Spencer Critchley

Leadership & Management

THIS is what it looks like when Democrats stand for something

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Last time, I cited a textbook example of how Democrats lose elections by campaigning as bureaucrats instead of leaders.

This time, I’m happy to point to a textbook example of the opposite: Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow’s powerful denunciation of a false and hateful attack on her by a GOP colleague.

You may very well have seen it, since it’s gone viral. If you haven’t, I hope you’ll watch it now. It’s fantastic.

Why? Because McMorrow shows how you answer the all-too-pressing question of what Democrats stand for: You stand for it.

This wasn’t “messaging.” It was presence.

Too many educated but alienated Democrats, from left to center, struggle to conjure this simple but elusive phenomenon.

It isn’t McMorrow’s policies that are so persuasive here, the packets of information being transmitted from her brain to our brains. It’s her obvious, full-body, bone-deep commitment to the values behind those policies.

I’ll bet there are plenty of voters who disagree with some of her policies who would still vote for her. Most voters don’t actually care about much about policies, or even understand them very well. They care about what McMorrow showed them.

I sure hope the many Democratic politicians studying her video right now can see what that is.

A Good Man

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Joe Biden smiling broadly and warmly while greeting people
Joe Biden photo by Spencer Critchley

With his experience, knowledge, and skills, Joe Biden will be one of the most qualified presidents in history. He will also be one of the best-liked by virtually everyone who has encountered him.

He is a thoroughly good man.

And by itself that will make a transformational difference. Leadership isn’t about what you impose on people, it’s about what you summon from them.

The Psychology of Sedition

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How do we make sense of the descent of Trump supporters, including people we know, into outright sedition? People who grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance are now actively betraying “the flag of the United States of America and the republic for which it stands” by supporting an attempted overthrow of democracy.

Photo of Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo of Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt via Wikimedia Commons

In my book, I describe the two very different visions of what our republic is, and how people can sincerely believe themselves to be patriots of two very different nations, both called the United States.

But I also describe how unscrupulous leaders can exploit this sincere, horizontal division to elicit something underneath it: the worst instincts in human nature.

That’s what we’re seeing now. At this point, to believe Trump’s outrageous lies is to want to believe them. Even allowing for the right wing media bubble, the malign effects of social media algorithms, foreign disinformation campaigns, or the sorry state of civics education, the self-contradictory conspiracy theories we’re hearing don’t survive a moment’s reflection — whether that reflection is logical or moral. You don’t need to be brilliant or even particularly well-informed to see that what Trump is doing is just wrong.

But with Trump, persuasion has long since stopped mattering.

The point is not persuasion, but permission.

[Read more…] about The Psychology of Sedition

What’s Seen and What’s Summoned

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Joe Biden
Photo by Spencer Critchley

Many people can’t understand why Joe Biden talks so optimistically about the American people, like he did again today. After all, nearly half of Americans have stuck with Trump, even after four years of corruption, cruelty, and incompetence.

I think it’s because Biden knows that what matters isn’t just what a leader sees in people, but what he summons from them.

Trump summoned the worst in us, and we saw a lot of it. Biden is determined to summon the best.

And it will probably work — not perfectly, but well enough.

That’s because the same people who do terrible things can also do great things. Germans built both the Third Reich and one of the most enlightened democracies in the world. Our history includes both slave-owners and the Greatest Generation.

In history to come, our generation will be seen as far from the greatest. But by counting on us to be good, Biden can help us be better.

The Death of Ginsburg and the Death of Democracy

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The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is symbolic of the slow death of democracy. She represented a model of public service set by the Founders, who in turn were inspired by the ancient Greeks and Romans and their concept of civic virtue.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg portrait
Ruth Bader Ginsburg portait via Wikimedia Commons

The word “virtue” sounds quaint now — and this indicates what’s gone wrong. But Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and their peers believed strongly that if a democratic republic were to survive, the people must choose virtuous leaders, in the Greek sense: leaders who were educated, excellent, and ethical. Washington was the contemporary model. He was called the American Cincinnatus, after the great Roman general and public servant.

In the time since, we’ve had other presidents who rose to that standard, like Lincoln or FDR, and most at least believed in it. But for a variety of reasons — including the poisonous legacy of slavery (tainting even Washington), the rejection by Andrew Jackson of the Founders’ republicanism in favor of “give the people what they want” populism, the rapacity of the westward expansion and the industrial Gilded Age, the ever-increasing influence of media and entertainment, and the postwar boom in prosperity and consumerism — the Founder’s classical ideal of civic virtue has been replaced by our modern religion of the self.

In place of a President Washington, we have a President Trump. We’ve gone from an American Cincinnatus to an American Nero.

And from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to whoever looks likely to help Trump’s re-election — in other words, to gratify his personal needs of the moment. That’s the standard that now, under Trump, rules over all others.