Madden Mischief

That’s the lesson we learned from President Biden’s passing his baton or torch or whatever you want to call surrendering your cognitive driver’s license when stepping down as a candidate for reelection as President.

It resulted from successive flubs in those no flub zones, nationally televised interviews and presidential debates.

Flubs in those zones are graver, much more noticeable and serious offences that many, particularly opponents, seize upon as capital crimes especially when their age starts with a 7 or 8.  Then they’ll be rounding up possies to go after their ass, and try to string up the old mother flubber, metaphorically speaking.

It’s compounded when you walk too stiff like you’re always on eggshells and you respond like you’ve just woken up in the middle of the night. 

Leaders today not only must not flub, but must be on their toes, and look and sound full of energy and vigor and project super, wide-awake and alert self-confidence 24/7. 

If you want to lead, you’d better act dynamic, enthusiastic and wide awake 24/7 especially about the future you’re heralding.

Don’t just cast your adversaries as screwballs mired in the past, blind to what’s plaguing the poor, crippled by self-interest or too damned biased toward billionaires, too beholden to big donors to reign fairly and objectively. 

Look how vice president and now nominee for President Kamala Harris spoke so vibrantly in Wisconsin about protecting a woman’s right to control her own body, while on another channel VP candidate JD looked dour as he scorned childless women, especially one running for the highest, most procreative office.  That contrast had better shape up to more enthusiasm and energy evenness.

Today, energy defines us especially when it’s friendly and playing to the crowd, and no one’s more a master at this than Trump. 

Trump has fossil-fueled energy to burn, not with just the gas and oil he courts.  He has charm and engagement in abundance.  Spirit galore.  And it’s a wonder he’s only a little bit ahead in the polls.

Trump’s opponents say he has too much energy, which causes trouble, and he must be docketed and confined in a court of law.  The Left cheers when he’s convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

But what did it do to Trump?  Made him more money, energized his base and has propelled him to fight harder.  Has it propelled him to higher ground?  We’ll have to see.

So, I would urge, whatever political side you’re on, let it be the court of public opinion, not a court of law that decides who’ll be our next President.

And let’s not judge our next President on just the energy levels alone or the width and depth of their smiles that he or she projects, but on the ideas, the policies and programs they’re espousing at this critical time for our Nation in a world full of turmoil and whack jobs leading powerful and aggressive autocracies. 

Let this be an election between candidates with clearly drawn positions so voters will have more substance and issues to vote upon, instead of choosing one personality over another or picking the best mudslinger. 

Yes, everybody, let’s get out of the mud zone before it motivates another creep like Crooks who next time might not flub as did our Secret Service in letting him roost on that roof. 

Let’s have a fair and honest election, one that whether we win or lose will be democratically fulfilling and suitably sensible for the greatest country on earth, The United States of America.

Tom Madden is an author of countless articles, blogs and books, his latest Planetary Lifeguard, Blowing the Whistle on Climate Change.  When he’s not writing books, he’s rewriting news releases at TransMedia Group, the international public relations firm he founded when he left NBC in New York City, where he was vice president, assistant to the president, then programming whiz Fred Silverman.