It’s also tempting to yearn for those seemingly simpler times in American society, but that era had its problems too. A couple of years earlier one of the deadliest riots in American history broke out in Los Angeles in response to the acquittal of the police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King. Voter participation in the Presidential election immediately following the release of ‘The American President’ (1996) was near an all-time low. And the year prior, when the movie came out, the Oklahoma City bombing claimed the lives of 168 people.

‘The American President’ also reminds me that a lot about our politics hasn’t changed. The politics of grievance was a thing back then. So were shameful personal attacks. And issues like crime, energy policy, and how we should interpret the Constitution were debated.

One of the focuses of the film - and I think is very much a focus of many Americans today - is also leadership. What does real leadership look like? Should character matter in our political leaders? And are our leaders capable of providing us with the leadership that a given moment requires?

Michael J. Fox’s character in the movie, Lewis Rothschild, addresses the topic of leadership head-on when he got on his soapbox in the Oval Office of all places. The President’s approval rating had been slipping and was about to compromise his legislative agenda. And it was in large part, because his opponent in his upcoming re-election campaign was doing a better job of shaping the national debate than he was.

“People want leadership, Mr. President,” he said, “and in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”

When a leadership vacuum is left. It’ll get filled. You just don’t know who will fill it. And what the consequences for everyone else will be.

I’ve thought a lot about that quote in recent years - not just the past 18 months. The crisis of American leadership has been ongoing for some time, we’re just really paying the price for having tolerated it for so long right now.

Leadership failure is also often a result of a failure of courage. It was in ‘The American President,’ anyhow.

President Andrew Shepard, played by Michael Douglas, tried to make too many people happy and had to face down the prospect of not getting anything done in partnership with Congress. His effectiveness in the eyes of the American people suffered as a consequence. He also failed to stand up to a bully - in this case Senator Bob Rumson, his opponent in his Presidential re-election campaign - and Rumson was consequently able shape how the public viewed who Shepard was as a man and as an American. And it wasn’t until the President found his backbone again that he was able to turn things around.

In his final speech in the movie (which you can watch here), President Shepard leans in rather than face defeat behind closed doors, as was about to happen. He engaged the White House press corps directly from the briefing podium, instead of letting a spokesperson deflect and spin for him. And, he finally stood up to the bully that had been beating him down throughout the course of the movie and who’d effectively gotten the public to wonder whether the President was someone he was not.

He also expressed sage words that applied to the American citizenry back then as much as they still do now: “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight.”

I’ll say it does. It has over and over again. And America’s doing so again.

Shepard also goes on to say: “We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.”

That still rings true today, too.

We’ve wrestled with a lot over our 250 years. We’ve had serious problems to face down. And we’ve been failed by our leaders over and over again. But we’ve always found a way forward and can do so again.

Believe.

And if you need some help keeping the faith…watch The American President!

My cousin supports this program, though she certainly does not need to. There’s no extra credit for moms who have means and want to look out for kids who aren’t her own. She was also happy to give her son perspective when he thoughtlessly made fun of a Backpack Buddy classmate for having to participate in the program. In fact, that’s how I learned about this all.

We’re living in a time that can feel overwhelming, bleak, and hard to overcome. But if you take Mr. Rogers’ mom’s advice and “look for the helpers,” you’ll find small rays of hope to help you get by. And “you will always find people who are helping.”

In Washington, D.C. (where I’m writing this from) people seem especially distraught these days. Perhaps that’s because people here have a keen awareness of what’s at stake in our country right now, and many have spent their lives dedicated to trying to make it a better place. But even here, you’ll find the helpers too. Many of them are my friends. People who step up to help in ways they don’t have to and never get recognition for, just because they want to.

To be sure, Washington is also full of people who want to cause hurt and pain. Probably because they’re the kind that would rather inflict it on others than to do the work to heal the hurt and pain they feel in themselves. Seems like a lot of those people are also in charge these days here too. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still helpers waiting in the wings.

The helpers look like Senator Andy Kim who was famously photographed cleaning up debris in the early morning hours of January 7th, 2021 after the U.S. Capitol was stormed the day prior. Kim then went on to launch a primary challenge against a corrupt member of his own party in 2023 while he was still in the House of Representatives, and his home state of New Jersey now has better representation because of it.

I also hate to break it to you, but there are also an awful lot of helpers who probably don’t share your politics. You may be telling yourself a story that they’re terrible uncaring humans, because they voted for someone you find reprehensible. But chances are they feel failed by most people they’ve seen get elected, don’t really know who or what source to trust these days, and are just making the best call they can about who might best fight for their family and their priorities (or perhaps against who they really think won’t).

During my time teaching young (mostly liberal) undergraduate students at Duke University, I loved having the opportunity to tell them about my aunt. A healthy share of my students were from places like Westchester, New York and San Francisco, California, while my aunt spent most of her adult life in Tobaccoville, North Carolina (you read that right) after moving around as an Army-brat growing up. She also had voted for Donald Trump not once, but twice at the time.

Not only did I want them to understand why I wasn’t going to write off a woman who has showed up for me again and again through the crazy ups and downs of my life, but she also took my advice to be a volunteer at the USO. Every week she made sure that the young Marines that passed through her local airport were tended to, and in some cases better than they’ve ever been by their own families. And she regularly couldn’t help herself but buy one of the brown bags of food that Lowes Foods packages up and has staged at the checkout for their customers to be able to contribute to the local food pantry.

We may not share the same politics, but my aunt is a helper too.

Perhaps what’s worth reflecting on these days is how we can give all of the helpers leaders they can enthusiastically and confidently get behind. I’m not sure that’s a feeling a lot of the helpers I know of all stripes have felt for a long time, but I do think it’s something that can be felt again.

Until then…let’s all just keep looking for the helpers.

Do you still wonder how exactly we ended up with Donald Trump as President again? Are you overwhelmed by the havoc that he’s been wreaking on American society? And might you be at a complete loss as to how we find our way out of it all and on to better days?

Well, you’re not alone.

I have an endless number of friends and family that I’ve had to give pep talks to since the 2024 election. So much so that I became determined to be a one-woman, hope-giving machine somewhere along the way.

So here I am in your inbox to give you (or insist that you have) hope too.

How, you ask? Well, by giving you perspective.

Perspective that I gained in the course of deploying to a combat zone in 2004 through 2005 and remains with me today.

Shortly after my unit from Ft. Carson, Colorado got to Taji, Iraq, I was reassigned to a subordinate unit in our battalion so that I could get my ‘platoon leader time’ as a young 22-year-old second lieutenant. My platoon then took over a logistics mission that was confined to our base in Taji, but within the first 60 days of our deployment most of that mission was reassigned to civilian defense contractors, which meant that most of my soldiers were all of a sudden out of a job.

I wish I could say that meant that they got sent home to their families, but nope. It was an intense time in the war in Iraq, so most of the soldiers in my platoon were then reassigned to execute a force protection mission - providing security in and around Camp Taji, but also to convoys as they transported supplies and equipment across Iraq.

This new mission was one that we tag-teamed with the 603rd Transportation Company that had deployed at less than full strength, was rapidly wearing thin, and needed the help.

After a short training period, my soldiers and I began to pick up force protection mission after force protection mission. They did shifts in watchtowers some days, guarded local nationals that were at work across Camp Taji on other days, and also rotated on and off the road to provide convoy security.

These missions had varying degrees of danger. Two soldiers in a watchtower were as much of a target as a convoy, but the threats were usually easier to discern. You could see enemy movement on the horizon and sometimes neutralize the threat before they had the opportunity to engage.

Out on the road, however, makeshift bombs were often buried alongside the highway or disguised and not known until detonated. And car bombs were indistinguishable from your average civilian vehicle that was also traveling on the highway, so if you let one get too close, you might find out the hard way that the driver was willing to blow himself up to score a win for the insurgency.

When we stopped running missions during the day, and instead overnight, we could at least see the gunfire that came in our direction a little bit easier. White hot tracer rounds would whiz over our convoy, and the darkness made it harder for insurgents to time the detonation of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) to ensure a direct hit. But we were still very exposed on the modern, asymmetrical battlefield and got regular reminders of it (thank goodness for the up-armor and quadruple-pane glass on our vehicles).

All of my soldiers and I made it home from that deployment, thankfully. Even the ones that were on missions that I was unable to be on, because I was pulling double-duty keeping watch on the contractors that forced them into more danger. But two of the 603rd soldiers that we served alongside didn’t.

A fellow platoon leader who was a guntruck commander executing his mission as I would have if I pulled it that day. And an 18-year-old gunner who was just shy of his 19th birthday that one of my soldiers witnessed bleed out as he was the driver of his humvee that fateful day.

Ever since that first loss in April of 2005 the ultimate sacrifice that’s been made on behalf of our country has not been abstract to me. The grief I witnessed my soldiers experience after both of their losses remains indelible in my mind. And the way I experience a bugle playing taps has never been the same since.

I consider myself privileged to know two men who didn’t just risk it all for us, but gave it all. And I carry that with me daily.

I’ve also done my best to try and live a life worthy of their sacrifice after returning home, and I believe that must include not giving up on this country that they died for. We owe it to them to maintain hope and to fight for the country they would have wanted to see if they were so lucky to return to it. And, I hope you believe so too.

On September 11, 2001 our nation was attacked by terrorists. An adversary that we knew had it out for us, finally succeeded at bringing us to our knees within our own borders. It was the first attack of its scale since December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor -- and more deadly.

Yet, our President at the time, George W. Bush did not meet the moment like Franklin Delano Roosevelt did after Pearl Harbor. And on our 250th anniversary as a nation, I believe we’re paying the price for that today.

FDR’s message to the nation in the wake of Pearl Harbor was that the war effort to come would require the participation of the entire nation—not just soldiers, but workers, families, businesses, and communities. He insisted that our response to the attack must be collective and called on Americans to dedicate themselves to supporting victory. And the greatest generation was built as a result.

We had a huge opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to remind our citizenry that it’s all of our responsibility to step up to protect what we have here in America, even if you weren’t going to be one of the volunteers soon boarding a plane to Afghanistan. But we chose a different path, in part because our President at the time told us to do so in his address to Congress on September 20th, 2001:

“Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children.”

Not exactly the same message FDR shared with the nation in his fireside chat on December 9, 1941:

“We are now in this war. We are all in it—all the way. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war.”

On 9/11 I was an Army ROTC cadet, so it was pretty clear what my role might be in the coming years to help protect and defend the United States against the foreign enemy that had just attacked us. I didn’t drop out and enlist to be able to get in the fight immediately like some of my classmates did, but the pathway to me doing my part was clear. What didn’t really register with me back then, but I can see clearly today though, is how much of a grave mistake it was that our leadership didn’t ask all of my fellow Americans to also do their part.

I believe that was America’s sliding door moment. The moment when we chose not to be a whole nation at war, but a select few. The moment we chose to pretend like the military effort in response to the 9/11 attacks wouldn’t come at a cost beyond the lives that may be lost and the anguish of their families. And, the moment our leadership allowed us to believe that the democratic republic that we all hold dear would remain intact regardless.

25 years later, our nation is bitterly divided. Many believe that American democracy is on the brink. And no one can agree as to how we got here, or how we find our way out.

Well, I for one, blame George W. Bush.

I blame him for not inspiring selflessness post-9/11, but instead selfishness. I blame him for squandering the generational opportunity to weave the fabric of our nation tighter through shared sacrifice and creating a ‘new greatest generation’ of Americans, and instead allowing that fabric to begin to slowly erode. And, I blame our former President that rightfully has the respect and admiration of many for also instigating a chain of events in our country that contributed to the rise of Donald Trump.

After all, do you think we would have ever gone to war in Iraq if the whole country had felt the full weight of what it was taking us to wage war in Afghanistan?

I haven’t been able to shake this feeling since the height of the 2024 campaign, and now hate the reality that we’re facing as all Americans are supposed to be celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday. Some will undoubtedly celebrate hard, being perfectly okay with the current state of our country or perfectly okay with being indifferent. But for many of us, myself included, today is full of heartache for a country that I love dearly, know people who’ve given their lives for, and is experiencing a deeply troubling time.

We are a nation that, for as great as we are, deserves better leadership.

Not just in the White House, but elsewhere. And, if you’re like me in addition to celebrating our greatness today, you’ll recommit to ensuring we have greater leadership in the decades to come than those that have preceded. We can’t reverse the effects of failed leadership nearly 25 years ago overnight, but it is possible in this democracy of ours if ‘we the people’ demand it be so.