Restoring Mutual Respect And Integrity In America
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With so many opposing views, opinions, and information out right now, trying to tell apart fact from fiction has become very challenging. This has also undeniably caused a strain in how people maintain respect and integrity with each other. Bill Stierle and Tom tackle how, in the midst of the current busy political climate, we need to restore some mutual respect and integrity in America. They talk about how you can maintain it and how to tell the truth when it has become increasingly difficult to do so. On the media’s role, Bill and Tom then share how we can discern what has been taken out of context, sinking in deeper into how politicians make meaning and create narratives out of their messages.
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Bill, last time we talked about how we need to restore some mutual respect and integrity in America. There are a couple of good examples that we can use to talk about that.
Tom, this is a good episode. I’m already excited before we even get started about how to restore respect and integrity and how do you maintain it. How do you tell the truth when something that you said or did, did not go well or the way the thing that you said or did was repeated in such a way that it doesn’t fully capture the discussion? This is where regrettably our media and the people that want to promote bias, labels, diagnoses, judgments and criticisms of each other can have a field day in the editing booth. What I mean by that is you can edit a sentence out of context, out of a discussion. The sentence by itself is terrible but in the context of things, there’s a problem. In context, there’s a problem because whatever paragraph was built around that sentence, there were other things going on inside that paragraph that was around that sentence. Let’s do something that’s very valuable. Let’s talk about this restoration of mutual respect and integrity and knowing how to answer a tough question. I’m going to pretend I’m Bernie Sanders and you’re going to pretend that you are the moderator that’s asking the question. What was the question that was asked to Bernie Sanders? What did he say?
“Did you say that a woman could not be elected in 2020?”
If I had been Bernie Sanders, here’s the best answer that he could have given. I’ve got to do this on the fly. I’m not even going to pretend that I even prepared this because here’s what with some training could have done. It might have sounded like this. “I’m glad you brought up that sentence because it’s been swirling around the internet that I said such a thing. Back when I was speaking with Senator Elizabeth Warren about that, the thing that were built around that discussion was the difficulty that we went through after going through the experience of Hillary Clinton and the way Americans approach and aren’t fully respecting women the way they need to. That sentence, ‘I don’t think a woman could be elected in 2020,’ is the amount of doubt and skepticism that was put into the environment that’s unfounded. My history shows how much I’ve supported women over the years.
I’m so glad you brought that up so we can all put this to rest. In that moment, it was not in alignment with integrity that women can’t be elected. They most certainly can be elected. I respect women and I’ve demonstrated that over the years. We have bigger things to talk about rather than a sentence that was cut out of a discussion and being put as an adversarial comment to put disconnection and division in our party. Our party is united. Senator Elizabeth Warren, would you be willing to comment on this because that is a little bit more of the meaning behind, ‘Women couldn’t be elected.’ We went through the amount of doubt and skepticism about a woman leader which I do not agree with. Would you be willing to talk a little bit about your perspective about how you took that?”
All until that last sentence you put out there, I thought if Bernie Sanders had said that, you would hear a pin drop, but then inviting Elizabeth Warren to comment, I would expect her to say, “No, Bernie Sanders. You said that and you meant it.” I would expect her to be argumentative.
I am saying that he rises ten points in the polls. If she becomes argumentative, he rises fifteen in the polls.
He’s taken the high road and he’s invited her to comment, but he also set her up right there with what he said.
Setting the vision through active empathy is talking about the need for truth at a higher level.
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It’s saying, “Yes, they’re trying to divide us.” It’s putting a similar ball on the tee for her to hit. If she takes it, runs it, and hits the ball the way he set it there for her to be successful too. She says, “They are trying to divide us and that’s not what’s going on here. What’s going on here is that the sentence was taken out of context. I see myself as a woman, a strong leader, and I see Bernie Sanders and his values as very important values for the party because it’s the nation we’re going to move forward.” That’s how she could have drafted off of that.
Had he had the presence of mind to approach it that way. What’s interesting is with what you said role-playing Bernie Sanders. You said, “Yes, I said that but here’s what it meant.” He also completely turned it into, “Of course, I support women and a woman can become president.” That was brilliant. All Bernie Sanders has done is deny that he said it.
“That’s not true.” That’s funny that you said that. All he did is deny what he said. He denied it and then put his credentials behind it. Because he denied it, what the media has done is, “Denied.” They did not focus on the back part of the sentence. I took the back part of his narrative and stuck it on the back end of my opening lead which was, “Do you know how messages can be cut up into pieces? Do you know how people are looking to divide people through certain sentences?” If I wanted to do something riskier, from time to time, President Donald Trump is correct.
That would be a stunner. You get everybody’s attention there.
Everybody goes like, “What did Bernie Sanders say? President Donald Trump is correct.” I know it’s only time to time but sometimes he’s taken out of context too. Most of the time, he doesn’t tell the truth but sometimes he’s taken out of context. I know there are only a few times he’s taken out of context and most of the time, he’s not telling the truth. He’s trying to support the people that voted for him. Regrettably, the need for trust and integrity is not met with President Donald Trump. He’s pivoted and kicking the crap out of Donald Trump for the next three sentences. The hard part about the thing that we’re doing in communication is a little strange. It’s not trickery. It is active empathy. That’s what it is. It’s also framing narratives versus trying to allow somebody else to create meaning out of what you said. You don’t want other people to create the meaning out of what you said. You create the meaning out of what you’ve said.
This is weird but Donald Trump is good at it. It’s not a true meaning but he creates the meaning and he stays with the meaning. “This means this and because there’s a partial truth to it and you’ve been propagandized to believe this to be true, this is the meaning I am going to stand for it.” Ronald Reagan used to do that. He used to stand and define a very strong meaning that had a certainty around it. People love that certainty. He looked like a strong leader. He wasn’t Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter was a collaborator and some people don’t like the collaborator mindset. Some people like the competitive mindset. Capitalism has a competitive mindset.
Even the power over mindset.
Some people like that. It’s like, “My dad was an authoritarian. I loved my father. He gave me some good things, but he did beat the crap out of me. It taught me to be strong.” A person spins a meaning out of it. Meanwhile, your dad didn’t do kindness and didn’t respect you as a kid. He didn’t appreciate that you were only ten when he hit you the way he did.
It was quite something to see these two people fighting each other in the democratic debate rather than setting the vision and showing leadership.
Setting the vision through active empathy is talking about the need for truth at a higher level and not to get caught in many of the spit matches that Donald Trump gets caught in and he’s spitting back and forth. He’s getting likes, traction and exposure but there is this rot that comes along with that because integrity is lost on how all men are created equal in the eyes of God. How do you do that as a government principle? We all know everybody is not created equal. We all know that there are all kinds of different levels of inequality that’s going on. At the same time, do we need to give the rich person six dice to roll and the poor person one dice to roll in order to play the game? I don’t know if that is called fair or equal. It isn’t.
It’s not to say that the person might not be smarter or do a better job of rolling or be luckier with the dice that they roll and because they keep rolling the dice, but you don’t want to take the dice away from six poor people and give it to the one rich person because you think they roll the dice better. That’s not what’s happening here. I want to do a moment of awareness regarding truth. It has to do with what’s the best time to talk about disagreements in leadership. Is it better to talk about it in front of people or is it better to talk about it not in front of people? Tom, your parents might have said this or they might have demonstrated this. “Don’t fight in front of the kids. Take your arguments and your conflicts and at least work them out between each other before you come out and inform about what happened.” I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience.
I completely agree. You don’t have those kinds of arguments in public. Parents shouldn’t have certain kinds of arguments in front of the kids. I’m a child of divorce. My parents got divorced when I was fairly young. I do not have a memory of my parents fighting. I’m lucky I don’t have a memory of it. Chances are it didn’t happen or it made quite an impression on me at six years old.
There are two different ways it can be taken. One is there’s the no talk and then divorce. It affects things like trust and certainty because I thought they were getting along, now they are completely not getting along. Where is the gap in communication? What happened here? The other one is if they fight in front of you and then don’t clean it up, you’ve got this is how you fight to a place of non-resolve and then you get divorced. That’s the second tragic modeling. The meaning-making and the framing of this are also very important too to capture what the truth is. In many divorce mediation, what’s missing is how do you fight cleanly, openly, demonstrate and show how restoration or closure on an argument can go all the way to the finish line rather than the trauma builds up and then you got a divorce and then you got two nice dead parents living in the same house. They’re either walking on eggshells or they’re lashing out independently of each other. The awareness piece is Elizabeth Warren trying to pursue truth at a time that did not serve her.
What could I say at the expense of leadership, demonstrating vision and certainty about the future of America?
How am I as a voter? I know from a binary position if it’s Elizabeth Warren or Donald Trump, I’m probably going to take Elizabeth Warren. From a leadership position, if I’m more on the fence, I don’t want to hear my leader arguing in front of somebody else, splitting and calling them, “Why did you say that I was a liar in front of the people?” It’s not a healthy conflict and it can’t be finished there. There are mics on there.
Here’s where I would like at some point is to have a woman guest on the show or a participant because it’s hard for a couple of middle-aged guys to talk about a female candidate in some ways. However, I’m going to make a comment here. Because Elizabeth Warren didn’t set the vision, take the high road, have that discussion in private accusing Bernie Sanders even through the moderator of making this statement and she set it on her own too, forcing Bernie Sanders to say, “Yes, I did,” or “No, I didn’t.” I’m concerned in some ways that that hurts her overall candidacy and credibility with the citizens of the US in general because it shines even larger light on the fact that she is a woman and talking about whether a woman can be elected or not. Of course, a woman can be elected. That’s an absurd statement. Let’s talk about the future of America. Let’s set the vision. Let’s talk about the things that we need to be doing not debating this tiny point.
It might have sounded like this. I’m going to pretend I’m her and this next sentence is not a man or a woman sentence. It is a leadership integrity sentence and a respect sentence. From time to time, people believe and have believed in the past that women can’t lead. We have many examples of women leading both internationally and here at home in the United States. We have strengths. Women have strength. It’s not necessarily the same kind of strength that men have but it’s still strength. We lead with our wisdom, compassion and ability to be decisive. As many women out there know, we don’t fully get the acknowledgment or recognition we get, let alone the respect when sentences like this are said in public.
That’s smart because she didn’t have to say, “Bernie Sanders, you said this. Did you say this? Admit you said this or deny you said this.” No, that’s not the issue.
Stay with integrity and respect. Extend respect to the person’s belief that said that because there are voters out there that have that belief. You don’t want to get near that belief women can’t be elected. You don’t want it repeated. This is the last time I’m ever going to face this. Do you know how many times, from this moment on, they’re going to be asked about that question? What a waste. None of them, neither of them, any of them including Tom Steyer knows how to do that. His best sentence on the mic right there as he’s sitting there with deer in the headlights in that awkward moment, he needed to look at both of them and say, “We have a need for privacy right now and we’re working together collectively in order to make a difference here for America. Would the two of you be willing to?”
If he says that on there and that goes viral, he moves up to 10 to 15 points. He would be seen as a leader. He’s not seeing as deer in headlights with conflict. I felt exasperated because both there’s awareness piece, the inability to handle emotions, the inability to handle conflicts and navigate messaging that’s life-serving rather than messaging what you do not want in the environment. The judgment is to shut that down. The qualification time is to move it through to closure. It’s facing it and then moving it through to closure.
This is going to be the sound bite that doesn’t go away or the wedge issue. It’s such a distraction. It’s a shame. Doesn’t it show you that people without skills in command of language and communication are at such risk in all these debates of doing more harm to themselves than good?
Without some skill and ability, it’s very hard for them with the tools and the language mindsets that they have, the ability to jump in there and mix it up with people who have different beliefs and be able to not be in a place of agreement with that person, but be in a place of empathy and compassion that the person is holding the belief. Not discounting the value of their life on the planet by disagreeing with that belief. They’ve invested a lot in that.
The thing about what you said, role-playing Elizabeth Warren, was so brilliant. Not only did she avoid the issue, it wasn’t an issue of whether Bernie Sanders said it or not. You turn that into an advantage for her and a benefit but the implication for a lot of people would still be that Bernie Sanders did probably say that, but she didn’t have to say that.
She didn’t have to say that. She would use it to draft on. You want to draft on what the last person said. You don’t have to always say, “I agree with this and that.” You don’t have to do that. You say, “I value whatever the need that the last person spoke from.” A lot of the mistakes that the candidates are making energetically is trying to get their explanation in and they’ve got to cut that out. It’s not the strongest narrative. The strongest narrative is to listen to the question and find out what the person is asking about, then talk about how they stand for that need and say, “Women can’t win in 2020, did you say that sentence?”
“Senator Bernie Sanders, did you say a woman cannot win in 2020?”
“Equality in America with women has not been met for a long time. It’s so important that equality takes place. The skill and mastery that women leaders and legislators is clear throughout our entire history, let alone international leaders that do a wonderful job. As the President of the United States, I am so interested in creating equality so that women have the same opportunity as men. I am not interested in having a debate about a sentence that’s taking out of a context of the ability to take a shot at women equality. It is not true.” What did I say wasn’t true? I said what wasn’t true that my value of equality, that I don’t see women as equal. That’s what the rub is. You never take the rub. You go after what the important need is. Women as equality is what the need is. All you’ve got to do is start with the need and roll it out. Notice we’ve cultivated on this discussion class A or A+ responses to a sticking point.
You gave one that Bernie Sanders could have said and one that Elizabeth Warren could have said. It highlights the skill that’s needed to be more effective. If anybody on Bernie Sanders’ campaign, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, the Joe Biden’s campaign or Mike Bloomberg’s, who knows, but whoever is going to get the nomination and go up against Donald Trump, please get some skills before you get to any of these debates with Donald Trump. You start having messaging going back from one party to the other because that’s going to be a whole different ball game.
One of the things that Barack Obama did very well is he stayed above the fray and talked about the leadership, working with the other side, the other side is polarized, how you’re going to do that. He stepped into the answer of, “This is what polarized things look like but understanding what’s happening on the other side and why the discontent is there.” That swung 20% of the votes in his direction or 15% to 20% of the votes in his direction in order to lift him into the presidency. He never went back on that even with the level of obstruction that the other party presented to him with a great deal of collusion between all the party members to go like, “We’re going to block him every single way and we’re going to make sure no legislation even gets to be voted on this guy.” He even knows that that was going on behind closed doors. He’s trying to talk with them for a year and they’re thinking, “We’re going to string this guy out.”
They did it for a year and he’s going, “Forget it. They’re stringing us out now.” Finally, they voted on the healthcare and passed it and stuff like that. The movement, the awareness of how to restore collaboration and cooperation in our government is what’s next because of the impeachment and the messaging that Donald Trump has been impeached. He is an impeached president and he is going to be now voted on whether or not the need for integrity or mutual respect is going to show up inside the hearts and minds of the seven Republicans that are going to walk across the aisle. The seven Republicans that will walk across the aisle. When they do, they get to have this language so they can have their off-ramp. I’m giving Republicans an off-ramp right now. They need an off-ramp bad because the inexpensive freeway that they have built in order to “win” at the expense of the system is demonstrating that they have no money left for infrastructure to keep their freeway going. Let’s see if we can have them get some help.
They need some help because they want an off-ramp. They don’t like Donald Trump but some of them are afraid to cross Donald Trump.
Look at Justin Amash. If I was living in Michigan, I’d vote for Justin Amash in a heartbeat. I would vote for him in a second. I’d go, “You’re a Republican but you took the heat and stayed through it and said that there was enough evidence, you bailed early and you got out early. You might be a candidate for president by doing that because of your courage to do what’s right versus follow the pack.”
That’s what integrity looks like.
Let’s do this off-ramp. The off-ramp for the senators might sound like Mitt Romney, a former presidential candidate, might start out his press conference like this, “In leadership, we need to have the ability to make very difficult decisions. Sometimes, half the people won’t like it. The other half of the people like the way that we made the decision. If we’re going to be able to work with each other, you’ve got to get used to the difficulty and the courage it takes to make difficult decisions. This is what good leaders do and because of that, I am choosing to vote for having witnesses. I know that by standing for this, many people will not like this. In order to meet the need for integrity, for the system, for law and order, for justice, for fairness at all levels of our government, this is what’s necessary for me to do.”
Notice how the energy changed on the show. It was like, “You’re putting a stake in the ground, a marker for yourself about what integrity for the entire system looks like. That sounds like a good idea. Are you running again?” That puts him back into the leadership consideration place. The people in his state love him. He’s Mormon, he’s wealthy and he’s doing the whole Utah thing. He has fought and stuck good things there and made things better. The state has a great deal of powerful quality in it. It has some wonderful social issues that are balanced with fiscal responsibility to go inside the state. It’s got the blend of the things.
He showed extreme leadership in leading the 2002 Winter Olympics which is also a beautifully non-partisan body. That helped him tremendously and did him great credit.
When leadership makes these difficult decisions, builds alliances and then it’s okay from time to time to burn the bridge of partisanship. I don’t agree with that. That’s not congruent with where the greater good needs to go. You can use that phrase, “Here’s where the greater good needs to go. Here’s where the greatness of America lies.” There’s a slogan for one of the candidates if they would like that. It’s not making America great again or keep America great because both of those things are very static. One is anchored in the past as if there’s some illusionary thing when America was great and the World War II, etc. We pick the higher cause but have fought for others because it was terrible. We don’t want to be on the other side of that.
The cost of negative messages, the inability to communicate through conflicts, has been a constant casualty for the different candidates.
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We don’t want to be the country that is making the mess that the other countries then start ganging up on us because they say to themselves, “They’ve got the largest military, yet here are some ways for things not to go well for them. It doesn’t matter how much military they have because you can break a country by getting them to overspend on their military.” This is what Ronald Reagan did to the Russians with the nuclear arms race. We got them to bankrupt themselves by trying to keep up with the number of missiles we were doing. Their mindset is to make more missiles at the expense of the economy. Ronald Reagan goes like, “We’ll keep making them until you go broke.” We outspent them in order to break them and finally, we’re going like, “Enough is enough.”
It’s interesting, Tom. We’ve won a distance with this. The cost of negative messages, the costs of the inability to communicate through conflicts has been a constant casualty for the different candidates. On the soft side of defense, the inability to engage conflicts effectively has also not allowed candidates to move up. Cory Booker would be a good example of this. How do you engage a conflict with strength? During the Brett Kavanaugh trial, it might have sounded like this, “You are applying for this job. You do not need my vote. You have those nine other people or seven other people over there that are going to vote for you no matter what. For you to take the time to scream at us, that is not in alignment with judges. They’re going to put your ill-temper in the highest court thinking that you’re going to be a measured person that you’re going to show jurisprudence.”
It doesn’t matter at this point, how much Chuck Grassley would bang the gavel and say, “You could bang the gavel all you want and now you can put him on the things. He is not allowed to scream at us, let alone paint this entire picture in order to disrespect us and if you vote for him.” Jeff Flake would have a problem with that. He cannot vote for him anymore because he put Jeff Flake in the thing and that might have gotten Brett Kavanaugh thrown out. That was Cory Booker’s moment. They don’t have the courage or the skill to keep their voice alive during conflict, whether it’s Tom Steyer in the small example that we talked about or Cory Booker in a bigger example and Kamala Harris. They don’t have the ability to work through it. Regrettably, they don’t have any skill but they’re elected.
It’s amazing they got elected without the skills. That’s an interesting subject to ponder for a future episode. Now that they’re there and they’re all going for the highest post in the land, you do highlight that the one that gets some skills could rule the country.
They could take leadership to the next level. They can knock the gate through the gridlocks that are currently in place. They could build coalitions that would have those various different gridlocks and have no place to go or not be a part of our narrative anymore. There are a lot of things to dismantle, a lot of temporary language and things that have been tragic. The next time we’re together, I’d want to go after the cost of these negative messages. That’s a part of that when negative messages pounded in a person’s direction, the cost of that and what it does to the physiology of the voter. That would be a good place for us to start.
I look forward to it, Bill. Thanks so much.
Thanks, everybody.
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