The 55 years following the end of World War II are often referred to as the era of “American Exceptionalism.”  That moniker was based on our military and economic superiority as well as our political stability.  Throughout the period there were shifts in partisan control of the presidency and Congress, differences in national priorities and a fairly predictable business cycle with times of boom and bust.  Yet, life went on relatively unaffected by internal scandals such as Watergate or external conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.  When compared to the chaos in other nations, America, in contrast, was truly exceptional and the world looked to the United States for leadership and as a role model.

However, the reality or just the perception of exceptionalism has its down side.  Montgomery Ward thought it was an exceptional retail company.  PanAm, an exceptional airlines.  American Motors, an exceptional car manufacturer.  MCI, an exceptional telephone company.  In a guest lecture at Stanford University, Hugh Martin, CEO of Pacific Biosciences, suggested why once dominant companies fall by the wayside.  He explained a company with a major share of the market begins to think it is invincible until some young, energetic and innovative upstart comes along.  And the more dominant your share the more likely you are to ignore signs your position is threatened.

Which got me to thinking (always dangerous).  Is the United States the geopolitical equivalent of a business that once held a near monopoly in the marketplace of nations?  And did our “exceptionalism” make us fat, dumb and lazy to the point where our leaders and the general populace thought nothing or no one could push us off that pedestal like a statue of Stalin in Gorky Park.  It was then I realized the 21st century became an era of a new kind of American exceptionalism or should I say EXCEPTionalism.  Consider the following:

• Before September 11, 2001, other countries were susceptible to attacks from foreign invaders EXCEPT the United States.
• Virtually every nation on earth recognizes the threat posed by climate change and is a signatory to the Paris Climate Accords EXCEPT the United States.
• Every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council remains committed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal) EXCEPT the United States.
•  Every one of our World War II allies stands behind Article V (an attack against one is an attack against all members) of the North American Treaty Organization defense agreement EXCEPT the United States even though 9/11 is the only instance in which Article V has been invoked.
• Most western nations honored their commitment to take their proportional share of Syrian and Kurdish refugees EXCEPT the United States.
• Every traditional U.S. trading partner signed on to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (successor to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership) EXCEPT the United States.
• And now, of course, the current administration assumed a global pandemic was a threat to every nation EXCEPT the United States.
• And when the World Health Organization offered coronavirus tests worldwide, most nations responded positively to the overture EXCEPT the United States.

What best describes 21st century American exceptionalism?  Only four percent of the world’s population resides in the United States.  Yet, despite the fact the first case of coronavirus in the United States was reported more than a month after the initial outbreak in China or after the virus had spread through Europe, we now account for more than 25 percent of the reported COVID-19 related deaths.  That is truly exceptional.  And it did not happen by accident.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

My religious studies also taught me how to analyze complex problems. When you study Torah, you learn how to peel an onion. You learn to look at a situation, a single word or phrase, and to appreciate that even one word can have multiple interpretations.

~Dan Bricklin/”Natural-Born Entrepreneur”

“Dan Bricklin” is not a household name,  but he and his partner Bob Frankston were responsible for creating a killer application, the first electronic spreadsheet program VisiCalc, which transformed personal commuters from a novelty into a must-have business tool.  The above quote comes from Bricklin’s article in the September 2001 issue of the Harvard Business Review.  Although he and Frankston were students in Harvard’s executive MBA program in 1979 when they began writing the code for VisiCalc, Bricklin acknowledges his ability to visualize and then develop the concept was the result not only of his business training, but every other learning experience which preceded his studies in Cambridge.

Bricklin’s reference to his religious training seems even more relevant when you look at the comparisons between the federal response to the current pandemic and those of governors such as Andrew Como (NY), Larry Hogan (MD), Gretchen Whitmer (MI) or Mike DeWine (OH).  Several commentators have suggested the inadequate federal response validates the theory this is what you get when the president has neither military or public service experience.  Yet Como, Hogan, Whitmer and DeWine never faced anything which could have possibly prepared them for the level of crisis management the current situation requires.  Therefore, without the advantage of past experience, the difference between success and failure depends on the application of universal principles developed over a lifetime of formal education and self-learning.

It was this epiphany which took me back to my time at the National Governors Association (NGA), in particular, an event called the “New Governors School.”  Within two weeks of election day, NGA invites new governors-elect to a series of workshops taught by sitting governors.  In 1990, the opening presentation was delivered by outgoing Illinois governor James Thompson, during which he gave the audience two pieces of advice.

• Governing requires a different skill set than campaigning.  Do not appoint your campaign manager to be your chief of staff.
• Heed Murphy’s law.  The very first appointment you need to make is the director of emergency management.  How you respond to a crisis, and there will be one, will define your legacy.

Although my bias is toward governors, I know the United States Conference of Mayors and the National Counties Association provide similar learning experiences for their incoming members.

A second benefit of these conclaves is a direct result of the social activities which accompany the instruction.  Dining together on the floor of Rupp Arena at the University of Kentucky or enjoying a concert by the West Virginia Symphony at the Greenbrier Resort created a level of comfort simply by being among others who were also entering a new phase of their public service careers.  Political scientists and media pundits can speculate what it is like to be a governor, but only those who wear the same shoes can tell you how it feels.

Sadly, there is no such thing as a “New Presidents School.”  Though there could be.  Imagine if the next president, within days of November 3rd, invited all living presidents to the transition office.  Not to rehash history because it is impossible to predict the exact nature of the next crisis.  Hurricane Katrina was not a replay of September 11.  Deepwater Horizon was not a sequel to Katrina.  What these events had in common was the need for sound principles of governing, when employed, can resolve or at least mitigate the negative impacts.  Imagine George Bush telling the next commander-in-chief, “Don’t pick a major donor to run FEMA or any other agency with critical responsibilities.”  Or Barack Obama advising a successor, “Don’t rely on corporations which cause a problem to resolve it.  Jump in immediately.”

Absent such an experience for the next occupant of the Oval Office, may I suggest the next president read “Natural-Born Entrepreneur” on the day after the November election.  Imagine how the spring of 2020 might have been different if Donald Trump was aware of what Bricklin shares with aspiring entrepreneurs.

You don’t have to be perfect.  I learned to accept that I would make mistakes and the crowd wouldn’t rip me to shreds.

First, understand your talent and what you bring to an endeavor.  Even today at Trellix, the company I founded to build Internet publishing tools, my title isn’t president or chief executive officer. It’s chief technology officer, a role I planned to hold from the very beginning.

Don’t wait to get started.  Or at least understand that if you wait, you may have less flexibility in making trade-offs.

I’ve arranged my affairs so that on short notice I can afford to live without a salary for a year.  This approach has allowed me to keep the business going longer.

Dan Bricklin is no Nostradamus.  In 2001, when he first offered this advice, he did not predict the disruption and suffering associated with this global pandemic.  It only seems relevant because the lessons are timeless, not tied to any specific situation.  When and where you learn these lessons is irrelevant.  Willingness to absorb and heed them is the key.  In other words, make every day a “training day.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

One need not go back very far in American history to understand the danger of cults.  Consider the following three examples.

On November 18, 1978, 909 men, women and children ingested lethal doses of a poison-spiked powered drink at the direction of Jim Jones, leader of the People’s Temple which morbidly resulted in the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid.”  (HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE:  Several accounts of the mass suicide suggest Kool-Aid did not deserve this bad rap.  The lethal mixture actually contained the doppelganger Flavor-Aid.)

In 1993, followers of Branch Davidian leader David Koresh chose to make an Alamo-like defense of the order’s Mount Carmel Center in Axtell, Texas.  The siege, precipitated when Koresh refused to honor warrants obtained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to search the premises and arrest Koresh on charges of stockpiling illegal weapons, lasted for 51 days.  It ended in a fierce gun battle during which the Center caught fire resulting in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians including women, children as well as Koresh.  (NOTE: In testimony before the Danforth Commission tasked with investigating the incident, surviving members of the siege reported that Koresh ordered the perimeter of the Center be set on fire to deter an anticipated attack by ATF armored vehicles.)

Four years later, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate religious order, led by a disgraced former Presbyterian minister Marshall Applewhite, were discovered dead in the sect’s rented mansion which they named, “The Monastery.”  Left behind was a tape of Applewhite assuring his followers they would be whisked to heaven by an alien spacecraft which was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.

What is most hard to fathom is not the existence of crazy individuals who profess prophesies and conspiracies absent of any factual evidence.  It is that their followers accept their nonsense as gospel.  If cult leaders kept their “wisdom” to themselves, they would be a minor footnote in history.  Instead of headlines that document suicide/murder of dozens of their followers, reports that an individual who believed in extraterrestrial deliverers had taken his own life would have been on the inside pages of major newspapers, if covered at all.

Which brings us to February 28, 2020 and the realization that Donald Trump has taken on the characteristics of both an autocrat and a cult leader.  What is the difference?  An autocrat imposes his world view on others.  Followers of a cult leader willingly accept and spread his representation of any situation.  This could not have been more clear than when I opened today’s edition of our local paper to the editorial page and found an opinion piece by area financial advisor Steve Nicklas titled, “The fear of coronavius.”  Based on the following three excerpts there is no doubt a modern day Darth Vader would observe, “The Kool-Aid is strong with this one.”

Most health officials will not exaggerate the potential impacts of a malady, but in contrast, Dr. Nancy Messonnier’s performance sounded like a exaggeration on steroids.  She is head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and is FBI agent Rod Rosenstein’s sister.  (Dr. ESP:  Rosenstein was not an FBI agent, but deputy attorney general under Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr.  One would think Nicklas could keep his deep state actors straight.)

Trump cited the 15 cases of coronavirus in the U.S., with those inflicted recovering quickly, except for one. (Dr. ESP: I think he meant afflicted unless COVID-19 microbes physically assault their victims before invading their bodies.) In comparison the generic flu causes as many as 60,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.  So you should put things in perspective.  The mortality rate of the coronavirus is in the 2 percent range by the way.

With precautions that have been taken already, such as restrictions on travel into our country from inflicted regions, and the premier U.S. health care professionals tracking the virus’ every move, we are in good hands.

Let’s take this assessment point by point.  According to Nicklas, and the major proponent of this conspiracy theory Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Messonnier’s 25 years at the Center of Disease Control are cancelled out by the fact she is related to a former deputy attorney general.  Nicklas is not the least bit bothered that his fearless leader now requires all messaging about the virus to come through Mike Pence.  Business Insider, hardly a bastion of liberal propaganda, reported this morning that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has served every presidential administration since Ronald Reagan, has been barred from speaking publicly about the virus without approval.  So much for public debate about the dangers and responses to what seems more like a global pandemic with each passing day.

Like his idol, Nicklas also chooses to cherry pick data.  Yes, during the 2017-18 flu season there were 61,099 deaths out of 44.8 million cases or a mortality rate of 0.14 percent compared to Nicklas’ own reporting of a current death rate of 2.0 percent for the coronavirus.  But if you take data for the most recent flu season for which statistical information is available (2018-19), there were only 34.157 deaths out of 35,520,883 cases or 0.096 percent.  In other words you are 2,000 percent more likely to die from the coronavirus than from the general flu.  One must admit, if there is one thing Trump and his cult followers are good at, it is false equivalency.

I do not know when Nicklas drafted his essay, but he draws heavily on Trump’s Wednesday press conference.  So what has happened since we were assured everything was “in good hands?”

• Individuals from infected regions of the world were allowed back into the United States contrary to health officials’ warnings there should be further quarantines.
• The medical teams that attended to those returning Americans did not have the proper equipment to protect themselves from contracting the virus.
• The first reported case of unknown origin has been documented in California.
• There are inadequate supplies of testing kits to determine whether a patient has the coronavirus.
• The CDC has been prohibited since February 10 from reporting the number of “Patients Under Investigation” as possible coronavirus carriers.
• Secretary of Health and Human Services Alexander Azar, whom Nicklas refers to as “more measured” claimed he was “still chairman of the task force,” even after Trump announced Pence’s selection at the press conference.
• CDC’s own website continues to assess the situation as “the potential public health threat posed by COVID-19 is high, both globally and to the United States.”
• And the global equity markets have been anything but calmed by Trump’s assurances with the largest and quickest declines in history.

I suspect followers of Jim Jones, David Koresh and Marshall Applewhite continued to believe these cult leaders could do no wrong as they partook of toxic cocktails or set fires to forestall their pursuers.  It is that blind deference which gives a leader the determination and belief that he is right even when every thread of evidence suggests otherwise.

It was not poison or flames that killed the inhabitants of Jonestown, the Mount Carmel Center or The Monastery.  It was allegiance to their respective leaders.  Likewise, microbes will not be the major cause of death in the event of a truly horrific pandemic, but lack of transparency and failure to confront power which is more interested in their approval ratings and stock portfolios than the health and safety of the American people.  For no other reason, now more than ever, America needs a president not a cult ringleader.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP