Ethan Penner's Friday Five
Happy Friday to all my Friday Fivers.
In the last issue I listed five grievances I had with the Left/Democrat party in the U.S. Today, as promised, I’m listing issues I have with today’s Trump-led Republican party. I am breaking my 2+ year custom and have made it six this week. I hope you don’t feel imposed upon.
With love and an always open mind,
Ethan
1. Resolving our immigration issue must never come at the expense of our nation’s soul.
Regardless of how strict an approach one may advocate for with regards to dealing with our illegal immigrant population, no decent person can be comfortable with any use of excessive force and, especially in our multicultural society, any actions that are driven by racist overtones. I was aghast at the Biden open border policy and note that there have been far fewer deportations during the Trump presidency (1.2 million) than Obama (3 MM), or GW Bush (2 MM) and far more protests (more than 350 for Trump and none for the others), which indicates another issue. However, I have been disappointed and even mortified by reports of a lack of training and psychological screening when hiring and empowering ICE agents, race-based roundups, and the use of excessive force. How we treat this issue, which involves mostly fragile and vulnerable individuals, speaks to our nation’s level of consciousness. Greater care is required.
2. Everyone has natural blind spots – no one knows everything or can consider every perspective – which makes a collaborative decision-making process far superior to an individual’s edicts.
The U.S. political system, with the three separate branches that serve as checks and balances to ensure collaboration is designed specifically with this in mind. In my career I’ve always prized collaboration and had similar structures of checks and balances, introducing them myself even when they were not imposed upon me. By contrast, our president ruled over his companies in dictatorial fashion, with little history of shared powers or decision-making, which explains his inclinations as president to operate in that style. Regardless one’s inclinations to agree or disagree on policy, our president’s disdain for collaboration and for having to sell his ideas at the least undermines the chances of them bringing lasting change and at the worst chips away at the wonderful foundation introduced 250 years ago by our Founding Fathers that has served us so well.
3. Giving credibility to evil and hate is foolish, dangerous, and unacceptable.
Our president and other players in the Republican Party (and in the Dem Party too but that’s another story) have displayed an unwillingness to espouse clarity and condemn purveyors of hate, instead seeming to walk a line to not lose the votes of their ostensibly hateful followers. Moral clarity even, or perhaps especially when it comes at a cost, is a sign of great leadership. There really can be no room for such things as the president’s infamous 2022 dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, or for Tucker Carlson to find his way into the White House, as he did last week. And there can be no excuse for not being crystal clear in one’s condemnation for long-time KKK leader David Duke, which our president famously could not bring himself to do in a 2016 interview. Some may say that his support of Israel has been historically good and that these instances are trivial when taken in balance. I say that there can be no quarter or moral ambiguity as regards haters or hateful rhetoric.
4. Lawfare or weaponizing the government against individuals is never acceptable. This week we learned that the DOJ is investigating Fed Chair Jerome Powell, ostensibly for misstatements he made to Congress while detailing how the costs for renovating Fed headquarters ran over budget. If the president had not been in a years-long public feud with Powell, his claim to not knowing about this investigation might pass without further issue, however, in this case it smells wrong and appears vindictive, and neither decent nor presidential. In the years prior to his second term, the president was on the wrong end of lawfare in a manner perhaps never seen before in our country. When he took office he promised to take the high road for the country’s benefit and not return the favor. This instance with Powell along with a few others recently involving James Comey and Laetitia James (neither of whom are my personal favorites and both of whom had prosecuted actions against the president in his time out of office), seem to indicate that the president has not kept his word. And, in any event, Powell’s term is up in May, which is just around the corner.
5. Wielding power in private is often more effective and preferable than doing so in public.
The U.S. presidency is inarguably the world’s most powerful position. As such, it is incumbent upon the officeholder to wield that power with great care, understanding that the world is literally measuring every word uttered for clues, and the impact of every word can therefore be great. There are clearly times when using the bully pulpit is appropriate and wise, and I can point to many fine examples of the president doing so. However, I can point to many examples when he has aired his sentiments somewhat carelessly and needlessly, which has led his opponents in these instances to dig in their heels lest they look feckless and weak. A prime example has been the ongoing public bashing of our Fed Chairman, who has stubbornly resisted the president’s calls to reduce interest rates. I happen to agree with the president in the matter of rates, however, by making his opinion public rather than negotiating this privately, he literally caused Powell to stiffen his resolve so as to communicate to the marketplace that the Fed remains independent of governmental influence – a matter far more important than a percent or two on the Fed Funds rate. By being public, our president undermined his own effectiveness.
Bonus: Conflicts of interest and gaining personally from public office is not cool.
In times past, it seemed that it was understood that public officials could not trade off on their government power for personal financial gain. Now maybe there was just less transparency back then, but in recent years the brazenness of this abuse of power is breathtaking and very off-putting, to say the least. The Congressional insider trading popularized by Nancy Pelosi, which while legal is grotesque, along all the smelly stuff percolating around the Bidens, and especially Hunter were beyond distasteful. However, our president has gone from leading the cry against this sort of behavior to himself engaging in versions of it. The Trump meme coin launch just before taking office caused most of his supporters to wonder why he would do such a thing and the list of questionable actions since and maybe in the first term as well is already well known to most. This is not how great leaders behave regardless of the precedent set by others.