Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
All in Governing Ourselves
Political parties can be helpful but only if their adherents exercise the self-restraint essential to avoid their dangers to democracy.
Americans have inaccurate views and conflicting expectations about the nation’s finances. An effort to educate us might be a useful step.
The trust essential for a healthy society is common resource but either infinite nor easily renewable. We are depleting that “social commons.”
The NASA mission to recover a sample from the near-earth asteroid Bennu has a lot to teach us about how we address problems back here on our planet.
Political extremism is hard to combat, but encouraging people to open their minds and leaders to support that offers hope.
Americans who prefer as president media celebrities and/or those with no experience in government take risks with their - and democracy’s - future.
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin gave the last speech. He urged delegates to be humble, judicious and virtuous in implementing the new government. That advice still matters.
Democracy thrives when citizens demonstrate civic virtue. Our leaders need to share more stories of it in our daily lives.
Democracy suffers when warring camps on major issues insist their side has to win. Some problems just can’t be solved, but creative ways to manage them can be found.
Our meritocracy - you go as far and high as your talents and energy permit - has downsides. Those at “the top” may feel superior to others, who who lack their opportunities but work equally hard. Those at “the bottom” may feel unappreciated. Neither is good for democracy.
President Harry Truman faced the political fight of his life in the election of 1948 yet risked defeat to significantly advance civil rights enforcement for African Americans.
When we witness, hear about, commit or cannot prevent actions that violate our moral values, we suffer moral injury - and the broader society also often pays a price.
Any trial of Donald Trump is a test of the rule of law on which every American depends for their freedom. We must be be careful lest we fail that test.
Questions drive learning. We should trust our children more to learn from the questions we and they pose in school.
Jim Thorpe was a perfect athlete and an imperfect man. In that he was like so many other public figures. We might be a better society if we can accept and learn from our flawed public figures.
Despite recent calls for a “national divorce,” the United States is a contract ratified by the whole people not a compact of states. Honoring that matters in how we think and behave, as the Constitution’s framers knew.
High-level officials who leave government service often reap large financial gain from drawing on their government assignments. Is this always as good for democracy as it is for them?
The “Citizen’s Guide” offers helpful tips on sixteen core tasks of citizenship. How we answer the questions our role as citizens raise is important for our democracy.
Americans often sour on democracy, yet it’s serving us reasonably well if we take a long-term view.
The peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of American presidential history. We must protect it.
