Every parent sooner or later must teach their children you can’t win them all. As a parent you endure the child’s tears and encourage a different approach and wait for the insight to take hold. We all have loses that shape us as we grow. Perhaps we might take that child out for ice cream to console, but we can’t spare the pain and frustration. Meanwhile that child either learns that there might be a better way to deal with the problem, or slips into whiney despondency until such time as that whine doesn’t pay off. Either way life is what it is and losses are there like a cone zone in traffic for all of us, from pauper to billionaire. Yes loss has been there one way or another for every president of the United States including the one we currently have, except his whiney despondency stage has become embedded in national policy as of late.

Don’t tell this writer he just watches the wrong news and that my faith in the American election process in simple ignorance due to lamestream media. My entire career was shaped around losses and gains in the political process so I know the territory from both the dark and light sides. Last nights speech from the President was an attack on one of the crown jewels of American history: the elections. What this writer sees is a man whose personality structure is so fragile he cannot lose and still be himself. His need to be a winner overrides all judgement making him unsuited for leadership which requires, above all, the capacity to see beyond personal needs. The billions of dollars he has made for himself and his family in this last year will never touch that abyss called fear of failure. He is terrified.

Modest Proposal for Good

Suffice to say we are in danger as a Republic not because our election system is corrupt, but because it is in danger of being corrupted. The Good Decision Project is about good decisions and the election is the public’s process for deciding. Our president is just that, our president, and out of reach in many ways for resistance. But we the people can still protect the public mechanism for deciding. For the conservative, you are not asked to become a liberal with your political action, but rather set aside differences with the liberals sufficiently to vote for America. For the liberals you may feel like you are right and moral about just about everything, but being right is not as important as forming a coalition with more people and views to protect the future of our country. Crossing aisles is not betrayal but democracy. Pitch a tent with wide doors and vote for healthy leadership. That would be good.

“There’s no way to truly know another person without first coming to know yourself.”

-JAUME PLENSA. (Art by Jaume Plensa)