Caffeinated Politics

Our nation has seen more than its fair share of policy disputes, strategic missteps, and even bizarre moments of national confusion since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. Now, we are facing an alarming moment with the absence of moral leadership at the very top of this White House concerning the Iran war.

Moral leadership was a topic Sen. Sam Ervin delivered during the 24th day of the Watergate Committee Hearings in 1973. Before I tackle the current quagmire, take a listen to a short part of Ervin’s comments.

Ervin’s point was not only about the burglary, but the responsibility of a president to confront wrongdoing with honesty, clarity, and a sense of duty to the public rather than to himself. Moral leadership, I suggest Ervin would say, is not ornamental. It is the foundation of democratic trust.

More than fifty years after the North Carolinian spoke, the United States finds itself in another moment when the public is searching for steadiness from the Oval Office. (My rational side says the public is in for a very long wait.) The Iran War is approaching its tenth week, and many Americans, from all points of the political compass, are still asking the most basic questions. Why was this war initiated? What national interest does it serve? Why does it continue without a clear explanation of its aims or its endpoint? How does Iran have a stronger international narrative than eleven weeks ago? How does Iran now have the power over the Strait of Hormuz? Are we to believe that no one in this White House had read a single analysis piece about the threats posed by Iran if it were to be attacked? There are 47 years of articles to pick from concerning the Straits.

Reporting and commentary in various outlets have noted that many citizens believe (as does the blogger at this desk) the timing of the unexplained war coincided with the release of the Trump–Epstein documents, which contain allegations involving Donald Trump’s sexual assault on a teenage girl. I have argued that the war’s launch was a political deflection. Without any plausible or rational policy goal that fits with the facts concerning Iran’s then already degraded nuclear capabilities, it only furthers the deflection narrative. Others reject that interpretation entirely. What is undeniable, however, is that the public has been left without a coherent, transparent rationale from Trump and his White House sycophants. What we are left with is a moral leadership vacuum. Especially since we have dead members of the U.S. military as a result of Trump’s alleged abhorrent behavior with Epstein’s girls, as noted in the files released shortly before the war started.

War is the gravest decision a president can make. But what we have witnessed is a shocking lack of candor and accountability from Trump. Call me old-fashioned, but when American and Iranian lives are at stake–yes, a moral stand means caring for all those in the path of the lethal impacts from war–it means a president is required to articulate not only the strategic logic but the moral justification for the use of force. Without that, citizens are left to fill the silence with speculation, suspicion, and fear. Democracies do not function well in that kind of fog.

Longtime readers know I am a Nixon history buff, and I make no apology for repeating the lessons we can still gain from Watergate. Let me say, again, Watergate was not simply about abuses of power that occurred. It was that the public would tolerate almost anything except being treated as though it did not deserve the truth. Ervin’s insistence on moral leadership, a theme he hit on often over the months of the hearings, was a reminder that the presidency is not merely an office of command. He pushes that the Oval Office is an office of example. When a president refuses to level with the nation, as we are now witnessing with Trump’s Iran war, the damage will not be confined to this single issue. Rather, akin to what happened during Watergate and as the nation absorbed it later, we know it eroded the civic fabric that holds the country together.

I do not need to remind readers that over the past 15 months, our nation has been seriously divided, anxious, and searching for truth, which has been in short supply from this administration. The Oval Office should be the place where truth can be counted on and where responsibility is owned rather than avoided. But more to the point of this column, that office must again be where the moral weight of leadership is carried with seriousness rather than deflection.

In 1973-74, the country faced a crucial period in our national story. We know from history (some of us lived it!) what happens when a president tosses national responsibility aside like a burger wrapper. We know what must happen now for this nation to deal with this war waged against Iran. For that to happen, we need now the kind of moral leadership Sam Ervin demanded in 1973. Wouldn’t it be nice if we woke tomorrow and discovered leadership that treats the American people not as an audience to be managed, but as citizens to be told the truth?

Yes, it would be nice. But that will not happen until Donald Trump is removed from office.