The Captain's Hand
So what was the tariff thing? A trick? A tease? A test? In the end, it looked like it was a tactical retreat, but some people think the whole thing was a stock manipulation. Surely not. I don’t like the guy on any level, and I’m absolutely certain he’s a grifter, but a grift at that level has to be a step beyond—even for him.
Although I was never very good at management, I studied it in school because I came to believe that the captain is fundamentally important in a ship's safe and profitable operation. The crew must look up at the bridge, even during the worst storm, and see the captain’s steady hand on the wheel. Where America is concerned, we’re part crew and part passengers. The storms and breakers are many. We have an acute need for a strong, dependable, and sane captain.
Many people didn’t like Ronald Reagan, but I liked him. Listening to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” this was the end of the song. I was living the Reagan years and fighting the Cola Wars at the same time.
When Reagan was shot, nobody questioned if it was real. For one thing, his team made sure the entire thing was incredibly transparent. Reagan believed that seeing the truth, even his X-rays, gave people a sense of security. The only real management missstep was when Alexander Haig said he was “in charge here” during the chaos while Ronnie was in the hospital. He wasn’t. Bush was. Haig was kind of weird, anyway.
Nearly every quality I knew of Reagan made me like him. As the parties evolved, he switched from one to the other. Staying more true to your beliefs than your party is a move I’ve made myself a few times.
His wife had a pretty terrible reputation for her exploits in Hollywood. Even as a teen, I’d heard of those. He loved her and respected her and made her an equal partner in his life. Sometimes, if you find a girl that people talk behind her back, and treat her like a lady, and believe in your heart that she is a lady, then she can be more loyal than any other creature on the planet. In the end, Nancy saw Ronald Reagan through the pain of alzheimers. That’s an entirely new level of love and respect.
Reagan was tall and muscular. He had remarkable hair and chiseled features. He rode horses and shot with the best of them. He was like a boy version of Sue Farrington. As Governor of California, he fought for reasonable gun control, even though people questioned his motives.
Even great men make mistakes. When testifying about the Iran-Contra affair, Reagan testified “I don’t recall” more than a hundred and forty times. That will always be part of his legacy. As he had done many times during his career, Oliver North fell on his own sword to protect the president.
Who really was responsible for Iran-Contra? Weisenberger? Schultz? Meese? Ultimately, we may never know because North put his neck on the line. There were avenues where Reagan could have escaped testifying. It was highly unusual for a president to do so. He was president, though, captain of the ship, even if his answers were unsatisfying, he gave them. It’s what we had come to expect of him.
Toward the end, and in the years since, I’ve come to realize that Reagan failed us in some very important areas. I forgive him, though, because you have to judge a leader by what he tries to do and how well he does it, not the times when it didn’t work out the way he hoped.
Like most of America, my exposure to Donald Trump came from Saturday Night Live. I knew a woman who lived in his building who hated him. Everybody I knew in New York had something to say about the guy. He was always in the news and never for good things.
Some people said he was the guy who was never invited to parties, but showed up anyway. I’d seen pictures of him at Studio 54, being ignored by the beautiful people. He had a reputation for coke, like most people in New York in the eighties.
Somebody said he was a friend of Roy Cohn.
“Roy Cohn is still alive?” I said, hoping he wasn’t. Cohn had a reputation as America’s Wormtongue. He earned it.
Donald Trump didn’t write “The Art of the Deal.” Tony Schwartz did. He wasn’t a fan of Trump and had torn new orifices in him in other written pieces, but Cohn suggested that Trump pay him to write his “auto biography,” so Trump did. Schwartz took the money and produced a best seller, knowing it was entirely bullshit.
I’d been out of the loop for a while when they hired Frank Neville to run Millsaps College. He has the same energy and drive as George Harmon, but is generally considered nicer. George not being nice was kind of an inside joke for many years. He was fierce and competitive. He used to walk the halls at the downtown YMCA like a South American predator looking for his next victim on the racquetball court.
Frank hit the ground running and has impressed everybody with his energy and his presence. I like him quite a lot, but if he were ever to start acting as squirrely as the current president of the United States, we’d probably have to have a sit-down. Fortunately, I don’t see that ever happening. I listen every day to see what he’s bringing us.
There’s a contingent that believes Scooter McMillan was the best president Millsaps has ever had. There may be something to that, even if he didn’t have the job for very long and carried the word “iterum” as part of his title the whole time. Part of the story with McMillan is that, no matter how great a job he did at Millsaps, it’s still just a footnote to his entire career. How he went from that to Millsaps, well—that’s a story for another day.
I’m used to what I consider excellent leadership in the position, because I’ve experienced it. Even the ones that didn’t work out that great still worked out pretty well.
When I was a teenager, before I’d had my first official girlfriend, but after my first official kiss (not withstanding being kissed by the governor’s daughter who thought I was 19 when I was 14), there was a party at my mother’s house.
In attendance was the President of Millsaps. The President and Chairman of First National Bank, (who were still two people at this point), the President of Eastover Corp.., the Governor and First Lady of Mississippi, The President of Mississippi Valley Title, Lead Council at Watkins & Eager, and the President of St. Dominics Health Systems, who also happened to be a nun. My job was to fetch ice, help with the drinks, pass out, pick up plates, and generally stay out of the way.
I mention this because I grew up as a puppy playing at the feet of most of Mississippi’s leaders in the seventies and eighties. It’s not a brag. They intimidated and frightened me, but I watched them intently—it gave me a sense of what to look for in leaders. A great leader is somewhere between Bob Hearin, George Harmon, and Sister Josephene.
Sometimes people get upset when I compare Reagan to Trump. It seems like a logical fit to me. They faced many of the same issues. They had polar opposite management styles, though, and Reagan was solidly against even the mention of tariffs. Trump supporters keep telling me it’s a different time and a different situation, but is it?
Jesus said you can’t have two masters. You’ll love one and hate the other. That’s how I feel about Reagan and Trump, you can’t love them both because even though Reagan famously said, “thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” I’m pretty sure he’d make an exception where Trump undoing his life’s work is concerned.
20 mule-team borax.
Good stuff amigo!