Caffeinated Politics

Somewhere between rereading The Imperial Presidency by Arthur Schlesinger and the daily newspapers, I have been trying to place the lessons of the past into the constant absurdity and irrationality of the present. I am not sure I am making headway in my thinking, but I want to share where I am as of today.

The United States has always been a country defined by tension. That is one of the bedrocks of our first-ever civics lessons when we were young. There is always a need for progress, but almost like gravity, there is a resounding reaction. The fight for a more expansive democracy crashes into the impulse to retreat into narrower, smaller groups with tribal instincts. The work by Schlesinger was published in 1973 and dealt with the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate, which was still ongoing. He writes that the time seemed fraught with so many ways for things to really go south. It resembles our current situation.

That is how I felt in 2008 during the presidential election season. The question posed to voters was whether the country would choose one vision of national identity or another. At the time, the ballot was asking the voter to choose between Barack Obama and John McCain. But today, if we think about it, the real question not stated on the ballot was about competing stories Americans told themselves about who they were and what future they imagined for the nation. That tension has not disappeared; it has instead morphed into a harsh racism for many, and we know it has become deadly.

The events unfolding in Minneapolis illustrate this danger with painful clarity. Federal ICE agents have murdered two American citizens. What we are witnessing is not some abstract policy disagreements. What is happening is that the machinery of the state is intersecting violently with the lives of ordinary people. I often derisively use the term “shallow end of the swimming pool” to point a finger at what is causing the trouble in our nation. Just consider current events, the space where misinformation, fear, and simplistic narratives thrive, and as a result, produce real‑world consequences, some of them deadly. When our public discourse becomes trite slogans, when complexity is treated as elitism (you have to be kidding me!), and federal institutions such as the Justice Department become a partisan engine, the result is not merely polarization. It is the very definition of instability.

We live in a time when political identity has become entertainment. Donald Trump has cheapened the national discourse by expertly using the headline-making news cycles to his advantage multiple times a day. Governing, policy-making, and serious conversations about the future of our nation or region around the globe must not be aimed at being entertaining. When I was working in radio, I quipped on air that the only reason the Democrats ran Alan Cranston as a presidential candidate was to show the nation what a bald Ronald Reagan would look like. The point being that ideas and policy were less important than image. In large part, Reagan ran on an image of himself and the nation.

What has resulted from the political climate that Trump engineered is a place where grievances and outrages are valued and thoughtful voices are viewed as less entertaining. Think about the way the Republican Party, which controls Congress have acted in the last year. Those men and women appeal to fear and grievance to gain traction. Name me those members of the GOP who determinately ask for patience, evidence, or compromise. They are threatened with a primary! We as a nation are left with outlandish narratives of the kind that followed the two murders by ICE in Minneapolis.

I was told this week by an extended family member that I use judgmental hate when writing my columns. I did not respond that I generally use the front pages of newspapers for my topic of the day, and base my views on facts, and my background in history. So it will be painful for some to read how I view our arrival at this time in our country. I see our history containing both a deep well of democratic idealism and, at the same time, a strong flowing river of anti‑intellectualism. The former pushes the nation toward expanding rights for women, Black and gay Americans, and the handicapped, while strengthening institutions. The latter resists complexity, distrusts expertise, and gravitates toward leaders who promise simple answers to complicated problems. These forces coexist, but when the balance tips too far toward the shallow end of the pool (there you go again, Mr. Humphrey), the nation becomes susceptible to destabilizing impulses.

I am aware of the reasons we can tick off for the blowback from this portion of the electorate. Economic dislocation, culture wars that they buy into, and truly rapid technological changes. History shows that people seek certainty in uncertain times and find slick and simplified narratives a tonic. But when we don’t stop that narrative, as we have seen, it can harden to the point that it can justify extreme actions, including federal agents murdering our citizens.

We are a nation in crisis. Simply put, a democracy cannot function if large segments of the population operate from fundamentally incompatible realities. Nor can it thrive if fear becomes the dominant mode of engagement. The events in Minneapolis are a warning.

We have a long list of things to do to right the ship. Rebuilding trust in institutions, fostering media literacy, and encouraging more civics education. But I would argue first and foremost, we need to have a national leader who can resist the temptation to exploit the shallow end of the pool for short‑term gain. And it requires citizens (you and me) willing to grapple with complexity, to question easy answers, and to not only know the foundations of the nation, but also be willing to fight for them.

The first weeks of 2026 suggest that we have a stark choice. Americans can choose to remain in the shallow end or swim toward something deeper, more challenging, but ultimately more sustaining for our nation.