Arlen Specter - Why I Support the Economic Stimulus - washingtonpost.com

I am supporting the economic stimulus package for one simple reason: The country cannot afford not to take action.

This is precisely the sort of “planning” that results in a surgeon cutting off the wrong limb to stem the spread of a cancer. Actually, Congress may be planning to cut off the three healthy limbs by mistakenly identifying the diseased one as the sole healthy one.

“In politics,” John Kennedy used to say, “nobody gets everything, nobody gets nothing and everybody gets something.” My colleagues and I have tried to balance the concerns of both left and right with the need to act quickly for the sake of our country. The moderates’ compromise, which faces a cloture vote today, is the only bill with a reasonable chance of passage in the Senate.

Why don’t they just cut off our heads, too. These “moderates” are being directed by an administration that has, from a communications perspective, bathed in Jimmy Carter eu-du-toilett. Can’t you just feel the “malaise” dripping from Obama’s every word?

The only new spending I can legitimately support is for our national infrastructure, for the sole reason that we paid to rebuild infrastructures of too many nations that now use their American-made modernizations to compete with us. So, give me spending for steel mills and power grids and dams and roads and bridges. Give me tax breaks for corporate research and development conducted to benefit the public.

Don’t anesthetize me to death with bloated programs, or force me to participate in some odd orgy of pork.

This is a freaking charade being led by a new King with no clothes who has gotten his court to get naked, too. If the thought of seeing all those folks naked scares you (ewww!), remember that what they are proposing is far uglier.

Here’s my short list of dangerous fallacies:

• All men are not only born equal, but are always equal. If they are not, then something, someone, or some group in the “system” is to blame, and government must fix it.
• Multiculturalism is a de facto good.
• Diversity is a de facto good.
• Basic human nature is benign.
• Innovation is de facto good.
• Individual or group “rights” must always trump broader cultural or societal responsibilities.
• “Equal access” to anything or everything is a de facto good.
• Egalitarianism must always trump tradition.

And so, considering that most of the above absurd propositions are things that contemporary leaders believe and act upon in ways that surely would astound their predecessors of generations past,  government has striven mightily in its hunt to assassinate all anti-egalitarian snipes.

Which brings us to today, to an expository article in the International Herald Tribune about how the world has been brought to the precipice of perhaps its greatest financial collapse. In reading it, I was looking for something concrete… much in the way I suppose a radiologist might look for a tumor in an MRI… that would reveal the root cause of our problem.

And here it is:

White House philosophy stoked mortgage bonfire - International Herald Tribune

“We absolutely wanted to increase homeownership,” Tony Fratto, his [Bush's] deputy press secretary, recalled him saying. “But we never wanted lenders to make bad decisions.”

Now, I have to admit here that I already knew The Bush Administration truly believed that all people of all races, ethnicities, creeds, intelligence quotients, and life experiences were equally capable of managing the details that go along with home ownership in our society. But I had not yet written about it here and it was time that I pointed it out.

In one short paragraph, this article exposes two assumptions, commonly held by many of our leaders, that our children and probably our children’s children will be paying for throughout their lifetimes.  The legacy it now appears we will leave is simply unconscionable, especially to those of us with traditionalist mindsets attached to stewardship obligations.

It is time for government, for leaders and especially for the snooty, elitist bastards on the left, to stop every social engineering effort they have in mind that is based on false premises regarding human nature. From now on, before those we choose to represent us do anything… and I mean ANYTHING… they must ask themselves the following: Does the world really work this way? Is there any instance in history, any set of acts not committed by Saints or our Savior, that supports what we believe will happen if we do this?

If the answer to these questions is not an overwhelming and utterly unqualified “yes,” then they must not do it. Period.

From what I’ve seen, I don’t believe that we have any leaders capable of the discernment necessary to keep us from the abyss.

It is a travesty that what we have this lose-lose situation being played out today thanks to eight years of conservatism being misrepresented by the GOP.  It’s sad for me to realize there is no prominent, decent, honorable, traditional right-conservatism in any public spotlight.  All the public knows as conservatism these days are ideologies espoused by neoconservatives and “compassionate” conservatives, people who aren’t conservative at all.  Conservatism is not ideological.  It is a starting point for thought that requires a mindful reverence for the past as an informative guide, a commitment to stewardship for future generations and that seeks the wisdom to apply both for the betterment of the nation.

There was no legitimate choice for me today.  Sure, the Constitution Party is just about right for me, but I had a point to make.  Here it is:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t listen to the liberals - Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows | Mail Online

George Orwell once wrote that politics was closely related to social identity. ‘One sometimes gets the impression,’ he wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, ‘that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England’.

It all started when I forwarded to a cousin a bit of minutiae regarding statistical differences between behaviors of peoples of various cultures. The data fascinated me because I have done many analyses of precinct-level voting behavior. Past behavior is a great tool for predicting future behavior. Generally, people within a precinct share a greater level of “sameness” than they do with those in neighboring precincts; people self-differentiate themselves from others when they select a place to call home. This information is pretty much confirmed by various sections of the General Social Survey (GSS) to which the Mail’s article pointed as a source.

My cousin, a dyed in the wool egalitarian leftist, apparently was upset that I had the audacity to even read statistics that explore differences between peoples’ cultural traditions and how they might affect behavior. To him, it appears I have committed some some sort of thought-crime in pondering that people from various cultures might be different in any way at all. To him, all people of every culture and every nation are not only “equal,” they’re “identical;” it is an article that underlies his humanist faith. If people actually are different, and that difference is in any way based upon folkways, traditions, or anything handed down through the generations, then his whole set of assumptions about the way the world works might crumble.

So he went on the attack:

“As I understand, your feeling of supremacy over other races is based upon a fortuitous event in history where one of your many ancestors happened to be at a particular place on this planet at a particular time, e.g. about 1776. And to accept this definition of superiority we must ignore the fact that this particular group of people committed genocide on one race and enslaved another and were in a position of great opportunity which allowed them to become a part of the world’s dominate (sic) culture as a result.”

The tone of his response took me off guard. Usually, we have some interesting intellectual give and take in our exchanges. I probably should have thought twice before sending the message. The first thing that jumped out at me was that while I had sent him information about cultural differences, he immediately equated it with racial differences. It is also very telling that he conflated my pointing out innate and learned differences between cultures with a “feeling of supremacy” that I supposedly was claiming. In my experience, that’s what immediately happens in the mind of the leftist when confronted with such information. So, in his mind a Conservative cannot make dispassionate analyses of statistical data; there must be some bad intent behind our considerations.

In thinking this through, it dawned on me that my dear cousin, in ranting about my purported feelings of supremacy over others, revealed something about leftists that I had not noticed before.

So, I replied:

“When a traditionalist points out that there exists a natural “otherness” or differentiation between peoples, nations or cultures, he is immediately cast by today’s liberals as a supremacist, which is just a slightly nicer term for “racist.” The epithet used is usually the latter. This is often followed by the expression of some variant of the Our Ancestors Were Evil™ meme by which we are expected to judge our forebears through our far superior, enlightened, progressive and contemporary lenses. We must not ever attempt to see the past through their eyes as they lived; we are so much better than they were! I wonder why the left isn’t amazed that our ancestors didn’t commit ritual mass-suicide to cleanse themselves of the guilt with which they must have lived! Talk about feelings of supremacy! If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this argument, I’d be retired.

“Or am I mistaken in reading into your arguments that you consider yourself superior to our ancestors? Why? So you can stand in judgment of them? As I see it, when a nation turns the corner away from venerating its forebears and down the path toward denigrating them, there isn’t much time or use left for it. Yet this is what our public schools and universities teach these days: America is the spawn of evil people who owned slaves, killed Indians and subjugated women. Folks like me – who merely desire to be stewards for traditions, the very fiber of the threads that connect us to the past, inform us of who we are and provide bearings for the future – are prohibited by the social Marxism that is political correctness from pointing out any such liberal absurdity; we’re evil too.”

It bothers me a lot that my relative is so attached to the purist egalitarian belief that all people are always equal all of the time that he would throw his (and my) heritage under the bus for the sake of holding on to his politically correct premises. It has been more than a week, and he has not replied to my points. I doubt that he will. And that’s a shame. Unless leftists are willing to explore the traditionalist conservative way of thinking, and vice versa, then we are not going to have “progress” that is useful to all peoples, which is supposedly what leftist progressivism is all about. I guess to the leftists, the “all people” they consider as always being equal somehow does not include those who are dead and those who are conservative.

Pardon me for pointing this out: It might actually make them happy to try exploring what makes us traditionalists tick.

With that in mind, today I’m going to introduce you to Twitter. It is definitely within the realms of both of the aforementioned new-fangled terms. And it is something that I instinctively know will be some sort of “next big thing.” That’s the oddest truth about Twitter: nearly everyone who uses it for a while finds it indispensable but we can’t describe it well. Most users believe that Twitter (or something very much like it) will become as much a part of our daily lives as email, but we still can’t tell you precisely why that will be the case.

Even explaining what Twitter is presents challenges. OK, it’s a means of “microblogging,” as if that helps. Rather than bore you with technical jargon, I’ll point you to this because it’s a good start:

Click here to view the embedded video.

But that’s all the video is: A good start. By the way, the video is by the good folks at Common Craft. I’ll have to do a post about that great company later; they’re really embedded in the Web 2.0 wave.

Yes, I “tweet” (jargon for Twitter posts) about the mundane daily life things, but I also post questions I have, random thoughts, inspirations, complaints and just about any other stream of thought stuff that used to just blink into my consciousness and then disappear, unnoted and unshared, forever.

And then, there are the stories about companies already having successes from following the grand thread of all life that is Twitter’s public timeline page. Dell Computer has apparently sold half a million dollars worth of computer equipment through Twitter in the past few months. The list of companies using it for business is growing.

We won’t talk about the recent down time. We have to be used to things that are free having growing pains as their popularity nears a tipping point. That’s what I chalk the recent outages up to. And you should too.

I predict that most of the people I work with will be communicating with me on Twitter real soon. Print this page and save it. You might have heard it hear first; not that I’m the first to say it, but based on the profile of my typical reader, it’s probably news.

Whither Twitter? Right here. Right now.

These days, there is a substantial segment of America, perhaps a significant majority, for whom such imagery will be a cause for offense. This is now an official “crisis” and the mode of communication coming from the company should reflect that. Heck, Americans make up 40% of the market for their product. The folks at Absolut needed to take some serious steps to alleviate this situation. First, they needed to apologize profusely. Then they needed to find ways to make amends. There simply is no way to make this pig in a poke any more palatable. In this instance, with so much at stake, the only defense is surrender.

Instead, Absolut’s in-house shill machine went on the defensive.

In an ABSOLUT World according to Mexico

Posted Friday, April 04, 2008, 5:26:34 PM

The In An Absolut World advertising campaign invites consumers to visualize a world that appeals to them — one they feel may be more idealized or one that may be a bit “fantastic.” As such, the campaign will elicit varying opinions and points of view. We have a variety of executions running in countries worldwide, and each is germane to that country and that population.

This particular ad, which ran in Mexico, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal.

As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market. Obviously, this ad was run in Mexico, and not the US — that ad might have been very different.

By Paula Eriksson, VP Corporate Communications, V&S Absolut Spirits

I have to make a stark example of this to show how foolish the strategy is. Here’s a different ad, and a rewritten response:

In an ABSOLUT World according to Germany

Posted Friday, April 04, 2008, 5:26:34 PM

The In An Absolut World advertising campaign invites consumers to visualize a world that appeals to them — one they feel may be more idealized or one that may be a bit “fantastic.” As such, the campaign will elicit varying opinions and points of view. We have a variety of executions running in countries worldwide, and each is germane to that country and that population.

This particular ad, which ran in Germany, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a German sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate for the master race, nor does it lend support to any anti-allied sentiment, nor does it reflect Fascist ideals. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the more nostalgic, elder population of Germany may feel was more ideal.

As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market. Obviously, this ad was run in Germany, and not any nation decimated by Nazi aggression – those ads might have been very different.

By Paula Eriksson, soon to be former VP Corporate Communications, V&S Absolut Spirits

Indeed. This is a market-share killing event, and they’re treating it like somebody made a typo or grammatical error. Such are the sensibilities of ostriches.

This is the only reasonable response:

Man, did we screw up!

Posted Friday, April 04, 2008, 5:26:34 PM

Sometimes, there just isn’t any excuse for mistakes we make. There is only an opportunity to apologize sincerely.

The In An Absolut World advertising campaign invites consumers to visualize a world that appeals to them — one they feel may be more idealized or one that may be a bit “fantastic.” We obviously didn’t properly vet or think through our most recent marketing effort in Mexico, which depicted the ideal Mexican nation as being one with borders that encompassed several U.S. states.

Our allowing that advertisment to be distributed was, plainly, wrong. It will not happen again.

In light of this serious misstep, we have suspended the campaign, terminated contracts with the agency that produced it and are putting the account out to bid. First preference will be given to agencies based in the United States. Further, we are establishing scholarships at several U.S. universities for youth interested in majoring in U.S. History.

Again, we sincerely apologize for this terrible mistake and ask for forgiveness. We did not intend to offend the citizens of the nation that makes up our most important market, The United States of America.

By Paula Eriksson, VP Corporate Communications, V&S Absolut Spirits

I cannot recall the last time… if there ever was a last time… I gained so much insight or experienced such an incredible multiplicity of revelation from witnessing a single presentation. I may have attended a sermon or two that came close to having its impact, but I doubt that any experience has ever educed from deep within so much insight about the human condition.

The following video will take up about 18 minutes of your life. It may change the way you look at the rest of it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve heard and read much about left-brain vs. right-brain thinking processes and how they may relate to individual learning processes. Jill’s talk made me realize far more clearly how human communication is a primarily left-brain affair. It now appears to me that, in fact, the human condition results from how much clarity people might find behind the veil brought down upon reality by left-brain noise. Jill makes it clear, at least for me, that people must get to know their right-brains a whole lot better; perhaps I can help some people do this.

As a communications professional, I’ve long been aware that in certain magic moments we are somehow…almost accidentally…able to find the right combinations of words that inspire the right mental images in our audiences that allow us to reach into and connect with their right-brains, cutting through the noise made by their linear, left-brain thoughts, to give our listeners and readers the gift of in-the-moment, timeless experiences. Some call these moments magic. Some call them spiritual. I call them vital to human communication, progress and understanding.

Such moments are too rare.

Last fall, I was awoken at 3 a.m. by an idea that demanded my immediate attention. Rather than just jot down a couple of notes, as I sometimes would, I ended up getting up and sketching out some broader rough ideas. Three pages of notes I composed that night have occupied much of my thinking and time ever since.

Some weeks before my inspired insomnia, I had challenged myself to come up with a new way of visually organizing thought processes. I had learned my share of varous communications and presentation systems, gimmicks and trade secrets. While I recognized that all of them have value, I thought that the information age required something new. In challenging myself, I had tasked my subconscious mind with finding that something.

For quite some time, I’d been tinkering around with some of the concepts first expressed by Tony Buzan through his mind mapping concepts. I had downloaded and played with some popular mind mapping software and found it to be useful. But for me there were problems with using it as an effective communications tool.

The biggest benefit in it, I thought, was that mind mapping helps people overcome limitations inherent in rigidly organizing thoughts in a left-brained linear, outlined or bullet-pointed manner. The biggest downside of it, I thought, was that mind maps went too far in the other direction. Most of the mind map examples I had found on the Internet were too freeform and too jumbled precisely because they lacked consistent structure. If I revisit some of my older mind mapping attempts, I cannot fully understand points I was trying to make that were absolutely clear to me at the time.

Experience taught me that that standard mind maps might be useful to individuals or groups as brainstorming tools, but they’re not all that useful for communicating ideas and concepts to wide audiences. I concluded that basing communications processes too much on the way our right-brains work goes too far.

There had to be a happy medium, I thought.

This happy medium is what got me out of bed that night. And so, my idea came out clearly… well, at least clearly to me so far: I understand it well, but expressing what it is, what it does and how it works with enough simplicity to be both practical and broadly useful is proving to be a challenge. In my minds eye I envision a simple, visual communications planning system that applies the freeform freedom of mind maps to a set of pre-defined and consistent but flexible structures.

The big obstacle for me is to come up with the best way for people to use my system. I’m designing a single-page visual tool for turning a brainstorm into a clear stream of ideas with a purpose. Maybe I needed a better understanding of the left-right brain relationship. Maybe it was this need that made me stumble upon Jill’s presentation. I sense that her video has helped me a lot, but I haven’t yet figured out what it means to the application of my new ideas.

I’m sure that it will all come into alignment…probably at 3:00 a.m…sometime soon.

For now, I am just stunned.

Some appear to want everyone to believe that America is just an idea because they seek to promote the notion that it is somehow our responsibility to transmit our brand of democracy to all the world. America the Idea is their template for all peoples. And all peoples are going to get fitted for it whether they like it or not.

Others make less of our heritage because they judge our ancestors through their own contemporary lenses, passing verdicts in absentia, making the best of our best into evil men for owning slaves or having wives at home or not being as tolerant as they should have been. And they’re willing to be outright fascist about making sure that history is revised to their liking.

Still others believe that since others from different folkways and cultures have come here and each group has provided a bit of itself to the current fabric, then we should stop reminding ourselves of what it was that made this place one of the greatest wonders of the world. We should stop talking about our origins because some might be offended or make themselves feel less attached to our culture because they come from more recently arrived stock. If there really are that many Americans today who cannot handle not sharing heritage by descent, then we probably have been too lenient regarding the sorts we have allowed to come.

In previous generations - not long ago at all, really - nobody ever considered this nation to be merely an idea.

America the Idea?

Preposterous!

America is a heritage based on an actual people. The founding fathers had a particular posterity in mind when they penned the preamble to the Constitution. Until recently, the idea nation - America the Proposition - was never an issue. It was so much not an issue that nobody ever felt it necessary to come up with an explanation as to why we are a result of heritage that cannot be adequately transmitted solely by words expressing ideas.

I will try. Let’s look upon America like a forest. Whenever we take a walk through it, we need to remain mindful that there is no way to see it all in one journey. Each path is but one of many. Each is informative.

It seems to me that many these days spend their lives talking mostly about the importance of the trees, or the branches, or the leaves on the trees. I’m more interested in the vitality of the soil. Yes, there are many good points to be made about the things we all can see before us that make our American woods. But it seems almost as if a lot of folks don’t want anyone to ever acknowledge, even a little, that everything we see in our forest would not exist were it not for the specific qualities of the soil in which it is rooted.

It is beyond me how anyone can objectively claim that this nation would be anything remotely resembling what it is without the essential nutrients fed into its soil by the lives and deeds of those who envisioned its original essences; I write of the early colonists, particularly those who came with the desire to practice Puritanism because it was their dreams and deeds that made the soil and soul of the American forest rich.

Without all of the things that led to Puritans leaving England, there is no Winthrop. Without a Winthrop, there is no idea of a “City on a Hill” and, later, there is no faith in “Divine Providence.” There is no American understanding of the tension between “natural liberty” and “civil liberty;” nobody would preach or understand omnes sumus licentia deteriores (we are worse for a license). It’s clear the French could have used that understanding.

Without the expansion of Puritan concepts the Calvinism that informed The Great Awakening, there is no American Jeremiad. There is no logical path from the British patriotism that swept colonies after the French and Indian war to a Declaration of Independence a mere 13 years later. The colonies do not reject George III; there is no impetus for it. Without the expansion of Calvinism, this is a land in 1776 with a lot more Quakers, Congregationalists and Anglicans. It is common to be a Tory and difficult to be anything else. There is no reason to declare independence.

Without the Puritan Calvinism that steeped the early New England generations, there is no source for an American version of Great Awakening during the 1730s and 1740s. Our founding fathers and founding generation are not born into a time of revival; they are not raised at a time of expansion and vitality of new and particularly American denominations. There are no American Presbyterians, no Baptists, no Methodists. There is no revolution in the colonies to be derided in the House of Commons and by the King as a “Presbyterian Rebellion.”

Without an America with two thirds of its colonial citizens of 1776 being members of new Calvinist denominations, not only is there no revolution, there is no American Exceptionalism, and later there is no Manifest Destiny. There is no lure for others to come and share in a new creation. There is nothing of particular note that would attract other non-British Westerners.

If American Calvinism is never conceived and transmitted to the middle colonies by Presbyterians, Congregationalists and others, there are no mid-Atlantic states. Without this species of faith being shepherded to the southern colonies by Baptists and others, there is no fertile soil for implanting ideas that challenge long-accepted impositions of the upper classes. Questioning authority does not become in vogue to lubricate revolution there.

Later, there are no allied churches anywhere for the Federalists to enlist in the cause of ratifying the Constitution. There is no Constitution, either.

Without the publication of Puritan and Calvinist sermons that served American Jeremiad, there simply isn’t much for the literate American colonist to read. Of course, there is the Bible. But all of Western Civilization has that.

This is our soil.

When we look at the trees that thrive in our soil, we see early rumblings about emancipation for slaves. We see the themes of the civil rights movement within the language of the Constitutional Convention, and later we see those themes become cacophony during the Second Great Awakening. Eventually these sounds became the dirge of Gettysburg. And yet the forest continued to thrive. It takes very good and special soil for the sort of stuff we have to grow after so much blood has been let into it.

When we look at the trees, we see many branches that support variety in cuisine, in music, and in the arts. When we look at the trees, we can see that much that appears concrete is really only ephemeral, like leaves, subject to the season and subject to the fad. It gives us hope that things like Britney, or Paris, or Brangelina will go the way of the Gong Show. When the soil is so rich, most of what is in the bud and the bloom is ripe and attractive for a time but eventually falls and is common. Qualities within the soil determine what seeds might take root and add to the woodland, not the other way around.

It takes special soil to grow such a mighty forest. There is no point in expecting even the sturdiest oak to thrive in soil stripped of the nutrients laid down beneath its boughs by life and death over time. I have no interest in wasting my time tending in futility to a forest with soil callously depleted to sand by men with high-minded ideas who know nothing of the cultivation necessary.

It is here that I find the clear difference between America the Idea versus America the Venerable Heritage. The former is planted in sand and subject to the wind. The latter is rooted in and nourished by the soil; it is hearty for the storm.

I prefer it.

I replied:

What Reagan Means to Me

I have a personal story about President Reagan that I believe might help you understand his power to affect people as individuals.

In September 1982, I was in my last semester of college looking forward to getting out and earning my place in this world. Things were really looking up and I remember thinking that it was the best time of my life. And up until my daughter’s birth five years ago, it was.

My happy and carefree state changed on a dime with a phone call from my older sister, who lived in another state. My mother had caught herself on fire while cooking dinner and was in the local hospital awaiting transfer to a burn unit. My sister had a family and a career to manage. My father had passed away when I was in elementary school. It was up to me to deal with the situation.

I could go on here and express to you the horrors that I witnessed over the next several months, the weekly 300 mile commutes, and the decisions that no 23 year old son should have to make. But that would be beside the point.

Let it suffice to say that my mother’s injuries were so severe, the pain so excruciating, that she lapsed into a state her doctors called “intensive care unit psychosis.” My visits to her bedside from Thursday evening to Sunday morning each week were incredibly frustrating. It was as if she wasn’t there. All she did, 24 hours a day, was sit in her bed with her eyes wide open speaking mostly gibberish.

The nurses said that she never slept…just continually talked nonsense. But every so often a stream of coherent subconscious thought, mostly expressing fear, would come through. And after a while I started to get the gist of what was going on inside her mind. She was worried about losing her home. And for some strange reason it was tied to her fear about, of all things, Social Security legislation that was being discussed by Congress at the time of her accident.

I did not understand what was happening in Congress; I hadn’t kept up with it. Heck, I was 23 years old! Why on earth would I be concerned about Social Security that seemed a million years away?

During one drive back to the university, I decided that I would find out what was going on in Congress. I would get the information, and explain it to my mother in a reassuring way in hopes that my words would somehow get through and ease her distress. And I couldn’t think of a better way to get some action than to start at the top. So, I would write a letter to the President of the United States. Maybe he could help.

My mother adored Ronald Reagan. I could not understand why at the time; I was influenced daily by academicians who almost universally loathed him. To write an effective letter in this instance, I decided, would require trying to write it the way I thought my mom would. I remember sitting down and pouring my heart into a letter, explaining the situation framed in terms that made it clear how my mother felt about her favorite President.

I sent it. I remember feeling better for having written it, but I also remember being skeptical about getting anything more than a form letter in response. Weeks went by, and I almost forgot about it in my struggle to juggle my mom’s crisis and still graduate on time.

My daily calls to the hospital to check on mom’s condition were becoming pretty repetitive. She was still sitting up, babbling and fearing. That’s pretty much what the nurses said every time I called.

Then, one day… I guess it had been about a month since I sent the letter to President Reagan… I called the hospital expecting the nurse to tell me the status quo had not changed. But it had.

“Would you like to speak with her?” the nurse asked.

“What are you talking about?” I replied.

“She received a card in the mail today, and get well card from President Reagan,” she continued. “We opened it and put it in her good hand. She immediately stopped talking, and sat and stared at it for a couple of hours. And then, she just came back and started talking to us all. We’re all kind of stunned around here.

“Let me put her on the phone,” she concluded.

“Hello,” mom said.

“Hi mom, how are you?”

“I got a card from Secretary Reagan today!” she exclaimed.

“I think you mean ‘President Reagan,’ mom. Don’t you?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she continued. “I wonder how he knew I was here…”

The next day, I received a copy of a letter to my mother from the Social Security Commissioner. It outlined specifically, point by point, why my mother did not need to be concerned about Security Cuts putting her home at risk.

Now, I know that in all probability President Reagan did not physically sign that card. It’s very doubtful that he knew anything of my letter, or of my mother’s situation. But I believe that the way in which my letter was handled speaks volumes about the manner in which Ronald Reagan governed.

At the end of the day, you can always see the mark of a true leader… a great leader… reflected in the the people he selects to work around him.

It’s been almost exactly 25 years since my mom got a get well card from President Ronald Reagan. I’ve worked with and around literally hundreds of elected officials and their staffs since then. I’ve seen the bad, the good and the great. But I’ve never again seen an instance in which a representative of the people was able to touch an individual so deeply through emissaries.

My mom loved Ronald Reagan. And although they were strangers, I know that he loved her.

That’s why Ronald Reagan means so much to me.

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