"Not Right, Not Fair, Not Just"

Yesterday, Congressman John Lewis said, "If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it."

That statement is not burdened with any political freight, or at least it should not be so burdened. It is simply a statement intended to cause any person of conscience to rise up--by voice or with actions--against meanness, dishonesty, injustice, inequality, and reprehensible behavior against living creatures. None of those words is hard to grasp for meaning; we all know what each one of those characteristics or actions, when seen and felt, both personally or to another living being, do to our guts and our conscience.

Now, the issue I suppose, is what is meant by "moral obligation," because not everyone will agree with my, or your, definitions of morality or obligations. But let me try to simplify the term "morality" by a general exclusion: I believe anyone who willingly and consistently practices one or more of the behaviors, or exhibits any of the attributes I mentioned in the second paragraph--meanness, dishonesty, injustice, inequality, and reprehensible behavior against living creatures--has a moral compass that swings to a very different pole than the generally acceptable Polaris of morality.

We don't need to invoke a deity or religious codes to support our feelings of discomfort; we don't need to point to western civilization vs. eastern or middle eastern or other cultural differences to know that certain behaviors, when directed against an individual, or another creature, or whole societies, are wrong.

It's as wrong to beat a dog as it is to beat a man; it is as wrong to allow the destruction of a city as it to permit the destruction of the very air we breathe; it is as wrong to deny a woman the right to vote in a foreign land because she is a woman as it is to deny an American woman the right to vote because her skin color, place of residence, or her choice of who she loves does not suit the election officials in her own country; it is as wrong to bully a disabled child on a playground as it is to bully a disabled reporter in a press conference; it is as wrong to mock the grief of a fallen hero’s family, as it is to mock an imprisoned hero for his sacrifice; it is as wrong to denigrate the lifelong service of a civil rights activist because he speaks his mind as it is to seek to elevate oneself above the law of the land. 

So many things are patently wrong—things we see every day—we should not need to debate them: genocide, torture, poverty, segregation, lack of access to education, gender inequality, crimes against women, crimes against children, public humiliation, faith-based means testing, ageism, xenophobia, homophobia, racism writ large. My word…this is just a short list. And yet, these things exist. So what do we do?

We do what Congressman Lewis asks us, implores us, importunes us, pleads with us, scolds us, to do. We look within ourselves to what the word “obligation” really means, and when we recognize that it means we are all in this together to rebuild, improve upon, or otherwise advance this generation and the next toward a better future, we act. We act in whatever way we can, with whatever tools we have at hand.

I am a writer. My tools are the keys on the keyboard and the monitor in front of me and the portal that allows me to share my thoughts. My obligation is to use words to express my moral outrage at meanness, dishonesty, injustice, inequality, and reprehensible behavior against living creatures. Photographers with the skills and tools to share with the world those conditions that need illuminating, fixing, changing, or eliminating…that’s what they do. Among my Facebook friends are photographers who have brought to the world’s attention many of the inequalities and inequities that plague the world. I can’t speak for them and say they feel obligated to do what they do, but I’m guessing they do.

But you don’t have to be a writer or a photographer to bring to the public arena your own tools of outrage. We all have voices, and whether we speak to a hundred million people through the megaphone of social media and television, or we speak as one person to one person, we can exercise our obligation to speak truth to lies. To show respect against disrespect. To call out the bully, and protect the child. Our voices are inexhaustible when applied to great causes.  

Congressman Lewis’s tools were the muscles, sinews, and bones in his body that were beaten and broken when his moral obligation took him to times and places in America where the peaceful demonstration of outrage was met with clubs, dogs, and fire hoses. His skill was his resolute courage in the face of mortal danger. How can any of us not see that courage and at least try in our own way to emulate it? And how, in god’s name, can a man with no similar frame of reference, sit in a high and golden tower and belittle such courage? That is, in itself, immoral, and, in John Lewis’s words, it “is not right, not fair, not just.”

The four years ahead will challenge us to speak out. I cannot help but do so.

To be continued.

It Might Be A Good Speech, But It Won't Be Trump's

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inauguration on the East Steps of the U.S. Capitol, 1865

A year-and-a-half ago, I responded to this question in Quora: “What if Presidential candidates had to write their own speeches.”

At the time, I never, ever, envisioned a Donald Trump candidacy, much less a Trump presidency. Ever.

In my Quora reply, on June 17th of 2015, I opened my answer with this now-ironic gem of a paragraph (I’ve italicized the part that, to my mind, should have been impossible): 

“And though the question does not set parameters on the kind of candidate seeking the Oval Office, I am going to assume that we are not going to consider the wacko candidates, the not-possible outliers, and the "I'm-in-it-just-to-be-a-spoiler" candidates."

I went on to say, 

“Those that did make it to the podium in Iowa or New Hampshire or any red or blue state venue, would be putting a poorly-loaded literary gun to their heads. The media fact checkers would have a field day with the inaccuracies and misquotes, and social media would be jammed with YouTube videos of candidates mangling metaphors, misplacing whole nation states, and enraging local politicos and special interests with mispronounced names and fumbled details.” 

Well, those chickens sure came home to roost in my inbox.

In a few short days, Mr. Trump is going to take to the podium on the West Front of the Capitol and give his first inaugural address. Do not believe a word that comes out of his mouth, even the phrase, “My fellow Americans.” He will not have crafted any aspect of his speech. He is demonstrably incapable of speaking (much less writing) complete, logical, and credible sentences that contain nouns, verbs, subjects, objects, adjectives, adverbs, articles, and conjunctions crafted in such a way as to make sense to anyone with more than a fifth-grade education (at best). He does have a lot of experience with pronouns…well, at least one; that would be the personal pronoun, though Mr. Trump knows it only as “I.”

There is simply no written record of any Trump writings of substance on the major issues of the day, academic or otherwise. His books on business were ghostwritten, the record is clear on that. He didn’t have to write the contracts that resulted in his wealth; his attorneys (and/or their associates) did that work. And he is not a reader, which puts him at a disadvantage when it comes to writing. When Megyn Kelly asked Mr. Trump to name the last book he read, he replied, “I read passages, I read areas, chapters, I don’t have the time.” It is no surprise, then, that he keeps Tweeting at or below the fifth-grade level.

Don’t take my word for it. The Washington Post, reporting on a Carnegie-Mellon study, said it this past March. The Boston Globe reported on Mr. Trump’s speech vs. grade-level comprehension last July. And, frankly, any American listening to Trump take the oath of office on January 20, should suspect the veracity of a man who relies on messages of 140 characters that include words like Nazi, idiot, and fools, and then build on those words in a press conference. That is well below the grade level of what we must expect from the nation’s chief executive.

But the other reason not to believe Donald Trump’s speech is that he will have had no substantial input to it, and if you believe he does, I cannot help you now, just as common sense could not help you when you selected Trump in the voting booth. Trump’s first inaugural address will be a speechwriter(s)’ speech in whole, from start to finish (except for those inevitable moments when he cannot help himself and flails away from the text with personal pronoun huzzas and hosannas).

[If it weren’t such a danger to the American public’s health, and a burden on the police and emergency rooms, I’d propose a drinking game during Trump’s address: take a shot each time he says one of the following: I, me, my, mine, great, fabulous, winning, we-don’t-win, believe me (that’s worth two shots because it includes ‘me’), weak, wall, fake, crooked, Putin.]

Trump's Inaugural address will be a speechwriter(s)’ speech in whole, from start to finish (except for those inevitable moments when he cannot help himself and flails away from the text with personal pronoun huzzas and hosannas).
There is nothing inherently wrong in collaborating with a speechwriter or a writing team. 

I spent most of my career writing speeches for members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and private-sector leaders. With few exceptions, these were men and women whose schedules simply would not permit them to take the hours on task required to craft a 40-minute speech of international importance. But they helped by offering input that was often insightful, reasonable, and bright. John Kennedy, a very quick study, good news analyst, glib speaker, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, still relied on a key speechwriter (Ted Sorenson), and a staff of writers, to work up drafts of his speeches. Even Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage, was, in large part, a ghost-written product.

Ronald Reagan, gifted with an actor's memory for scripts, and a genial public presentation, needed a speechwriting team to prepare his remarks. The same was true for virtually all 20th and 21st century presidents and presidential contenders. No matter how bright their brains, the work of preparing a ready-to-deliver speech required them to call up the resources of many subordinates. The exception, in the 20th century, was Woodrow Wilson, who, I believe was the last president to bang out his own speeches. The problem Trump’s speechwriter faces is that Mr. Trump’s brain is not particularly bright. It is not inquisitive. It is not facile. And it doesn’t care that it lacks those qualities.

It is not, apparently, capable of focusing on even one topic for more than a few moments. Mr. Trump does not show signs of being a critical thinker, of analyzing issues by comparison and contrasting, of admitting to not knowing all the answers when it is vital that the public not be victims of false promises based on false premises. Under those restraints, what he will deliver will be a speechwriter’s speech, of that I have no doubt, unless he goes off the rails and gives a Donald Trump speech.

I do not wish a poor outcome for Mr. Trump’s first inaugural. That would be embarrassing for our country so exposed as we are on the world stage. I know many people do not share my temporary sense of charity, but on Friday, there will be too much at stake. Here is what I hope:

When Mr. Trump steps up to the microphone next Friday, the words on the teleprompter may be soaring phrases of goodwill and thanks. They may raise the hope of a new era of peaceful coexistence in our country and among all countries. They may offer an honest handshake across congressional aisles and may seek to narrow the social chasm that divides us today. They may speak honestly and frankly to the fears underlying our national dialogue about crime, race, drugs, immigration, gender inequality, unemployment, education, and national security and a host of other anxieties that must needs be arrested, treated, and vanquished. They may acknowledge bluntly the incredible challenges facing the new administration, and assure all Americans that those challenges will be met with clear-eyed vision. And they may bind the wounds that are so deep in our country.

As a speechwriter speaking, unasked, on behalf of Mr. Trump’s writer(s), I hope, at least, that the word “may” I used in the previous paragraph is replaced by “must” in every instance. Try the paragraph for yourself and see how it feels; listen to the cadence; imagine what it would sound like if delivered that way with total assurance and credibility on the part of the speaker. Now substitute the word “will,” and you have a presidential speech.

It won’t be Trump’s speech, but, thanks to a speechwriter, it will be a good one.

Right now, that’s the best we can hope for.

(A shorter version of this blog, and other columns are also available on my Huffington Post page)

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Education: We Must Rise to the Stars Together, Ms. DeVos

Ad Astra. Scuputure by Richard Lippold, on the North side of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum

In the Sunday, January 8, Washington Post, Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, and the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 2012, wrote an op-ed in favor of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education.

As a former political appointee to the Secretary of Education (now Tennessee's senior senator), Lamar Alexander, under President George H.W. Bush, I am familiar with the department in question, and with the issues Mr. Romney raises. It should be noted that since my days as a Republican Party operative, I have broken with the party for reasons I’ve often described in previous columns. 

I am also the product of both public and private education in schools in the Midwest, the deep South, and the East. My wife and three children all experienced a similar blend of education, and my wife and I have remained active in supporting a gem of a private school in central Virginia, and we support our public county schools here in Northern Virginia even though our children are no longer parts of that system. That preamble is directed at Ms. Vos, who does not share, hands-on, such a broad base of education with tens of millions of students and parents. 

Mr. Romney opens his op-ed by saying, 

“The nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of education has reignited the age-old battle over education policy. The heat is already intense not just because it involves the future of our children but also because a lot of money is at stake. Essentially, it’s a debate between those in the education establishment who support the status quo because they have a financial stake in the system and those who seek to challenge the status quo because it’s not serving kids well.”

No, Mr. Romney, with all due respect, you have not identified the essential debate, though you have identified players whose self-serving positions obscure the fundamental failings of the American education system. You are thinking short-term and tactically, when your thinking, and the thinking of the nation’s incoming leaders, including Ms. DeVos, must be long-term and strategic. You must align your arguments with the yet-to-be-resolved results and products of local, state, and national elections not four-years hence, not eight years hence, but 20-40 years hence, if not beyond.

It is not just the “future of our children” that is at stake; it is the future of a nation built on ethics, decency, humanity, and the fundamental right to feel safe within the borders of the country, the community, and the home. Whether our children and their children will be responsible for that vision of the future is not a certainty.

Mere educational outcome metrics, no matter how they are massaged by competing factions, do not reflect the underlying failure of our society to hold parents, communities, teachers, and leaders to much higher moral and ethical standards, and to do so by creating an atmosphere in our schools—all schools—conducive to, and encouraging, educational rigor, logical thinking, and non-judgmental debate of the issues facing all of us. We must unlearn fear and distrust, and relearn reliance on others, acceptance of differences, and the immutable value of personal accountability. If Ms. DeVos speaks to those issues in her confirmation hearing, I will be open-minded and ready to listen.

When many of us older, traditionally-educated, folk--mystifyingly considered "elites" by Trump--were in school, there were debate teams, oratory classes, English lit and appreciation, composition requirements and lengthy assigned papers, etc. The excellent schools that remain—public and private—are, I’m afraid, beating against a tide of education mediocrity, a tide that lifts many students to unreasonable and unearned levels whether or not they have accomplished the basics that underpin actual understanding.

The 2016 National Center for Education Statistics Report, “The Condition of Education, taken at face value, would suggest otherwise. The report’s Letter from the Commissioner suggests rosier-than-historical trends: 

“In school year 2013–14, some 82 percent of public high school students graduated with a regular diploma. This rate is the highest it has ever been. Sixty-eight percent of 2014 high school completers enrolled in college the following fall: 44 percent went to 4-year institutions and 25 percent went to 2-year institutions. Meanwhile, the status dropout rate, or the percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds who are not enrolled in school and do not have a high school credential, declined from 10.9 percent in 2000 to 6.5 percent in 2014.”

But, in that same Letter, lies this disturbing paragraph: 

“[T]he 2015 average mathematics scores in grades 4 and 8 were 1 and 2 points lower, respectively, than the 2013 average mathematics scores. The 2015 average reading score for 4th-graders was not significantly different from the score in 2013, and the 2015 score for 8th-graders was 2 points lower than the score in 2013. At grade 12, the average mathematics score was lower in 2015 than in 2013, and the average reading score did not significantly differ between the two years. Of particular note is that in both mathematics and reading, the lowest performing 12th-grade students— those performing at the 10th and 25th percentiles—had lower scores in 2015 than in 2013."

In short, we have not improved the outcomes of our youngest, or our most educationally-at-risk older students, and we have not really moved the needle toward excellence for the rest.  

We Americans can debate for hours the relative merits or shibboleths of teachers’ unions, home-schooling, charter schools, vouchers, racial red-lining of inner city schools, the public’s willingness to fund school bonds, etc., but if there is no fire in the belly of a community to make the hard choices necessary to address the underlying deficit of core knowledge training—which I define as the development of logical thinking coupled with open-minded analysis followed by non-judgmental critical debate—we are not going to advance this nation toward a favorable goal.

Communities and families must face those truths, and we simply cannot afford to let every upwelling spew of popular opinion, or false equivalency trends set by political expediency, give communities the misguided impression that their kids are doing well. They are not doing well in many instances, and when our education system fails our children, our children, as adults, will repeat and compound the failures.

Writing this week for the Salt Lake Tribune, Garrison Keillor, in his column titled “Done. Over. He’s Here. Goodbye,” closes with this: 

“Back to real life. I went up to my hometown the other day and ran into my gym teacher, Stan Nelson, looking good at 96. He commanded a landing craft at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and never said a word about it back then, just made us do chin-ups whether we wanted to or not. I saw my biology teacher Lyle Bradley, a Marine pilot in the Korean War, still going birdwatching in his 90s. I was not a good student then, but I am studying both of them now. They have seen it all and are still optimistic. The past year of politics has taught us absolutely nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The future is scary. Let the uneducated have their day. I am now going to pay more attention to teachers.”

Learning is hard. We must heft our own shovels to clear away the paths to our individual success stories.

There is a beautiful, 100’ tall, gold-colored stainless steel spire on the Mall side of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The spire pierces a constellation of stars. The title of the sculpture by Richard Lippold is Ad Astra, meaning, "To the Stars." While this title is most apt for the sculpture, and the sculpture itself is inspiring, I prefer the longer Latin phrase, Per aspera ad astra, or, "Through hardships to the stars," because no journey of such significance can be begun without great effort supported by education at every level.

I do not begrudge those who voted for Donald Trump. But I do begrudge their parents, teachers, and social and media and political role models who encouraged them to vote for reasons unrelated to Trump’s qualifications for office. Such encouragement comes from ignorance—the willful kind or the kind that comes from never having learned—and it is unacceptable. It is an admission that we are still not ready to take on the hard work of saving our democracy if we are not willing to question those who promised a journey to the stars with no plan to teach us how to get there. 

But there is hope. I am an optimist at heart. I was born the year William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize In Literature—and a year before he gave one of the most remarkable acceptance speeches in the history of the award (though Steinbeck’s, in 1962, has echoes of Faulkner’s in it). Let me share with you what I’ve long believe to be one of the most salient observations about mankind’s future as Faulkner saw it. He said, 

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Let's get on with it. Ad Astra!