The upshot: Trust and credibility are the mother's milk of effective democratic leadership. FDR and Churchill had it in World War II, and so did George Bush when he stood at "ground zero," bullhorn in hand. Bush was trusted then because the public needed desperately to trust him. But now Bush's fund of trust, like that of LBJ and Nixon before him, has been exhausted, and with it, his capacity to lead. For truth and reality are remorseless adversaries, and eventually as the lies are exposed, trust evaporates, whereupon leadership fails. Then follows a time of great political danger. For if the discredited regime is to remain in power, civil order, once accomplished through trust, mutual respect, and obedience to law, must instead be achieved through force and threat, which is to say, oppression.
So now, when our country has been dealt a grievous injury by the terrorists, when the regime in power has proven itself incapable of dealing with natural disasters or extricating itself from an ill-conceived and immoral war, when the dreadful consequences of fiscal insanity are soon to come due, we are called upon to place our trust and loyalty in an administration which has gained office through an unprincipled manipulation and subversion of our foundational political institutions: the vote, the rule of law, and the free press. Today, when we desperately need to trust our government, trust, that essential moral resource has, like the federal surplus, been squandered to serve private greed and ambition.
The essential first step in restoring trust in our political institutions is to separate from the government those who are most responsible for discrediting those institutions.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
