Lessons. Sessions. Confessions. Hessians. Tensions. Scrambling up letters to make new words. “Scrambling” is a such a great word, whose arrangement of letters and sounds resemble the act of “scrambling”.  Scrambling is a good and safe word when used in concert with eggs, word games and magic tricks (which I really hate; all the willful conniving).

It is not a word to use with expectations for or of leadership. Leadership can be wise, determined, empathic, experienced, capable, heroic, but not scrambling like a crab on the beach. Leadership has to possess a strong prow with an assured course that stays despite any turbulence it encounters. 

Leadership should be designed and built for turbulence and crisis. And if it’s absent these, then it isn’t leadership. Rather, it’s a group that scrums, heads in hiding, with members moving against each other and getting nowhere. Think rugby. A gaggle of ruffians hungry for one ball and using only muscle to get it.

But just like faith without works is dead (thank you, James), so, too is muscle without a brain. As is leadership without character and experience. Leadership like we see on display daily in the White House and parts of Congress. The country’s ship of state has become unseaworthy at a very inopportune time.

While the nation writhes under the strain of an unprecedented epidemic, there is no succor to be found nor action by this government for the suffering and out of work and the exhausted. No relief or future aid plan in sight. Instead, “pop-ups” around the world are working piecemeal to develop solutions to address the lack of medical equipment, procedures for not allowing the dying to die alone and ways to contain the virus with a vaccine.

The United States in crises past exhibited strong and fearless leadership for the world.The US provided support, guidance and ingenuity to tackle the challenges facing humankind for centuries. And now, we have to show only a blathering administration that disregards medical information and scientific fact, reason and empathic humility. 

Instead of uniting and leading the country and the world out of this miasma, the “President” of the United States seems only interested in TV coverage and ratings. That’s where his energy goes, while the cities of the country wither away with disease and desperation. He’s the dunce overseeing the emergent dystopia.

Many, at least 3 million more people that voted against and not for him in 2016, thought his skill set to be insufficient to take the sacred Oath of Office of President of the United States. Those misgivings have now proven to be valid given his lack of commandeering the talents and resources of OUR government to handle the problem.

He demonstrates time and again that he’s gained no mastery of his job as a public servant (yes, he IS a servant to the public, not chairman of a for-profit board). He’s shown time and again that he has no useful instinct or talent to navigate this COVID-19 risis. And without navigation, either an internal compass or external sextant or radar, our Nation is rudderless and lost at sea under his sorry command.