I was sitting in church last week in my normal spot, second from the back row because I’m not a back bencher. You cannot avoid overhearing what people around you are saying when you are sitting in church.
There was a group of older ladies talking about their dismay and disappointment with the way kids are these days but how happy they were knowing that their children were raised in the church so they weren’t “that way”.
I couldn’t help but speculate how their kids were. But then it occurred to me that even though their kids were raised in the church, they were citizens of the world and away from the church, their kids had to compete with other kids who didn’t have the benefit of Christian teaching. And even then, temptations of the world are the biggest magnet for pulling kids raised in the church away and into the secular world. That learning the lessons in Sunday School might expose you to God’s messages, but that alone didn’t prevent other “preachers” from offering competing ideas.
So who are those other preachers? Well, our public school system is the place we send our kids to learn. So the preachers who are in the pulpit most of your kid’s life are teachers in whatever school your kids attend. If your kids go to Sunday School on Sunday then go to public schools Monday through Friday, which one do you think will have the greater influence?
That’s right, the teachers in the public schools have your kid’s attention five or six or seven hours during the day, five days per week. Under ideal circumstances, those teachers are exposing the class to Reading, Writing and Arithmetic along with Science, History and Social Studies. If you teach a kid to read, that child can accomplish almost anything. If you can’t read, you will be challenged to learn any of the other essentials. If you can read, you can teach yourself almost anything. If the public school system has one mission, it’s to teach kids to read. And yet, the failure rate for elementary school age children in learning to read has never been higher than today.
This little rant is one I often land on. If education has one vital function, it’s to teach reading and reading is the heart of our body of learning. Give a kid a weak heart and he will be handicapped the rest of his life.
Because I am a pundit, I wanted to insert myself into that conversation in church, but I did not. I didn’t have to bite my tongue, I just sat there silently.
Kids raised in the church on Sunday and in a Christian school during the week have a better chance of being a competent reader than kids in public schools because in my view, if you can’t read, you can’t read your Bible. But being in a Christian school doesn’t guarantee a Christian education.
Who makes the decision about who is teaching our kids and what they are being taught matters. The people in decision making positions decide who and what will be taught. So in your circle of influence, who is making those decisions? Do you know the names of your school board members? Do you know any of them personally? How about the principal at your kid’s elementary school? How about your kid’s teacher?
You put your kids into the care of these people and you probably don’t know enough about them to say with confidence they are teaching my kids the things they will need to know to be successful in the world or conversely, that they are not teaching your kids things that will undermine the values you think are important in your family.
I have to admit, today, I do not know the names of the school board members in our school district. My daughter and her kids are all well past public school age. I will say that when they were in school I did know most of the people in those positions.
Not everyone knows that typically, your public school district is the largest employer and business entity in your community.
When I shot my mouth off in 1987 and was critical of the city, I ran for city council because I thought my ideas made more sense than the ones I saw coming out of city hall. It could just as easily been a run for the school board.
I saw my local government heading in the wrong direction and rather than staying quiet, I spoke up and ran for office. I was advised by people I respect to stay quiet because I was in business in town. I answered with a typical STEVE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY answer. “The reason we are in this pickle today is because we stayed quiet and the ones now making the decisions have their own agenda.”
And that is my core message in everything I write about. The decisions that affect every aspect of our lives are made by the people at the table or the ones out in front. From 1987 until 2021, I served in some capacity governing the city of Snohomish Washington. Not because I they couldn’t get someone else to do it, but because the other people wanting the job had a different agenda than mine.
I put my business and my family at risk because I believed serving is our obligation and because a number of the other people wanting the jobs believed in different principles.
I recently wrote about Capitalism vs Progressivism. I am the Capitalist, they are the Progressives. A city’s first obligation is public safety. If people are not safe, what other function can a city provide that makes living there worth the risk? For all my years in government, I prioritized economic development because I understood that services like public safety (cops and firefighters) are paid for with taxes and in our state, sales taxes coming to the city are the life blood of spending. Are you with me? I’m the Capitalist on the council. I’m focused on making money for the city. Many of my council colleagues were the Progressives. All they could care about was how to spend the money. Sadly today, nearly all the council members are Progressives.
I ran for office because I thought, If not me, then who? Remember, I’m a near back bencher so that little pearl resonated with me. Send me Lord.
The most impactful lesson I learned during my thirty-four years of public service was the importance of showing up, to serve, to criticize and offer alternatives or to support the ones that do.
I started this essay today talking about learning to read and reading our Bibles and who is teaching our kids. If I had been motivated to run for school board rather than city council, my life would be different today and my school district would be different as well. The people sitting in those school board seats have a lot to do with what your kids are taught and what they are not taught. The quality of education in our country is determined by the ones who show up; to run for school board, to serve in the PTA to serve as a volunteer or teacher’s aid. Multiply that obligation by the number of school districts in the state or the country and you will see the scope of the job. But the lesson wasn’t a generic who, it was “will it be YOU?”
I don’t want to be too churchy in this, but one of every pastor’s core messages is “Nobody can do everything, but Everybody can do something.” There is an obligation to serve in some capacity in our churches, our schools, our cities, counties and states. Nobody is asking you to serve thirty-four years like I did, but you should do your compulsory duty to serve for a few years, even if it’s only during the years when your own kids are in school.
The decisions about what your kids are being taught are made by people who believe things differently than you do. Are you really surprised when you find out that the kids can’t read, or write, or do arithmetic? When I was in the restaurant business, I added a simple third grade math test to every job application I passed out to kids applying for work in my restaurant. If they couldn’t do third grade math as seventeen year old juniors in high school, I couldn’t hire them. My employees needed to know how to read and do simple math. And sadly, there were a disappointing number of kids who couldn’t fill out either side of the application.
The ones that showed up made the decisions about which kids were left behind. Or which ones were dragged along even though they couldn’t read.
Our country today is over run by almost fifty years of “graduates” from the public education system that cannot read or do simple math. Our education system is cranking out millions of kids heading off to college that cannot read, write a complete sentence or work a simple logic problem.
We get what we settle for. I was never willing to settle for less because that was all the system required.
If you wonder how you kid will fare in the world with the poor quality of her education, ask yourself one question, “What was MY contribution to a successful outcome for my child?”
Our school systems are screwed because we left the decisions to other people that showed up. Our city governments, county governments, state governments and our federal government are screwed up because most of us left the decisions to other people who showed up and they got their way and your kids got shafted.
We as a people don’t even bother to participate at the level of voting for the candidates who run for office. You don’t have to commit for four years, you just have to show up on election day and you won’t even do that.
Those ladies in that group at church don’t realize the ripples on the pools of their lives have such profound effects on their own kids and the others. We get what we deserve if we don’t bother to serve.
Get off your butts and pitch in doing something for the betterment of your community. Not only will it serve the now, it will serve the future by modeling positive behavior for your kids who are more likely to serve if they have a parent who served.
I actually wrote a book about public service and why some serve and others do not. It will be coming out here on my Substack in 2027.
I also have an essay I’m writing about how important education and participation in the system protect and promote liberty and freedom in America.
FIND ME FOR LONG FORM PUNDITRY AT SUBSTACK AS WELL http://www.theteapartypundit.substack.com/
No Loss for Words 
Maybe We Should Interview Presidents Differently
by Steve DanaEvery four years America conducts the most expensive job interview in the world.
The 2028 presidential election may sound like it’s still a long way off. It isn’t. Once we get through the midterm elections this fall, the next presidential campaign will begin taking shape almost immediately. Candidates will start testing messages, courting donors, building organizations and introducing themselves to the American people. Before they spend the next two years telling us why they deserve the job, maybe this is a good time for us—the people doing the hiring—to decide what qualifications we’re looking for.
And I’m beginning to wonder whether we ask the right questions.
We ask presidential candidates where they stand on abortion, taxes, immigration, guns, climate change, foreign policy, Social Security and a hundred other issues. Republicans want to know whether the candidate is conservative enough. Democrats want to know whether theirs is progressive enough. Interest groups have scorecards. Donors have priorities. Activists have litmus tests.
But the person we elect will become the chief executive of the United States.
Maybe somewhere along the way we ought to ask:
What have you actually run?
That question seems almost embarrassingly simple.
Yet we have spent most of my lifetime electing professional politicians to an executive position unlike any other on earth.
Why This Matters
The President of the United States is responsible for an executive branch that spends trillions of dollars, employs millions of people directly and indirectly, negotiates with allies and adversaries, oversees the military, responds to disasters, enforces federal law and makes decisions that can affect American lives for generations.
This isn’t an honorary position.
It isn’t a reward for giving the best speech.
And it shouldn’t be the final promotion in a political career.
We ought to care whether the person asking for the job has demonstrated some ability to do the job.
Donald Trump, for all his faults, forced me to think differently about that.
I don’t believe America needs another Donald Trump.
I do believe America should learn something from having elected him.
The Professional Political Résumé
For most of modern history, we have treated government experience as one of the principal qualifications for the presidency.
A candidate served in the House.
Then the Senate.
Maybe became governor.
Perhaps served as vice president.
He accumulated twenty or thirty years in public life and eventually we were told that all that experience made him ready for the Oval Office.
Maybe.
But experience doing what?
Political professionals become very good at politics. They learn how to raise money, assemble coalitions, make speeches, win elections, work committees, negotiate legislation and satisfy constituencies.
Those are useful skills.
But they aren’t the same skills required to run the largest, most consequential organizations in the world.
A senator doesn’t have to make payroll.
Congress can spend more money than it collects year after year and call the result a budget.
A business owner who tries that long enough gets introduced to his banker under less pleasant circumstances.
Political professionals spend enormous amounts of money, but almost none of it belongs to them. They make decisions affecting businesses they have never operated and employees they have never hired.
And when a government program fails?
Nobody goes broke.
Nobody loses the house.
Nobody tells the family that the business is gone because Dad made the wrong decision.
They hold a hearing.
Then they appropriate some more money.
That is a very different education from the education received by someone whose mistakes have consequences.
Failure Is Experience Too
One criticism of Donald Trump has always been that some of his business ventures failed.
That’s true.
But I’m not sure failure is always the disqualification we pretend it is.
I’ve been in business. Failure teaches things success never gets around to mentioning.
You hire the wrong person.
You misjudge the market.
You borrow too much.
You trust somebody you shouldn’t have trusted.
You make a deal that looked wonderful on paper and discover reality forgot to read the proposal.
Then you live with it.
Trump has had spectacular successes and spectacular failures. Whatever else we think of him, he has operated in an environment where decisions have consequences.
That matters.
I’d like presidential candidates to be able to answer a question we rarely ask:
Tell me about something you really screwed up. What did it cost you, and what did you learn?
I’d learn more from that answer than from another rehearsed speech about their vision for America.
The Pragmatist
Years ago I came across a piece falsely attributed to Charles Krauthammer arguing that Trump was neither really liberal nor conservative, but a pragmatist.
Krauthammer didn’t write it. The attribution was bogus.
But the thought stuck with me.
A pragmatist sees a problem and asks how to solve it.
Not: What is the Republican solution?
Not: What is the Democratic solution?
What works?
The bogus essay argued that immigration isn’t fundamentally a Republican or Democratic problem. Neither are trade, debt or economic decline. They are American problems requiring workable solutions.
That idea is bigger than Donald Trump.
In fact, I hope it eventually outlives him.
One of the frustrations of modern politics is that ideology too often dictates the permitted solution before anybody finishes defining the problem.
Democrats and Republicans have constituents they must satisfy.
And frequently those constituents are not the voters.
The political class develops priorities that frequently aren’t the priorities of the people paying the bills.
Then everybody retreats to their corner and calls the stalemate principle.
Maybe we could use more pragmatists.
The Art of the Deal
As painful as it may be for some people to admit, Trump’s The Art of the Deal contains another qualification we should think about when selecting presidents.
Negotiation.
Trump sees negotiations differently from most politicians.
He understands leverage.
He understands opening positions.
He understands that the first proposal doesn’t necessarily have to be the final proposal.
He understands that sometimes you begin by asking for something outrageous because doing so changes the boundaries of the conversation.
Some of Trump’s proposals sound preposterous.
Sometimes they probably are preposterous.
Trump is fully capable of saying something ridiculous without having formulated a master strategy beforehand.
But it is equally foolish to assume that every outrageous opening is proof that he hasn’t thought about what comes next.
An extreme opening position can establish an anchor.
It can force the opponent to react to your proposal instead of allowing you to react to his.
It can reveal what the other side really values.
And it can create room for an eventual agreement that would have looked impossible before the negotiation began.
Trump also understands something politicians frequently forget:
Sometimes no deal is better than a bad deal.
Government officials often enter negotiations under tremendous pressure to produce an agreement. If everyone knows you must return home waving a signed document, your opponent already possesses leverage.
A businessman learns that occasionally the most powerful word in a negotiation is no.
I don’t need the next president to have Trump’s personality.
But I’d like him to understand leverage.
The Trouble With Trump
None of this requires pretending Donald Trump doesn’t come with enough baggage to fill an airport carousel.
He can be crass.
He is vain.
His ego enters the room several minutes before the rest of him.
He turns disagreements into personal battles that never needed to happen.
He can insult somebody who might have helped him ten minutes later.
His discipline leaves something to be desired.
And sometimes his mouth obscures a perfectly legitimate argument.
Trump’s supporters occasionally make the mistake of believing that because his enemies exaggerate his faults, we have to pretend those faults don’t exist.
We don’t.
Trump can behave like a buffoon.
But he’s no dummy.
And confusing those two things can be a serious mistake.
The characteristics that make Trump difficult can sometimes make him effective.
His unpredictability creates chaos, but it can also prevent opponents from knowing exactly what he will do.
His ego creates unnecessary conflict, but it also makes him difficult to intimidate.
His willingness to violate political conventions can be embarrassing, but it also allows him to question assumptions that professional politicians stopped questioning years ago.
His stubbornness can prevent compromise.
It can also prevent surrender.
The trick for the future isn’t finding another Trump.
It is identifying which characteristics were valuable and finding them in somebody with better self-control.
The Candidate After Trump
The next round of interviews is about to begin. Suppose this time we interviewed presidential candidates differently.
What have you built?
What have you run?
How many people have depended upon your decisions for their livelihood?
Have you ever been responsible for a real budget you couldn’t simply increase?
Have you negotiated when your own money or reputation was at risk?
Have you ever hired somebody smarter than you?
Have you fired somebody you personally liked because they couldn’t do the job?
When did you abandon a plan because the facts showed it wasn’t working?
Tell us about your biggest failure.
Tell us what it cost you.
Tell us what you learned.
And perhaps most importantly:
Can you listen to experts without becoming captive to them?
A President needs experts.
Nobody understands everything from nuclear weapons to epidemiology to monetary policy to artificial intelligence.
But experts advise.
Presidents decide.
The adviser can write another paper explaining why his theory should have worked.
The President has to live with what actually happened.
I’d like a President capable of listening carefully to the smartest people in the room and then asking:
That’s a fine theory. Does the damned thing work?
What We Should Keep
Our MAGA discussions have repeatedly led me to the same conclusion.
Trump and the ideas associated with him don’t have to remain permanently attached to one another.
Some of the ideas are bigger than the man.
So are some of the lessons about leadership.
Maybe presidential experience should include more than government service.
Maybe building something matters.
Maybe meeting payroll matters.
Maybe negotiating matters.
Maybe failure matters.
Maybe accountability matters.
Maybe having operated in the real world, where arithmetic eventually wins every argument, matters too.
And then let’s add the qualities we wish Trump possessed in greater quantity.
Humility.
Discipline.
Temperament.
The ability to hear criticism without treating it as betrayal.
The ability to admit error without believing the admission makes him weak.
Confidence without constant self-celebration.
Strength without needless cruelty.
Pragmatism without chaos.
Imagine a candidate with substantial executive experience, negotiating ability, an understanding of risk and accountability, the willingness to challenge stale assumptions—and enough humility and discipline not to make every issue about himself.
That sounds like somebody worth interviewing.
Every four years Americans are told we are choosing the most powerful leader in the world.
Maybe it’s time we stopped conducting the interview as though we’re selecting the chairman of a political club.
The presidency is an executive job.
We ought to start hiring accordingly.
FIND ME FOR LONG FORM PUNDITRY AT SUBSTACK AS WELL http://www.theteapartypundit.substack.com/
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