Politically Independent Writers Needed

President Coover

How appropriate, as we approach Halloween and stories of hobgoblins and headless horsemen, to have a Capitol City without the slightest hint of leadership. President Coover has abdicated no less certainly than Edward of yore, and he didn’t even get to keep the girl!

We have the party in office (I avoid the term “in power”), a heretofore blind or simply uncaring steward, discover an economy in trouble, despite the soundness of its fundamentals, running pillar to post for $700 billion to fix it. Setting aside that the administration that stewarded us to this turn would seem the last with which to trust so staggering a sum of money, its three page, blank check request is fleshed out, run to the White House where it stalls as that same party’s members walk out, survives over a weekend of work and sweat to be announced done, only to be voted down by the very party that initiated it, as taunted by the majority party’s leadership, a grandmother but not quite yet, it would seem, a grown up, all leading to market value losses of over one trillion dollars - that’s $1,000,000,000,000. Gone.

Yes sir, that’s what I call leadership!

In truth, I know little about President Calvin Coolidge, “Silent Cal” to both his friends, and about as much about President Herbert Hoover, his successor. They were apparently decent men, the former known for two hour naps each afternoon and the latter, a tireless engineer credited with herculean efforts in the rebuilding of Europe after World War I.

What I know of either man, in fact, is largely what I have seen on the History Channel, Coolidge in his Indian headdress as it flowed over his three piece business suit while he held a peace pipe, and Hoover, hapless as a market crash was let run to the Great Depression. Somehow the colors and forms of these visions seem to run so easily to a composite vision of George W. Bush (I avoid the word President) as he works to reassure us that all will be fine in these troubling times, knowing as we do that he would not seem to have a clue as to what to do or whom to call. Indeed, after personal calls to all 19 Representatives from his own party, from his own home state of Texas, he was able to win the support of only four for his own Adminstation’s legislation.

Yes, sir, can’t you just see W in that headdress, a podium and microphone before him, stumbling through a simple declarative sentence? But wait. Wait. This is unkind, unfair even. As I said, I know little of Coolidge and Hoover and perhaps I defame each unjustly by such association.

What, in these circumstances, could be more timely than a presidential election? We get to audition the contestants at a time of national crisis and make a choice, the effect to be enjoyed in 112 days. I can hardly wait.

Elector 

The Organizer from the Windy City

Reaction to the Mayor from Nowhere of September 22 included concerns that IDn was betraying a bias against the Republican ticket and that this is not consistent with being an Independent. This is an important point and requires a response.

Being an Independent doesn’t mean that a person does not develop a candidate preference during the course of an election. The first criteria of an Independent is that his or her political preference is not directed by identification with one political party or another. Independents come in all shades, conservative, moderate and liberal. (See Independent Way.) Being Independent means being more analytical, more concerned about the facts than who is saying them or how they fit with a particular platform or agenda. The genuine Independent is not concerned so much with what others think or do as his or her own values and needs. Like IDn’s bumper sticker says, We don’t herd very well but we hear great!
 

This having been said, there is the matter of the Mayor from Nowhere, i.e., that there was nothing in Governor Palin’s experience or accomplishments that would prepare her to serve as this nation’s president. We stand by this view.

There are those, though, of the view that the experience of the Organizer from the Windy City is no more impressive. Perhaps. Indeed, had  Sen. Obama had been plucked arbitrarily from political obscurity by a Democratic presidential nominee eight weeks before the election, had he not participated in 20 nationally televised debates, not run in more than twice that number of primaries and caucuses from Iowa to Puerto Rico, not raised an army of supporters and volunteers registering well over two million new voters, not raised nearly $500 million from more than 1.5 million donors, not defeated the closest thing this country had of to a political machine, then the same might have been said of him.

But he did do all of these things. Senator Obama literally created himself as a political force, raised his own resources, created his own momentum, ran against his own party’s establishment and took the prize. More substantively, it was Obama who, from the beginning, built his campaign on the one theme that each of the late runners came to claim as their own – Change. He worked the process, won the votes and set the course of the election. He has engaged the voter on a par with Reagan and Kennedy and those who would dismiss him do so at their own peril.

As for the Mayor from Nowhere, she remains largely sequestered from the media save several less than distinguished outings with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, and reporters questions hurled at here and there as she is shuttled from one controlled environment to the next.

ELECTOR 

The Mayor from Nowhere

My reaction to Senator John McCain’s selection of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate came in three phases. First was dismay. Is this a national election for the most powerful position in the world? In what was surely the longest and most open pre-primary and primary process in the history of the country, how on earth does the former mayor of Wasila, Alaska, get named to a national political ticket? Where were all the grown-ups when this happened?

Next was insult (v.t., to behave with insolent triumph, to exult contemptuously.) How could a man seeking to serve as this country’s President use the authority of a national party nomination to choose someone so categorically unfit to succeed him in that role? Was all what went before - the debates, the primaries, the position papers, the millions of hours spent by thousands of dedicated professionals and volunteers from every party, from every state – was it all farce? Of all those in Senator McCain’s party who have dedicated their lives to public service and this country’s political process, is it Senator McCain’s contention that Sarah Palin is the most qualified, best available to serve? Yes, where were the grown-ups?

Finally there was vulnerability, a sense of powerlessness, the fear that reason and process play no role other than that allowed by Senator McCain. We are told that the Senator’s selection of Governor Palin followed a rejection by party leaders of former Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania and Senator Lieberman of Connecticut. While one might agree or disagree with their views, there can be no question that these were leaders of the first order, public servants of national standing and political substance.  

The vulnerability, though, goes deeper than this. The intended impact of the primary process was to rid the selection process of back room deals and party bosses who manipulated the process to their own selfish and parochial interests and ends. Well, we have now come to a place where the parties are the prizes of the primaries whose winner takes all, in this instance giving us to two weeks of pit bulls with or without lipstick, soap opera emotions surrounding an out of wedlock pregnancy, repeated dribble about “thanks, but no thanks” while the country and world shudder under the weight of the worst financial crisis in 70 years. Exactly whom in Governor Palin’s experience would she call upon to counsel her were she now the President? We all want Washington to work better. With Governor Palin the question is How would it work at all?

A presidential election should be a quadrennial discussion and debate on the issues that join and separate us, a review and examination of the national soul. The process should be interactive such that a heightened appreciation of the needs of the nation and the goals to be pursued are examined, challenged, refined and claimed by the candidates so that we might choose between them. This is what we should rightly expect from a national election. Senator’s McCain’s selection of Governor Palin has made this all but impossible.

A Palin presidency, which Senator McCain’s nomination compels us to consider, offers two highly disturbing scenarios. The first is a president as populist tool to be manipulated and manged by an inner circle of uncertain composition, capacity and intent. The second, and the more disturbing, would be an emergent, self-nurtured demagogue whose political experience is informed by rural Alaskan politics and governorship of a state whose revenues are overwhelmingly single-sourced, i.e. oil. Among her most important duties as governor is that of dispensing revenue surpluses to agencies or citizens (i.e. voters), duties not unlike those of OPEC sheiks and other third world potentates.

Despite her current celebrity, Governor Sarah Palin is patently unfit to be president of the United States. Her arbitrary and ill-advised nomination by Senator McCain, putting her first in line to lead this country in what might be optimistically anticipated as a period of great uncertainty and tumult, both at home and broad, calls into most serious question his qualifications to serve as this nation’s President.  

ELECTOR

The Independent Way

The time of the Independent is at hand. For good or ill, the parties are about to offer their wares and it now falls on us, the nation’s Independents, to determine who’s to be the next President of the United States of America.

And who, exactly, are we? Though at least 10 million strong, and arguably three times that number, the first and best answer to that question is that we are not one. While each of our single votes will help determine the next President, the unum, if you will, we remain as the pluribus, the many. We are not a political unity or entity. Though many of us are politically active, we participate without benefit or burden of party affiliation.

So, in this Perfect Storm of an election, we need an anchor, a fixing from which we can take our bearings. With “Democrat” and “Republican” having become so partisan as to be useless to us, our default option would appear to be the conservative/moderate/liberal continuum. But even here, where to start? Enter Mickey Edwards, a Goldwater Republican and retired eight-term Congressman from Oklahoma, with his recently published Reclaiming Conservatism in which he attempts to delineate the conservative pole of the political spectrum.

And what is conservatism to Rep. Edwards? Love of freedom and opportunity, and the dignity of every individual. He cites European Liberalism, born of the Enlightenment, as the wellspring of American Conservatism, holding that European Conservatism was autocracy, plain and simple. Fixing on the U. S. Constitution as autocracy’s antidote, he drives home the conservative mantra that the first purpose of the Constitution was to limit the authority of the state.

Moreover, in Rep. Edwards’ conservatism, there is no place for a strong Executive Branch. Nor does his Constitution-centered conservatism include the Religious Right and its intolerance of those outside its belief system. Lamenting the “change wrought by the movement of the religiously conservative in the world of politics,” he notes its effect even on the Heritage Foundation,  the prototype conservative think tank of the early 1980s whose Mandate for Change was the first Reagan administration’s bible and handbook. Founded on four central principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom and a strong national defense, by the early 1990s it had added a fifth – traditional American values.

Indeed, where Goldwater’s conservatism spoke of rights, many of today’s conservatives speak of values. And where does this take us? Adverbs. Republican, the noun, as modified by conservative the adjective is no longer enough. Now the adjective has to be modified by adverbs, e.g., politically (Constitution-oriented) or socially (Religious Right) conservative. Strikingly, though, when the politically conservative Republican is stood next to the socially conservative Republican, you have two wholly incompatible animals. The former sees the political process as something that should ensure and promote his/her personal liberty, i.e., rights, whereas the latter sees the political process as an opportunity and venue to compel behavior consistent with the values of the group or the majority.

The liberal portion of the continuum is equally problematic. For a time frame, we will take FDR’s first term as the origin of contemporary liberalism in this country. Prior to that time, neither national party favored a role for government in the economy. Indeed, in the 1932 election that put FDR in office, both Republican and Democratic candidates had run on a balanced budget platform. Moreover, there was a fundamental resistance at all levels of life to government intrusion, economic and otherwise, especially at the federal level. Market forces had been linked at the hip with personal liberty for as long as anyone could remember and there was little interest in changing this.

What people wanted in 1933, though, was work, jobs, and FDR’s New Deal set about creating them, as well as fundamentally redefining the federal government’s role in the economy. And as the Depression wore on for eight years more, to be followed by four years of world war, a majority of the population came to accept this role such that, by Truman’s Fair Deal of the late 1940’s, liberalism had expanded from jobs to include education, with healthcare next on the agenda. Though resisted by conservatives as creeping socialism, the ultimate thrust of the liberal agenda remained opportunity.

In the 1960s, however, this was all to change. John Kennedy’s New Frontier was transformed into Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, incorporating an all encompassing civil rights agenda with jobs, education and healthcare. The result was a liberal mantra that morphed from opportunity to entitlement. The classical liberal agenda grounded on individual rights and personal liberty (i.e., out of the Enlightenment), had now expanded such that rights were to be linked with results, i.e., the economic well-being of each individual. The process was to find expression in official mind-sets and entitlement programs that put process and structure above all else, expanding government programs exponentially and marginalizing initiative and personal responsibility.

As political terms, liberal and liberalism had in fact come to encompass individual rights and large social programs through which the government extended its impact at every level of society in every state of the union. This was a far cry from the classical liberalism of the Founding Fathers whose crowning achievement was a Constitution designed to limit the authority of the state. Whereas the political and governmental venue is the first option for the contemporary liberal, for the liberal of yore it was the last. They did not seek to be politicians nearly as much as they sought to be free of them, and largely of government, as well. So, what in all this is liberal? What, exactly, in all this, does liberalism mean?

For the Independent, then, the conservative/moderate/liberal continuum appears to be of little use. In today’s politics, conservatism and liberalism both lack the precision and commonality of use needed to facilitate and inform political discourse. But we still need something, a schema, an underlying organizational pattern or structure, a conceptual framework, a context for thinking politically, if we are to participate meaningfully in Election 08. So here’s what we are going to do. We are going to keep the words of the continuum but develop a different context in which to employ them. To do this, we will go back to basic concepts, of which we will focus on four: truth, principles, rights, and values.

Webster’s has truth as ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience. By its own measure, then, truth, as timeless, is ultimately beyond us. However, we each do have within us a sense of truth and it is from this we deduce principles. For example, we as a nation hold equality at birth as a principle that is accepted as self-evident.

Rights come next. These we will cite as agreed upon specifications of the application of a principle. For example, accepting the principle of equality at birth, a right would specify that we are all equally eligible to stand for public office. Another right might specify participation in decisions regarding changes in the rules under which we have organized ourselves.

Next, and finally, we come to values. Where a right can be seen as a linear extension of a principle, a value is a more subjective thing. It presumes alternatives and finds expression in different perspectives on a given phenomenon or idea or concept. Where truth-to-principle-to-right engage primarily the mind, values far more engage the heart, the emotions. And as a right is grounded on a principle, a value is grounded on a convention, a mutally accepted commonality of perspective, interest and purpose.

Interestingly, where truth, principal and right can lead us to common ground, values often lead to confrontation, or worse. Furthermore, as being built on experience, instinct, psychological need and personal expression, values can adjust and change over the course of a life, and certainly over time. The question for us as a nation, though, is do we have a center of gravity, a core national convention, that does not change? The answer, certainly for a country grounded on a principal rather than ethnic or geographic association, must be yes. The following, then, are offered as this nation’s core values:

Each human being is of worth, in and of himself or herself, without the need of validation from any state, or religion, or sect, or other person.

Each person is responsible for his or her actions, for the state of their lives, for their individual, separate tracking across time and place.

These are the values, the driving social forces, of our nation. As compatible, they are, at the same time, both distinct and interdependent. If either is taken away, the nation, America, disappears, evaporates. Taken together, though, they form our social foundation, incorporating the reality and necessity of what it is to be social: the I and we. As there can be no society without a multiplicity of Is, i.e., people, there can be no Is without a multiplicity of people - at least two.

The context of individual worth is essentially that of community; i.e., as a person is of worth with certain unalienable rights, it is on the community, the group, to protect and ensure these rights for each citizen. The context of the second is of the individual. It holds that it is on each person to live a responsible life according to his or her ability, to deserve and claim by their actions the rights and the respect they would call upon the group to ensure and protect. As the core elements of our value system, they are concrete: they cannot be divided nor be further reduced.

With this, then, we appear to have the parts and pieces and commonality of interest we need to develop a schema, a context for thinking politically. Our purpose, remember, is to help you to find a place or perspective from which you can regard and evaluate others and participate meaningfully. And, as above, we are going to use conservative, moderate and liberal, but in a way that is structurally apart from their conventional association with political parties and the complexity of their current usage. To do this, we’re going to use the three realms of our daily existence: political, cultural and economic.

The political realm has to do with rights, the relationship between citizen and state, and between and among the citizens, and as these lead to the governmental structures that provide, protect and alter them. In a democracy, its ultimate mechanism is reason. The cultural realm has to do with values; religious, tribal, community, family, others. Its mechanisms are largely associative and emotional. More broth than portions, it incorporates the future as affected and driven by the past and present. The economic realm is next. It starts with physical need and necessity and builds, in our era, to enabling personal liberty. It incorporates property, but as a mechanism rather than a principle.

And what do these realms in which we live our daily lives have to do with Independents in Election 08? Very simple. It’s a matter of identity. Remember, only one American in thirty is actually an on-the-rolls, dues-paying member of a political party. Every one else “self-identifies” as a Republican or Democrat or “other.” For the vast majority of us, then, Republican or Democrat is not a membership thing, it’s a perspective thing.

So, go back to the realms. Think about them. From how they have been described above, is there one with which you identify more than the others? Does your perspective on the election, or politics in general, seem better housed in one of the realms over the others? Thinking about it? Got one? You ready? Okay, here goes. If you picked the political realm, your perspective would be liberal, if the cultural realm, conservative, and if the economic realm, moderate.

Remember, now, while the actual realms exist in our daily lives as physical, legal, and experiential realities, we are using them as metaphors. We want to use the realms as perspectives from and through which to view and appreciate the national political process as it plays out during this election year. So, let’s explore what liberal, conservative, moderate might entail as associated metaphorically with their respective realms.  

As the word implies, the liberal seeks to liberate, to empower. Liberals are concerned first with rights (civil, voting, patient, gay, etc.) and how the political process works to advance them, along with the political process in general. Accordingly, the liberal sees the political realm as the best context and venue for addressing the nation’s issues and pursuing its opportunities. Ideologically inclined, he/she sees change as good in and of itself and has a healthy instinct for challenging social traditions and order. Conceptually-oriented, the liberal’s time-anchor is the future in which great faith is placed and nourished. And with such faith in the future, there is little reluctance to borrow against it. Typically, the liberal’s focus is more on goals and ideals and less on consequences.

Conservatives, first and foremost, resist change. As the word implies, they are inclined to conserve what exists. With an abiding faith in an existing order, the conservative puts the burden on others to demonstrate the need for change. Tradition and institutions weigh heavily with society seen as an extension of the nuclear family. Typically religious in orientation, they routinely see themselves as tasked with sharing and enforcing their values with, and on, others. Distrusting ambition and individualism, and wary of opportunity, the conservative’s time-anchor is in the past and he/she views the future with apprehension, strongly disinclining him/her to borrow against it. The conservative’s focus tends more toward consequences than goals, with ideologies viewed as counter-cultural distractions at best, and dangerous at worst.
 

The moderate is less interested in politics as a process and is apprehensive about political solutions to social problems. Though respectful of culture, they readily admit to change, but resist it for its own sake. To the moderate, rights are important as a social foundation, though subject to contemporary application and interpretation. Technology is not only welcomed, it is viewed as the driving force for change. Ideology tends to be both distrusted and ignored at the same time. They are more curious than concerned about values that differ from their own, so long as these differences do not unduly challenge the lives they are building. Of the three, they are the least emotional and their time clock is anchored primarily in a practical present. They think in terms of goals more than ideals and welcome opportunities to explore consequences.

In the course of a life, a person’s identification with a particular perspective is subject to change. The young tend to be liberal. Less burdened with the complexities of personal experience, they are attracted to the simplicity of rights and ideas. They are less invested in the cultures about them which can be seen as unnecessarily restrictive, especially in light of their more conceptual perspective on reality. The seniors amongst us tend to be conservative. Certainly today’s seniors have seen a sufficiency of change in their life journeys and that they would now welcome stability should only be expected. These and other considerations incline us to move about and among the realms as the circumstances of our lives emerge and change.

And as with individuals, so with groups. A labor union, for example, having started of necessity in the economic realm, might migrate to the political realm in seeking the right to organize, and, once established, move to the cultural realm to protect the wages, benefits and privileges it has won for its rank and file. Government agencies seem particularly inclined to migrate; i.e., from the political realm, where rights (political or economic) are defined and writ, to the cultural realm, there functioning as bureaucracies, tasked with protecting their programs and existence, increasingly resistant to change.

Business organizations, as well. While routinely starting in the economic realm with an open market outlook, once established, corporations frequently slip into the cultural realm where the perspective shifts from finding new markets to protecting existing ones. Indeed, what would be more treasured by the successful executive than an iconic brand name? Have a Coke! Even our national political parties are not immune. Having become primarily structures, they tend to resist change forced upon them by the very candidates who seek their endorsement and nomination. Having begun life in the political realm, they find themselves today full square in the cultural.

And exactly how does all this help the Independent? The idea is to determine with which of the realm-oriented perspectives are you most comfortable politically. Remember, we are trying to separate conservative, moderate and liberal from party association, as well as from the complexities associated with the use of these words by factions claiming their ownership. Our focus is on your finding and developing a perspective with and from which to participate in the electoral process. Coming to a sense of which of the realms offers you the greatest compatibility should facilitate choosing the candidate that best serves the needs of the nation as you understand and perceive them, i.e., from your perspective.

A Hinge Election

Well, it looks to be a hinge election after all. Only two things are now necessary for this to happen. First, Sen. Obama has to pick a running mate other than Hillary Clinton. Second, John McCain has to continue to distance himself from the hard core conservative elements of his party.

Incredibly, neither party ended up with a baseline player. With McCain, the Republicans will ride a maverick to November, a man distrusted and disliked by many in his party. It is Obama, though, who has really shaken things up. While the Clinton Machine was not ultimately up to the task, it was the closest thing in either party to a genuine centripetal force and Obama dismantled it. And in tracking the super delegates steady migration to Obama from early February, despite his reverses in Ohio and Pennsylvania, it appears that mourning for Machinus Clintonius will be brief.

Though a declining force since the early 1970s, the political parties, both Democratic and Republican, now seem truly to be shells of their former selves. Where are the bosses? Where are their anointed ones? Well, there aren’t any of the latter because there are none of the former. For the Democrats, the Clintons are in decline, if not gone, and their retainers with them. DNC Chair Howard Dean, House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid comprise the Democrats’ structured leadership, with Kennedy, Byrd and a handful of others at their side, and a freshman Senator with the party nomination in hand. Hardly the trappings of an Establishment.

And the Republicans? They have a radioactive incumbent, a Vice President whose casual utterances distance him further from the citizenry, certainly those in West Virginia, a congressional leadership whose only certainty is a diminution in its numbers and a virtually anonymous national chair. Oh, then there’s the cacophony of radio jocks claiming to be its soul, but whose distain for their party’s nominee approaches the vulgar.

We are on fresh ground here. It is, indeed, a pundits’ paradise. Speculation upon speculation will fill the airwaves tracking what might be the most important five months in the nation’s recent history for neither candidate is a truly national figure. McCain, as maverick, has lived in contrast to others. He is, in fact, more of an exception than a rule. And Obama? There is not a political figure in living memory, perhaps even our history, who has taken himself to such heights from such obscurity in so short a period of time. 

And, perhaps as never before, much of what each will bring to their presidency will be the product of the campaigns they run and lead, and the ground they traverse in the process. We don’t know who they are yet because they are not quite done yet, quite turned out. We are going to watch as they become who they are to be. How we react, by acclamation or silence, in awe or disappointment, will literally affect who they are to become. While each has a center of gravity and a political soul, they will be burnished and sculpted by us, by the media, and by the pressures and turns of the campaign.

Even now, for all the negativism from some Republican quarters, there is emerging a sense that McCain may, in fact, be the best of their available candidates to hold the White House. There is a practicality in this that is refreshing. It speaks of a loosening of the ideologue’s grip and an appreciation of the maxim that politics, after all, is indeed the art of the possible. And for the Democrats, its hard to reflect on Obama’s success and not sense that there was within the party a core dislike or distrust of the Clinton Machine, if not the Clintons themselves. As much as many wanted George W. Bush out of the White House, there seemed to be something inside that held them back from puting the Clintons back in it. Indeed, there is reason to argue that her popularity with blue collar Democrats in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky during the last weeks of the campaign was more a rejection of Obama than a preference for her.

Renewal, it would seem, is in genuine prospect - for Republicans and Democrats alike. We could be on the cusp of a new political time, even era. If Obama is in fact who so many hope him to be - a new political force who will return partisanship to its productive purposes - then his prospects in the campaign are strong, perhaps certain. For the nation, there can be nothing in this but gain and good. Similarly, if candidate McCain can find his voice, can show himself to be a uniter, that which Bush has so cynically and ruinously showed himself not to be, then here, too, there is naught but gain and good for the nation.

The issues, of course, remain. However, the very purpose and role of government in a democracy is to resolve issues. This nation’s first need is a better functioning democracy and the prospects of such seem suddenly brightened. It does, indeed, seem to be a hinge election, and perhaps a Perfect Election as well.

I can’t think of a better time to be an Independent.

Elector

The “I” Wants It

Pronouns. They pour forth from us in daily profusion, expediting thought and speech, directing the listener to a point or place, or just sharing our lives. But even in these, the shortest of words, there can be more than we intend. Indeed, Marshall McLuhan, 1960s sage of the coming communication revolution, assured us that the medium is the message.

And so with pronouns. Now I do not claim here the authority of a survey in what follows. I do, though, claim the authority of active and objective listening in all things Election 2008. And in this listening I have discerned over the course of the campaign a distinction between the two Democratic contenders. Where one says we, the other says I. Of late, the latter, it would certainly seem, never, ever says we. It is I, I, I, I, and this I, i.e., me, cannot ignore it or what it seems to scream at us: This is not a person inclined to share.

In leadership, focus is essential, as is confidence, dedication and purpose. But leadership, if it is to have any meaning, requires a group context. Indeed, leadership is a plural thing, there needing to be more in it than one, i.e., a leader and at least one of the “led.” Leadership by its nature and purpose is a we thing. I is a me thing, and the antithesis of leadership in a practical democracy.

Listen once and you will hear. Listen twice and you will question. Listen thrice and you will understand, you will know. Go forth, then, and listen…thrice.