Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
They don’t make many romantic comedies anymore, even as our lives testify to the centrality of love, to the need to find someone who sees the best in us. Do film-makers just find this too sentimental for our times?
The danger is that, over time, deviant behavior by a president becomes accepted as normal - and perhaps for future presidents as well. While President Trump’s supporters hardly seem concerned, how they would feel about such behavior by a president who is a Democrat?
Many Americans believe we do too much for other countries. They think it is time to pay attention to our own interests, misunderstanding that this is exactly what George Marshall did when he sought to avoid another world war and build a peaceful, integrated Europe through American multilateralism.
Storytelling serves us well, except when it doesn't. The capacity to use stories is an important human trait, but stories in the wrong hands or used without awareness of their limits are dangerous.
Perhaps a way forward in our ideologically-frozen society is to find something more important than partisanship. Two candidates: finding jobs for those who will lose them to technology and restoring America's infrastructure to world-class standards.
President Trump had the right to fire Sally Yates. She was a political appointee, serving at his pleasure. Yet when he told her she betrayed her agency, he was wrong. She used her best professional judgment about the law and her reading of the Constitution. Her action was honorable.
Effective government depends on truth, without which we get shoddy thinking and disastrous action. Those who live in democracies have a right to guide their future, but only if they think well.
The state of the "free press" is not the greatest cause for concern. Our ability to think about what it offers, without emotional and logical blinders, is what should worry us more.
The fight for gender equality for women must go on, but we have to look at what we can do for the development of boys and the success of men. America needs all its citizens. When we fail for males, as when we fail for females, we also fail all those whose lives they touch.
Going with our "gut" has served us in the past (though we tend to forget when it has not). But when we don't do our homework, intuition can fail. In our personal lives, the damage might be limited. For leaders, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Jobs matter, but so does meaningful work. As technology and globalization advance, we will be challenged to create both.
Perfect institutions cannot be expected from inherently imperfect people. But our major, national institutions can be better. Strengthening them must begin with action to restore the primacy of moral values and ethical behavior in institutional life.
Delegitimizing American institutions appears to be a conscious strategy of the Trump campaign.
The theatrical film, Hell or High Water, by design or coincidence, offers a useful vehicle for an important national concern. What do we do when the law and justice conflict?
Those tempted to send nasty tweets or hurl hate at others, should think not just about how good it feels but about what good it does. Tearing us apart to save us is irresponsible. Freedom demands more.
Questions about how candidates understand the Constitution are almost never asked. No one gets to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs without understanding the oath of office and the history of subordinating military to civilian authority, yet one can become Commander in Chief without even reading the Constitution.
Politicization hardens the societal arteries. Politics has its place, but when it warps our thinking and institutions, it risks the healthy society which is its sole purpose.
It is easy to tear down international unions, especially when you take no responsibility for articulating how else to achieve the same ends they are designed to address. Going it alone has led to two world wars. We should learn from that experience.
In our current culture, with its emphasis on "me," the film Me Before You offers homage to the transforming power of focusing outside ourselves.
Falling in love is the easy part. But staying in love - protecting and building a marriage - is harder.
