What do we need to trust our politicians and elected officials?
Friend Anna and I spent three hours together in the pottery studio today talking about this and other things. Walk the talk, of course, we agreed. And when you fuck up, because we all do, own it. Admit ya’ done wrong. There may be a fine line between making excuses and giving ourselves grace for the circumstances that brought about our transgression, but regardless, accountability, simple and difficult, is key for earning and maintaining trust. What else do we need to trust you? What do our leaders need to trust us, their supporters (or opponents)?
I have been a fan and follower of Brené Brown for years, and I like to think I have integrated many of her central tenets and practices in my life, professionally and personally. She introduced her BRAVING framework, the so-called anatomy of trust, in Rising Strong, and further developed it in subsequent books Braving the Wilderness and Dare to Lead.
Take a look at the seven elements of trust: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault (confidentiality), Integrity, Nonjudgment, and Generosity. What think you? How many and which ones could be absent and you would still trust someone? With whom and about what do you think, speak, and act with all seven?
Brown also references and incorporates tenets from Charles Feltman’s The Thin Book of Trust, in which he (per Google AI overview) “defines trust not as an abstract feeling, but as something built on four distinct assessments. In his framework, trust is the assessment that what is important to you is safe with another person’s actions, while distrust is the assessment that it is not.
“The four distinctions of trust are:
“Care: The assessment that you have the other person’s best interests at heart and will not act solely out of self-interest. It means looking out for the well-being of others and protecting what matters to them.
“Sincerity: The assessment that you are honest, say what you mean, mean what you say, and express your opinions and feelings genuinely. It is the alignment between your internal thoughts and external actions.
“Reliability: The assessment that you keep your promises and fulfill your commitments. It means your actions match your words over time, making your behavior predictable and dependable.
“Competence: The assessment that you have the specific ability, skills, knowledge, and resources to do what you say you will do or what is expected of you. Competence is situational and domain-specific.”
It is a actually very thin book, and worth reading.
On walking the talk: I have recommended Barack Obama and Ben Sasse’s memoirs this week. I think it’s important to hear and read our leaders’ own words, spoken and written out of the spotlight and in their most thoughtful and nonperformative states. But even then, it’s just talk. So I look for town hall meeting footage, images of candid moments, and assessments made by others who know them, and whom I trust. My cynical brain whispers that it could all be staged, that we never see these people’s real selves. I don’t believe that. We just have to look, listen, and think harder at them as whole people and make our assessments as honestly as possible.
Funny how honesty itself is not listed in either framework of trust, right? Maybe that’s because honesty is too hard to assess?. How does honesty manifest–how do we feel it? It’s sincerity and reliability, repeatedly.
Trust takes time and multiple instances of interaction and observation to establish and deepen. Just like high blood pressure, one measurement does not the diagnosis make. Context matters. Lifestyle matters. Measurement devices matter. We can withhold judgment about a person/leader’s character and trustworthiness until we’ve witnessed multiple real instances of expression, and not jump to conclusions after just seeing the viral click-bait instigations. Trust is also partly intuitive, and heavily influenced by our default biases. So we must also be self-aware about our default mistrusts.
I often think of trust as a great oak tree: Stable, and strong, reverent and admirable. But when branches are broken, they do not grow back and the tree remains forever altered. So while fully grown and deeply rooted trust can withstand myriad challenging forces, it must also be tended and protected to flourish long term. That’s relationship and communication.
Of the seven BRAVING elements, accountability and integrity come up most frequently in my assessments and conversations. What about you?
There are no shortcuts, no substitutes for time, thought, care, patience, experience, and real human connection. These are the ingredients of good leadership and policy cooking, and we need better folks in organizational kitchens everywhere. Poor metaphor of fantasy incoming: What if this Congress rolled up its sleeves and engaged fully and in good faith with the proverbial, messy sausage making machine? What would that crew look like and need?
Calm, knowledgeable, creative, exacting head chef. Multiple competent, energetic, collaborative sous chefs. Reliable lighting, appliances, cookware, and physical plant. Efficient and effective back of the house staff. Friendly, engaged, well-compensated servers. Welcoming, clean, inclusive space and ambience. Skeptical and fair critics with well respected platforms. High standards for safety and working conditions for all. Windows into the kitchen so consumers may watch their food being made, and so appreciate the labor and complexity involved. This is the ideal situation, of course, like a Michelin starred restaurant. The reality of legislative cooking seems more like Ratatouille.
Barack Obama’s memoir of his first term, The Promised Land, calls me to listen again. Oh how I miss seeing him and hearing his words on a regular basis, so inspiring and motivating. The book is long and fascinating. I listened at 1.2x until the last chapter–didn’t want it to end, and I’m still waiting for the second term edition.
So much happened between 2009 and 2013, but the most memorable part of the book chronicled the creation of the Affordable Care Act–in excrutiating detail. It may have been why I sped up the playback; the frustration and sense of repeatedly stalled progress practically gave me heartburn as listener; I can only imagine what it felt like in the White House and congressional chambers. I am so proud that all involved finally hammered something out that has outlived many of their terms in office. I consider it a win for Progressives and the general population, but I wonder how it could have been made better had the process not been quite so adversarial. It did not occur to me until just now to seek an alternative perspective on the process. Ask Google and you shall receive…
Query: “Boener account of ACA negotiations” AI Overview: “In his memoir, On the House: A Washington Memoir, former House Speaker John Boehner presents a highly critical account of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) negotiations, blaming what he viewed as President Barack Obama’s “haughty” negotiation style while simultaneously disparaging his own party’s subsequent strategies to dismantle it. [1, 2] “His reflections on the ACA span the initial 2009–2010 legislative battle and the subsequent 2013 government shutdown: Initial 2009 Negotiations: Boehner (who was House Minority Leader at the time) claims that a “bunch” of Republicans were open to finding a bipartisan, common-sense compromise on healthcare. However, he asserts that President Obama chose to negotiate “behind closed doors” and was too rigid, pushing the final bill too far to the left rather than engaging in genuine cross-party outreach. “The 2013 Government Shutdown: Boehner recounts the intense pressure he faced from the Tea Party faction to hold the federal debt ceiling and government funding hostage in exchange for defunding Obamacare. He famously writes that he knew the strategy was a “dumbass” idea and likened it to being “on the Titanic playing chicken with an iceberg.” However, he felt compelled to go along with it because it was his job as the Republican leader. [1, 2] “The “Repeal and Replace” Illusion: Following his retirement, Boehner openly laughed at the Republican campaign promises of a quick “repeal and replace.” He noted that in his 25 years in Congress, Republicans never once agreed on what a healthcare alternative should actually look like. He warned party leaders that passing a repeal without a viable replacement would leave them entirely responsible for a broken system. [1] “Ultimately, Boehner acknowledged that the core framework of the ACA—including protections for pre-existing conditions and allowing adult children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26—was here to stay, and that his party would only ever be able to conservatively tweak its margins rather than fully destroy it. [1]”
The work, the time, the cooks, the kitchen, the end product, the failed attempts to unmake it: Sausage. Some love it, some hate it. Nobody sees it as high cuisine.
Medicare, Medicaid, Women’s suffrage, Title 9: I bet they all looked and felt similar in the political cookhouses of their times. For now, they and the ACA stand, more or less in their inceptual forms, no?
Interestingly, this is NOT the case (pun!) with Roe v. Wade or marriage equality. Wisely, RBG expressed her concerns about the fragile vulnerability of abortion rights, and here we are.
Google AI overview of ‘case that decided marriage equality’
What legislation tops your priority list? How do you envision that sausage getting made? Who should lead the effort, and what cooking methods do you endorse them to use? Do you wish them to rule the kitchen as harsh dictator, cultural guru, or something else? What costs of your method do you recognize, and how willing are you to pay them (or let someone else pay) in the short and long terms?
It’s so easy for us to demand legislators to ‘get sh*t done’, then yell at them when we don’t hear what we want when they speak publicly. But when we hold their positions hostage to our most extreme and rigid ideological standards, what leeway, autonomy, and creativity do we allow them to do the job we expect?
I had not intended to write so many nights in a row about politics for this 30 day blog challenge. But it’s kind of perfect, and I feel a cosmic smirk at the corners of my lips. The embers of my activist heart reignite a little with each post and it feels gratifying. “Activate to collaborate,” I want to say.
How can we each fan the flames of connection in service of good sausage making?
I listen to James Talarico’s victory speech as I write tonight, on the advice of two friends who referenced it after reading last night’s post. See highlights quoted below.
I spoke with both Blue and Red voting friends today. The primary shared sentiment is a profound desire for the bickering and ideological warfare to end, for legislators to finally sit down and work together to solve problems (Iran, economy, healthcare) and make policy that will reliably outlive their terms in office. We want stability in government, upright character at the helm in each governmental entity (though most of us are still skeptical of this dream), and relief from the politics of hate. Across the voting spectrum, nobody I know wants time, energy, or resources wasted on frivolous, performative, vengeful retaliation from either side. Legislators have a chance, a narrow window of oppourtunity, so show they can actually legislate at all meaingfully–to ‘get sh*t done’.
Talarico’s speech sounds optimistic and hopeful, but it’s easy to cheerlead for your own team. He preaches about love and bridging, and I believe he is sincere. I believe he has the skills and conviction the Senate needs. But holy cow, the headwinds he will face. I have commented on various platforms today, “May he withstand and resist the forces that test this conviction. May we all step up to uphold and amplify. This will be a test for us all.”
So how will we rise to the challenge? How crazy that I did not include Mónica Guzmán’s book I Never Thought of It That Way among my recommendations last night? She is a force of nature for curiosity, humility, openness, learning, sitting with the discomfort of disagreement and even conflict, and walking the talk. I’m glad I can devote an entire post to encouraging us all to study her approach and method for bridging across differences. I listened early last year and would benefit from a repeat of study.
From her website: “We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own built-in curiosity. “Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding one another is hurting our relationships and our society. In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people. “She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours. “Drawing from cross-partisan conversations she’s had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her own family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want, curiously. In these pages, you’ll learn:
How to ask what you really want to know (even if you’re afraid to)
How to grow smarter from even the most tense interactions, online or off
How to cross boundaries and find common ground—with anyone
”Whether you’re left, right, center, or not a fan of labels: If you’re ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times—in your own life, at least—Mónica’s got the tools and fresh, surprising insights to prove that seeing where people are coming from isn’t just possible. It’s easier than you think.”
I know not everybody is ready to connect with folks who voted the other way. But if you have any inkling to try, if you can imagine any scenario in which you could possibly muster even the smallest effort, this book could boost your morale exponentially. Read it with a likeminded friend. Challenge each other to embrace some discomfort in service of narrowing the political chasms in your own lives. Relationships take work. We are all in relationship, like it or not. How much better could it be if we all stepped forth and exercised our civic responsibility to uphold a civil society?
We elect officials to lead us. But we must lead them in return. Accountability for the state of the union lands on each of us in our daily attitudes and interactions, not just on election day.
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Talarico victory speech highlights: “We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. “We went up against more than $300 million, more than any Senate campaign in American history. We went up against all the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots and AI deep fakes that money can buy. Those attacks were the final howls of a dying establishment. The death rattle of a status quo that knows its days are numbered. “We built a movement unlike any this state has ever seen. We united Texans from all backgrounds and beliefs onto one team to take on this broken, corrupt political system. First time voters, three time Trump voters, working people from every corner of this state who are fed up and ready for change. “To the Texans who supported this movement, I am humbled by your trust and I will work every day to be worthy of it. And to the Texans who didn’t vote for me, I will be your senator too. I will always serve you. I will always fight for you. This win is not about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. It’s much bigger than that. “My granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, and when I was little, he told me that we follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments, love God and love neighbor, because there is no love of God without love of neighbor. “Because despite our differences, we all want the same things; a safe neighborhood, a good job, a high quality, well-funded public school, and the ability to see a doctor when we need one. But the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they want us at each other’s throats. They want us focused on how we’re different instead of on how we’re the same. They want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them. “The real fight in this country is not left versus right. It is top versus bottom. The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided, because our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power. We saw it in this race. We saw it in every billionaire funded attack ad. “The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets. That they are defunding our schools, that they are gutting our healthcare, that they are raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves. It is the oldest strategy in the world, divide and conquer. “But tonight we sent a crystal clear message to the people at the top. We will not be conquered. I think it’s safe to say that we are tired of being pitted against each other. We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been 10 years of this kind of politics, politics as blood sport, politics as trolling and owning, politics as professional wrestling. “It tears families apart. It ends friendships and it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time. People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love. “My faith teaches me that love is the strongest force in the universe. Love is not passive. Love is not neutral. Love is not weak. Love requires that we stand between the bullies and the bullied. Love requires that we look evil in the eye and not blink. That kind of love has always been a threat to the powers that be. That kind of love is revolutionary. That kind of love is creative. “Love can turn a student into a scholar. Love can turn a closet into a nursery. Love can turn an enemy into a friend. Love can turn a campaign into a movement. Love, love can heal what’s broken in America. We can’t defeat the politics of division with more division. We can’t win that game. We have to change the game. “In my experience, when you extend an open hand rather than a closed fist, you’ll be surprised by who takes that hand. We didn’t win this race by alienating our neighbors, or shaming our neighbors, or ridiculing our neighbors. We embodied a new kind of politics, a politics rooted in a deep love for our state, for our country, and most importantly, for all of our neighbors.”
