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).
The survival of our nation depends on political leaders with the moral courage to do the popular if politically difficult thing. Until voters demand and reward that behavior, we will continue to get political cowardice.
During Hurricane Harvey, the federal government stood by our side. That's worth remembering the next time a politician, pundit, blogger, or even our neighbor invites us to act as if the "feds" are a nuisance at best and the enemy at worst.
In regard to the health care debate, we seem to be in a zero-sum game. Anyone who benefits from a change would do so at the expense of someone else, for whom a musical chair is pulled away. Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions, framing the problem in the wrong way.
Those who want to extend life indefinitely seem to lack the understanding of how precious life is precisely because it is short. They would live in just one world, as if the earth and the sun could be as majestically glorious without each other.
Feeling shame results from failing to live up to one's own standards and/or those of society. Shamelessness is thus the result of a moral deficit and/or social indifference. Shame must be restored as a useful social tool against those who weaken the community.
We don't all get to realize our dreams, but with passion, we can be lifelong dreamers. Not every actor in the Stardust Diner will make it big, but they all have something big inside them.
Impeachment may be exciting, and for some emotionally gratifying. But we should harbor no illusions. It would be the biggest - and longest - of national distractions from the work the government needs to do.
When disrespect flourishes on the national stage it trickles down into daily life. Our leaders in politics, the media, business, associations, and religion should be exemplars of the behavior we need to foster in civic life. Disrespect teaches, and its lessons are hard to unlearn. Respect is the only antidote.
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.
