Almost exactly a year ago, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich posted an op/ed entitled “America Needs an Honest Adult Conversation” in which he outlined eleven issues and threats critical to the future of our country that are in need of serious debate, and in his introduction to them he wrote “If America is going to […]
A Prayer For All Seasons
Particularly around the beginning of the new year I often return to the familiar but never out of date messages in the Serenity Prayer, the authorship of which is usually attributed to noted theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. In case you haven’t visited it lately, the shortened version is as follows: God grant us the serenity to […]
Happy New Year! What Next?
It’s good to have 2021 behind us and the Christmas holiday break seems to have given the country a much-needed breather to regroup on a number of fronts. No one needed a breather more than Joe Biden and, actually, he owes Sen. Joe Manchin a big thank you for hopefully putting a nail in the […]
The U. S. and China: The Mandate for Transformational Leadership
“No relationship will be as important to the 21st century as the one between the United States, the world’s great power, and China, the world’s rising power”–Richard N. Haas, President, Council on Foreign Relations, April 2007 “Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world”–Napoleon, 1817 The world is faced with so many […]
Leadership and the “Swarm”
A couple of months ago, David Brooks wrote an article lamenting the fact that based on recent polling, including a recent Pew Research Center survey, many Americans no longer have faith in top political figures or the military to keep the U. S. on top in world affairs. My first reaction was, does he think […]
An Abdication of Leadership
I will make no attempt to defend or justify certain elements of the tactics of the Republicans in the House and Senate in the run-up to the current government shutdown “crisis”, particularly the futile attempt to defund Obamacare, although I agree with most aspects of the underlying policy substance in their recent position–on Obamacare, […]
The Limits of Competence and Its Frustration
The political class and all of its groupies in the punditry industry just can’t stand it. They cannot abide a major disaster of the nature of the Gulf oil well blowout that doesn’t have a political solution. This frustration is manifest in every media update on the well and every White House press briefing–the 21st […]
The Threat to America’s Leadership
No less an authority than Lech Walesa (you remember him, the former electrician who stood up to the Soviet puppet government in Poland, which ultimately, with a little help from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the Pope, led to the fall of the Soviet empire) recently made an insightful observation: “The world has no leadership. […]
The “C” Word
An editorial lead in the current issue of Chief Executive Magazine caught my attention. It essentially suggested that CEOs of the major companies are finally waking up to the realization that a renewed and primary emphasis on competitiveness is the key to the restoration of business credibility on a range of issues, including the multiple […]
Editor’s Note
A note on admirable policy leadership: My friend and publishing mentor Sen. John Andrews of Colorado will be co-sponsoring legislation led by Gov. Bill Owens to ban race-based college admissions in that state. Congratulations and best wishes. We need one of these in Texas. I wonder who has the courage for such leadership?