issue like slavery by what others in the same age and facing the same realities thought and did.  And there were at this time in the 1790s  some Virginians of Jefferson’s class who recognized that the blight of slavery had to go and they did what was within their power by emancipating their slaves.

4. Somewhat surprising to me was Jefferson’s desire to “avoid conflict at any cost.”  I can identify with this personally.  It has gotten me into trouble at times. 

It showed up in Jefferson’s case on a personal level by his unwillingness to intervene in a conflict between his two sons-in-law.  Meacham’s traces this tendency on Jefferson’s part back to his childhood.  So it is with mine as well.

5. As with so many historical figures, I was struck by how much death occurred in Jefferson’s family.  His wife, Martha, at an early age; four of his six children, three of them in early childhood.  I’m also struck by that Jefferson had that were either improper (for example, with the wife, Betsy Walker, of one of his best friends) or other loves which were not returned. 

6. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, because it’s so human, but I was surprised at how often and how deeply Jefferson felt sorry for himself.  

Early on as president, he wrote:  “I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.”  (I can understand that.)  Here, too, he wrote his wife:  “There is such a mixture of the bad passions of the heart that one feels themselves in enemies’ territory.”  

Maybe that’s less “feeling sorry for yourself” than simple good introspection.  

In a latter part of his second term, he wrote a friend:  “I am tired of an office where I can do no more good than many others who would be glad to be employed in it.  To myself personally, it brings nothing but unceasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.”  (Well, we can have our down moments.  He’s just human.  That’s one of the things that makes this biography and his life so special.)  

Later, now retired from the presidency, but still only 68, he writes:  “I am already sensible of decay and the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be.  This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it”  (I sure can identify with that today at the age of 81).

7. Another element driving Jefferson’s fear of a return of monarchy was his deep knowledge of the history of the English civil war when a short-lived move to popular rule was turned back and the monarchy returned.

8. Striking and concerning to me was Jefferson’s abandoning his rule as Governor of Virginia in the midst of the British attack in 1881.  Jefferson later defended himself against charges of walking away but they were not persuasive to me.   

9. On religion, Jefferson believed in the existence of a creator God and an afterlife.  On the death of Abigail Adams, a good friend, he wrote to her husband, John Adams:  “Mingling sincerely my tears with yours.  Looking forward to ‘the time not very distant’ when we will ‘ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost and whom we shall still love and never lose again.”  Jefferson expressed far more certainty in the prospect of an afterlife than I hold, but I won’t be particularly surprised if that’s what I find and I will be delighted to find it for the same reasons Jefferson enunciates.  Jefferson had no time for what he described as the “dogmas” of most established religion, including the divinity of Christ and his birth by the Virgin Mary.  But like me, above all, he defended the moral essence of the life and teachings of Jesus.  In fact, he wrote a 46-page worked entitled, The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted from the Account of His Life and Doctrines as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

He carried a well-worn Book of Common Prayer, served as a vestryman and invoked the divine in his public statements.  He fought against the establishment of a religion but understood and appreciated the cultural role faith played in the United States.

10. Telling testimony from Jefferson writing to Edward Rutledge as he entered George Washington’s presidency as vice-president:  “You and I have formally seen warm debaters and high political passions.  But gentlemen of different politics used to speak to each other…it is not so now.  Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest they should be obliged to touch their hat.”  (What we are experiencing today is not as novel as we sometimes aver, but it is still very undesirable). 

Personal Beliefs Strongly Reinforced

1. Jefferson shares a commitment to service, to good values, to importance of good relations and treating all equally.  To wit:  “There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, a proportion (according to the) bounty which nature and fortune have measured to him.”

Writing to his grandson, Jefferson articulated this understanding of politics and the management of conflicting interests:  “A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence and good honor will go far towards securing  the estimation of the world.”  

And then going on in that letter:  “I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument.  I have seen many…getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another.”

Jefferson believed, Meacham writes, that “socialability was essential to Republicanism.  Men who like and respected and enjoyed one another were more likely to cultivate the virtuous habits that would enable the country’s citizens to engage in ‘the pursuit of happiness.’”

On treating all equally, Meacham writes:  “To Jefferson, each guest who came into his orbit was significant and he had little patience—no patience in fact—with the trappings of rank.”

2. On optimism.  “I’ve often been ‘accused’ of being too optimistic.  I plead guilty.  I have sometimes been too optimistic, not sufficiently attached to a sense of reality.  But far better that than a pessimistic view.”  Jefferson held an optimistic view of life’s possibilities, even as he recognized its imperfections and tragedies.  How could he not, with all the death in his family which surrounded him.  As Meacham writes: “To Jefferson, the imperfections of life and the limits of politics were realities.  So were the wonders and the possibilities of the human mind.”  “I am among those who think well of the human character generally,” Jefferson wrote 21 months before becoming president.  “It is impossible for a man who takes a survey in what is already known, not to see what an immensity in every branch of science yet remains to be discovered.”

I think of this as we contemplate how we will create a lifesaving vaccine for Covid-19.  And how we will create the method and science to be able to predict the next epidemic before it takes its onslaught on people.  

Later in his life, Jefferson struggled to be optimistic.  “I think, with you, that it is a good world on the whole; that it has been framed on a principled benevolence and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us,” Jefferson wrote Adams in 1816.  He took the broadest of views:  “I skewer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.  My hopes indeed sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.”

Future presidents often drew on Jefferson’s thinking.  Here is Truman invoking Jefferson:  “I have a profound faith in the people of this country.  I believe in their common sense.  They love freedom and that love for freedom and justice is not dead.  How our people believe today, as Jefferson did, that men were not born with saddles on their backs to be ridden by the privileged few.  We believe, as Jefferson did, that (the) ‘God who gave us life gave us liberty.’  We will not give up our democratic way to a dictatorship of the left; neither will we give it up to a despotism of special privilege.”

3. Like me, Jefferson saw civility as an important political virtue.  In the main, he practiced what he preached.  He understood, as Meacham writes, that “politics is a kaleidoscope, constantly shifting, and the morning’s flow may well be the afternoon’s friend.”  

On a key issue in dispute, Jefferson confided his faith in a middle course of Madison:  “I think we should leave the matter in such a (position) that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, and yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent.  A little patience and we shall see their spills dissolved and the people recovering their true sight.”

4. On the importance of taking decisive action, including reversing a prior point of view and taking a bold risk.  This was at play for me and others at P&G when we decided to introduce multiple categories in multiple countries at a time of economic and political uncertainty when Eastern and Central Europe opening up after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Probably the most luminous example for Jefferson was the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803.  He exercised executive power here, foregoing involvement of the states in a way that, under normal circumstances, he would not have countenanced.

As Meacham writes, “The vibrant, breathing, prevailing politics of the hour reflected the complicated character of the triumphant president.  The America of Jefferson was neither only Federal nor wholly Republican.  It was rather a marbled blend of the two, confected by a practical man of affairs.  The significance of the case of Louisiana in shaping the destinies of the country and in illuminating Jefferson’s political leadership cannot be overstated.  He believed, for instance, in a limited government, except when he thought the nation was best served by a more expansive one.”

This is what has characterized the most momentous decisions of any time, including right now, as Congress and every level of business of government has had to take unorthodox, even draconian, steps to minimize the impact of Covid-19.

At a time in 1805 when the Nation was under threat of war from either France or Spain, some advocated forming a provisional treaty with Britain.  Jefferson said “no.”  He insisted  that neutrality was still the country’s best course.  

A similar decisive action, though in history not highly regarded, was Jefferson’s decision to impose an embargo on all imports and exports in 1807.  “It was a breakthrough bill,” Meacham writes.  “A projection of governmental power that surpassed even the hated Alien and Sedition Acts.”

5. Jefferson’s life affirms what I’ve all believed of all of us, even the most famous, “No man is perfect.  We must judge a person by his whole life:  what he did, what he said, what he stood for, his values.”  As Jefferson wrote to his daughter, Patsy:  “Every human being, my dear, must be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us, no one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections, this world would be a desert for our love.”

As Jefferson wrote later:  “All we can do is to make the best of our friends:  love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad; but no more think of rejecting them for it than in throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two.”

Meacham writes with wisdom as he moves to sum up Jefferson’s life.  “We sense his greatness because we know that perfection in politics is not possible but that Jefferson passed the fundamental test of leadership.  Despite all his shortcomings and all of the inevitable disappointments and mistakes and dreams deferred (surely referring to the abolition of slavery and the treatment accorded to the Native Americans), he left America, and the world, in a better place than it had been when he first entered the arena of public life.”

No one could ask anything more of a human being than that.  

Meacham continues:  “The real Jefferson was like so many of us:  a bundle of contradictions, competing passions, flaws, sins and virtues that can never be neatly smoothed out into a tidy whole.”

With due respect, I think Meacham oversimplifies what anchored the values and purpose of Jefferson’s life.  He writes that, “The closest thing to a constant in his life was his need for power and for control.  He tended to mask these drives effectively.  Henry Adams wrote:  “The leadership he sought was one of sympathy and love, not of command.”

But that was not quite the case, Meacham writes.  “For him, sympathy and love among the members of his political circle were means to an end—and the end was command.”

Yes, I agree.  Command was part of it.  But I think he had a nobler purpose, to make the nation a better place, a safer place, a larger and more vibrant space.  In other words, I believe comand was a means to a nobler end.

What has been the “constant” in my life?  I return to service.  Being all I can be and helping others do the same.  Succeeding.  Leaving people, above all my family, in a better place.  

In a way, Jefferson expressed what he viewed as the constant in his life in his later years, as he reflected on drafting the Declaration of Independence:  “Neither aiming in originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that occasion the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.”

In less grandiose terms, that thought was in my mind, in all of our minds, as we wrote the Purpose, Values and Principles of P&G in 1987, as we celebrated the 150^th anniversary of the company’s founding.

FM_JonMeachamThomasJefferson051520

"The Blame Game"—Stop It

The Trump Administration blames China  for the spread of the virus, implying it may have even been intentional, and threatens higher tariffs or other actions for compensation. Our National Intelligence Agency has been dispatched to carry out the investigation of China.

The Democrats and some Republicans blame Trump for having dismissed the virus a threat for far to long, causing needless deaths as a result.

Republican blame Democrats for politicizing the epidemic to get Trump out of office.

Trump blames Obama for not having stockpiled supplies, even tough he (Trump) had been in office for three years.

Stop it. This is madness.

There will be a time and the need for throughly examining the causes of this epidemic: what could and should have been done differently to lessen its impact and the learning for the future. But now the focus needs to be like  a laser  on everyone's working cooly and as wisely as possible, protecting lives while getting people and the Nation back to work.

Political leaders and the media need to stop the blame game now and focus on what matters now.

The Future Global Order—A Fork in the Road

Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, has written an important article in the April 7th issue of Foreign Affairs.  The headline of the article summarizes Haas's conclusion: "The Pandemic Will Accelerate History Rather Than  Reshape It". 

    . 

Haas  is a realist. He is deeply informed. I respect him. But in this judgement, I hope he is wrong. 

No doubt, , the future following Covid-19 which he predicts— an acceleration of  the populist, nationally-centric policies which we are increasingly  seeing today-- would rightly be deemed the "most likely"one  based on the evidence in hand. 

It is, however, for me, a very dangerous one. It would certainly spell a lost major opportunity--for if there is one thing Covid-19 is doing more than any other in my adult life time is giving teeth to the well-worn mantra that we really are all in this together and that we will not resolve the major challenges we face in the world successfully without strong International  coordination. 

We are seeing that the response to Covid-19 is requiring complete unity and coordination—public, private, government at every level, nationally and globally, hospitals, healthcare workers, and every one of us no matter who we are. 

Covid-19 presents two driving dynamics: 1) those forces which underscore how connected we are in this world (e.g.witness how the disease travels) and the opportunities this offers and demands (e.g. sharing medical discoveries, learning, organized immigration policy, border control etc.); and 2) other competing forces which accelerate the drive for national separation (e.g restricting immigration; securing national not imported supplies).

It is a fact  that prior to Covid-19, leadership in much of the world, including the United States, has been moving increasingly toward a more exclusive national focus and away from multi-national agreements.. There have been many forces driving this, including increased pressure of  immigration, futile and costly involvement by the U.S. in the Middle East, weakness in European common market and U.N. leadership, adversarial U.S. relations with China and Russia ( powers which must work together if we are to achieve global effort against the existential threats of climate change and nuclear proliferation) and the U.S.'s abandonment of the Paris accord and TPP, and other multi-national agreements. 

I had hoped, and I still hope, that  the Covid-19 crisis will compel us to see the need to work together, to strengthen institutions like WHO and the U.N .and the EEC. To date, there is no sign of that happening. I see very little chance of its happening  under under a Trump administration.  As Richard Haas points out, it will also be extremely difficult for Biden, assuming his election.

Nevertheless, several things keep my hope alive.

The first is that we are and will remain a global economy for good economic reasons, quite beyond any ideological motivation.

Second, beyond the threat of a future pandemic, we face two undeniable existential threats to the very existence of  life on this planet as we know it today: 1) environmental deterioration and 2) nuclear disaster and war. Neither of these threats can be overcome without effective global organization and agreements. The question in my mind has always been: how much pain we will have to suffer (akin if you like to the devastation wrought by WWII and WWI before it) before we finally recognize and act on this need for global agreements and policies on these undeniable existential threats.   

I hope that Covid-19 will begin to tip the scales. It is presenting powerful evidence of the need to work globally on key issues including sharing knowledge and expertise and resources among the medical and scientific community. As just one example,  on a recent conference call with the Heads of the Schools of Public Health and Nursing at Yale, we learned that the Nursing Association in China is sharing protocols on their learning in combating the virus in China and having them translated into English.  Sharing like this will come naturally for the scientific community provided it is supported by the leadership of  the principal nations and a strengthened WHO. 

I believe that if Joe Biden is elected President, the United States will take practical steps in the right direction, rejoining the Paris accord and helping lead effective global action on climate control. He can also bring back the Iran treaty  on nuclear capability  I believe it should be possible even if difficult to update the START treaty and reach agreement with China and Russia on nuclear proliferation. Remember, we reached agreement with Russia on nuclear weapons controls when it was still part of the Soviet Union. 

Development of immigration polices which reflect a collective multi-national and not solely individual country perspective is critically important—and will be extremely challenging. However, we and other countries must try. Failure to do so up until now is a big reason explaining the rise of populist national leaders like Hungary's Orban and our own President and it is influencing the political dynamics in almost every country. Beyond that and most painfully,  it is resulting in the greatest refugee crisis in modern history.

Practically, at this moment,  we must  look to new Presidential  leadership in the United States to take concrete steps toward achieving collective action, both domestically (for example,  Covid-19 reveals deep racial inequities in health care)  and globally, against our key existential threats of epidemics like Covid-19, climate change and nuclear proliferation 

 It will be vital to identify Congressional leaders from both parties that see these imperatives and are prepared to guide and  support the President on these policies. We will also need media to shape public opinion to see the realty of the need to work together across the globe on specific key issues and trumpet the benefits of doing so. 

This will be very difficult. It will not be the task of a single administration. It will take many years. We stand at a crossroads, as Yaroslav Trofimov writes is an essay in the "Wall Street Journal". Will the route we take to tackle the pandemic and its economic fallout follow the route of national grievances and finger pointing  and protectionism which country after country embraced after WWI with its disastrous outcome? Or will the pandemic, with it lessons, spur a renewed commitment for cooperation and shared solutions as happened after WWII—though this time, unlike post-WWII, on a global basis?  

History offers hope. As Winston Churchill once remarked, "the future is unknowable but the past should give us hope"—the hope, as Jon Meacham brilliantly offers, that human ingenuity, reason and character can combine to save us from the abyss and keep us on a path, in another phrase of Churchill's, to a broad sunlit road.  

We must hold to our vision, mindful of the current realities and challenges, but not flinching from them. Richard Haas is right in saying that Covid-19, in and of itself, is not going to lead to a dramatic shift in the recent populist direction of global and national polices. In fact, as we have seen,  it will reinforce some of them. Crises like Covid-19 expose problems, often painfully,  but they do not supply alternatives, let alone the political will to make the changes happen. 

The change we need  will require fresh ideas and strong leadership. I believe that providing these ideas and the leadership to make them happen is the overriding responsibility of our generation. May those who look back a century from now be able to say that our generation seized the lessons coming from the Covid-19 epidemic as well as they could. They chose the right path. They mustered the fresh ideas and the political will to reengage strong international coordination on the most important challenges the world faced. I hope and pray that is what they will be able to say, for the very future of our country and our planet  depends on it.  

Too Beautiful; Too Wise Not to Share. What's It Means to be "Ahead"

My daughter-in-law, Kim Pepper, shared this with me. Author unknown

What if instead of “behind” this group of kids are advanced because of this. 

What if they have more empathy, they enjoy family connection, they can be more creative and entertain themselves, they love to read, they love to express themselves in writing. 

What if they enjoy the simple things, like their own backyard and sitting near a window in the quiet.
What if they notice the birds and the dates different flowers emerge and the calming renewal of a gentle rain? 

What if this generation are the ones who learn to cook and organize their space and do their laundry and keep a well run home? 

What if they learn to stretch a dollar and learn to live with less?
What if they learn the value of eating together as a family and finding the good to share in the small delights of the every day? 

What if they are the ones to place great value on our teachers and educational professionals, librarians, public servants and previously invisible essential support workers like truck drivers, grocers, cashiers, custodial workers, health care workers and their supporting staff, just to name a few of the millions taking care of us while we are sheltered in place? 

What if, among these children, a great leader emerges who had the benefit of a slower pace and a simpler life to truly learn what really matters in this life? 

What if they are “ahead”?❤️ 

Happy Easter everyone!

Corporate America and P&G Respond to the Coronavirus Epidemic

 As those of you who read my blogs might recall, I have published several pieces asserting Corporations" responsibility and opportunity to add value and bring support to society and  their communities. At no time is this as important than at a time of crisis like the world is experiencing  right now with the tragic Covid-19 epidemic. 

And corporations are responding. My company—Procter & Gamble is one of them, building on its tradition of over 175 years. How it is doing this is spelled out in this letter to employees from P&G's CEO, David Taylor.  

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We (P&G) have a long history of supporting communities in times of need—and we are answering the call to do even more. We’re stepping up to provide much needed product donations and financial support. Our contributions of product and in-kind support now exceed $15MM and will continue to increase as we work with communities around the world to understand how we can best serve them.

Millions of P&G products are being donated from 30 brands in more than 20 countries, with more on the way. These donations ensure that families who do not have basic access to the everyday essentials many of us take for granted, can have the cleaning, health, and hygiene benefits P&G brands can provide.

Our contributions are broad-based with cash support to ensure disaster relief organizations can meet immediate needs, including hygiene education and medical equipment and supplies. We’re partnering with some of the world’s leading relief organizations, including the International Federation of Red Cross, Americares and Direct Relief, and key regional organizations such as Feeding America, Matthew 25: Ministries, the China Youth Development Foundation, One Foundation, the Korea Disaster Relief Association, the United Way, and more.

P&G people across the world are stepping up to use our innovation, marketing and manufacturing expertise to directly support our communities for the greater good.

We have installed new lines to start production of hand sanitizer in five manufacturing sites around the world, using it to ensure our people can continue operating safely and sharing it with hospitals, health authorities and relief organizations. We are expanding manufacturing capacity further in additional facilities in the coming weeks and will have a capacity of at least 45,000 liters per week when fully operational.

Work is underway to produce critically needed face masks at nearly a dozen P&G manufacturing sites around the world. We’re up and running already in China. We have teams working to install capacity in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and will quickly begin production in the coming weeks. This is important for several reasons:

1. It will increase the supply of masks for hospitals, first responders and other organizations by reducing market demand for production and industrial use;
2. It helps us create a safe working environment for P&G people;
3. Longer term, it will allow us to directly help many communities across the globe where there is unprecedented need for protective supplies. 

And we’re not stopping there. Around the world, P&G people are evaluating how we can be of service to the communities who desperately need help. We’re in this together and working side-by-side with retail customers, suppliers, agency partners and government officials to do our part. We’re using areas of P&G capability and know-how to develop and deliver solutions to protect those who are most vulnerable. We’re funding startups with innovative ideas and partnering with established companies who have complementary capabilities. We’re also using our marketing and communications expertise to encourage consumers to support public health measures to help flatten the curve and slow the spread of the virus. 

We cannot predict how and when this crisis will end but we’re committed to be part of the solution. We have mobilized the full capabilities of P&G and our partners to help out in this time of need, and we will be there for our employees, consumers and communities—stepping up as a force for good—however long it takes.

David Taylor

Timeless Truths: Timeless Life-Changing Experiences

I’m reading a book of literary criticism, written by George Steiner, a long-term columnist of The New Yorker.  In introducing his book,   Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, which was published in 1959, Steiner sheds light on the rewards and requirements of literary criticism.  

 

In reading this introduction, I find a great deal that brings me back to the importance of never forgetting those foundational kernels of truth and principles of living which emerge from our most life-changing experiences.

 

There are more than 100 great books, more than 1,000, Steiner tells us.  But their number is not inexhaustible.  The same comment applies to the principles of living and truths.  There are a lot of them.  But the number is not inexhaustible.  And the most important are ones we must always cling to, including the commitment to excellence, to truth and integrity, to never giving up in the pursuit of what is right,  and to respect for one another.  

 

Steiner points out, correctly, that in today’s world a more diffident view of what is timeless prevails.  “With the decline of Europe from the pivot of history, we have become less certain that the classical and Western tradition is preeminent.  Our minds are shadowed by the wars and bestialities of the 20^th century.  We grow weary of our inheritance.  But we must not yield too far.  In excess of relativism lie the germs of anarchy.”  

 

The “ancient recognition and habits of understanding run deeper than the rigors of time.  Tradition and the long ground-swell of unity are no less real than that sense of disorder and vertigo which the new dark ages have loosed upon us.”  (Steiner wrote this in the 1950s.  The shadow of World War II still lingered.  I feel certain that his thoughts would be no different in today’s troubled world.)

 

Even as we know that change is unending, that circumstances change, and that new opportunities and challenges arise, we must hold fast to those truths and learnings which have come down through time and which we believe in our hearts represent guides to our doing the best we can in the world we live in today.

 

Steiner’s subject is the challenge of literary criticism returning “with passion and awe and a sense of life renewed.   At present, there is grievous need of such return,” Steiner writes.  “All about us flourishes a new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read short words, words of hatred and tawdriness, but cannot grasp the meaning of language when it is in a condition of beauty or truth.”  

 

This may sound too highfalutin, too detached from the rigors of everyday life, but I don’t think it is.    I think it calls upon us to honor those truths gained from our experience and learning which, put simply, helps us be our best selves.