Tuesday’s election results were clear—the Democrats won, the Republicans lost. This was an across the board defeat. There were no shoots of Spring. The President’s most fervent supporters said the problem was that Trump was not on the ballot. I say, excuse me, Trump has chosen to put himself on everything but the granularity of household waste.
The voters, well a majority, share Trumps anger on many issues but are turned off by his angry approach and his often mercurial zigs and zags. Most don’t like meanness. Most don’t like unhinged. Most don’t like extravagant claims with little or no foundation. When the “best ever” becomes a throw-away line, claims of truth lose their plausibility.
Stuck is not a good thing for a leader. But today the nation is enmeshed in a debilitating tangle featuring true believers, an absence of cohesive leadership (the government is shutdown) Courts and a large class of voters called independents.
Independent voters find the lack of civility chilling. Most independent voters don’t have the passion of true believers with the attendant intolerance. They don’t have high expectations, but they do know courtesy and its absence. In short, the mess Democrats served up in the 2024 election cycle defeated them, not the grandiosity and ridicule offered up by the President.
I suspect a majority of voters respect the potential of an extension of the Abraham Accords across the Middle East. But political victories have very short shelf lives. This is particularly true of successes in places most would have trouble finding on a map.
And politicians who live on emotions have to be aware of overnight reckonings. When Trump’s marquee supporter, Elon Musk, was portrayed with a chainsaw in hand, slashing programs that had constituencies, there was trouble in River City (the Potomac).
Trump is now a lame duck, who turned the gun on himself. A majority expressed confidence in him over her (Kamala Harris) last November, but popularity is fragile—especially if in the telling everything revolves around one man. Independents, the deciding factor in all elections except those where hardcore supporters are densely clustered, are suffering indigestion. Americans have not been trained to take orders from an autocrat.
So now America has a White House occupant who has precious little time to effect a turnaround but who, I guess, is building a giant ballroom for various celebrations. A ballroom filled by sycophants will not transmit the right vibe.
Neither George Washington or Abraham Lincoln were modest men but they formed their visions from history, theology, philosophy and literature, not from the vagaries of the marketplace. And they governed for history, not X (formerly Twitter).
An aside. Flying too close to the sun is always perilous. Watch out Zohran Mamdani, reengineering New York City will not be a walk in Central Park.
And what about those red carpets on the just finished Asian swing? Understand, Mr. President, that Xi of China is not your friend. Nor Putin of Russia. Nor Kim Jung Un of North Korea.
Un doesn’t want anything you can plausibly give him so he deflected your barely disguised suggestion for a stop over. Xi will do business because it is in his best interests. And you will prevail in negotiations with Xi, if he perceives you to be strong back home.
Putin will welcome staged bilateral talks that make him look reasonable, but persist in his tyrannical ambitions until he is certain the West will exact unbearable costs.
America is rich. It has enormous military power. It has sound government institutions and these are only the headlines of its strengths. Persons who become President will, as long as our assets hold together, be offered a certain deference. But don’t confuse tactical deference with friendship. If you are using tariffs to penalize friends (Canada, for example), don’t imagine that the red carpet is for you; it is for America. America is made strong by its stable democracy, law-bound courts, free markets, and diverse leaders and ideas. And true friendships.
A final thought. We always need to adaptively build strength and measure our initiatives against our history. Too often, we have allowed hope and borrowing power to weaken us. A $37 trillion dollar debt is shameful. In the neighborhood of 30% of the debt is held by foreign holders.
My last political job was in President George HW Bush’s administration. He built an incomparable resume through good public service. The jobs he did, including as President Ronald Reagan’s Vice President, were done well, and he didn’t ever, as I recall, try to upstage those he worked for or with. When he was President, the “Captain of the Ship of State”, there was a lot of ballast. Today, not so much.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
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