Send Up A Signal

 

The word came down from on high—no more recipient auto fill allowed when sending emails from our Outlook. Yes, one of the world’s largest technology companies (the kind you only know about by walking past their innocuous yet omnipresent ads in most major airports) was banning one of the most common, and time-saving, features in modern communications. Unsaid was why, but everyone knew that somebody had accidentally copied the wrong person on an email.

The unfolding story about the Trump administration’s national security team’s unwitting inclusion of a hostile reporter to their Houthi bombing text chain has caused an international stir. Screaming headlines of “Leaked Classified Information” started every story, with cabinet officials dancing around what the definition of is, is, when it comes to classifying battle plans. Getting past the emoji bro-boasting, there was some interesting substance to the conversation. While bashing Europe is a daily pastime for this administration, it highlights an important problem for the U.S.: why are we swatting $10,000 drones out of the sky with million-dollar missiles? The right of freely navigating international waters is important, but this plan can’t work financially in the long term—other countries have to share in this cost or launch their own million-dollar missiles. Perhaps the mighty Belgian navy can splatter high-quality chocolate against these enemy menaces.

Yet it seems to me that nobody is asking the most critical question: Why was anybody having a conversation in the first place, other than to confirm operational success?

During my time working for the Giuliani administration, I was hardly the guy who was in the room where it happened (even though City Hall was barely a half mile from Alexander Hamilton’s grave). But I did have plenty of meetings with the folks who were in that room. One such time was with a Deputy Mayor and his staff, with my boss and I joining in (our part of the administration reported to a different Deputy Mayor). Over the course of our meeting, the increasingly agitated Deputy Mayor blurted out in anger, “But this agency reports to me!” My boss, a master of managing internal politics, gently but firmly reminded him, “The MAYOR asked our Deputy Mayor to run with this.” Some might refer to this as a “power move,” but it really was a reminder that this meeting was about moving forward and that the decision on who was leading it had already been made by the boss. Implicit was also the message that the offended party could go back to the Mayor, but it wouldn’t end well bringing it up again.

Which brings us back to text chains and bombing Houthis. I have no doubt that Trump’s national security team had prepared policy memos and made presentations to the President, weighed the options, and been given the final go-ahead. I’m also sure that some advisors were annoyed that some of their views weren’t adopted, and I’m also equally sure there are corridors in the West Wing or sulky staff offices where these folks could blow off some steam. The collective leadership failure, then, was not knowing when to stop talking, through a text app or otherwise, and move on to the next issue. Going back to the boss was not an option.

As to the consequences of this app-driven SNAFU, my own feeling is that whoever added the errant journalist’s name to the group chat, and increasingly it seems to be National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, needs to be fired. There was no subterfuge or ill will in his actions, but he utterly screwed up with the most sensitive of information.

And what ever happened to sending emails from my former consulting company employer? A few weeks later another note came through that the auto fill restriction had been lifted. There was an admonition to check your sender’s list very carefully going forward, a concept more than a few people in D.C. should be taking to heart.

© 2025 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Taking Out The Garbage

 

Tuesday is trash and recycling day on my block. Normally an invisible process, for the past two weeks the same oversized cardboard box remained stuck in my blue bin. By sheer coincidence yesterday I heard the truck coming down my street, and so in my Florida man flip flops I grabbed the box and ran down the sidewalk to catch the truck. Peering down at me from his cab, the driver pointed, indicating that I should put the box in my neighbor’s blue bin, and within seconds my Amazon packaging was off on its next journey.

After last night, the Democrats could learn a thing or two about taking out the garbage.

Trash is real; you can feel and smell it. You want it out of your home and thought of no more. For the Democrats, once again, they made the case that wide swaths of the electorate, that is, their fellow Americans, where nothing but trash. And for the second time in three presidential elections, voters ran to the polls in all manner of footwear to throw out these elites. Maybe this time the Democrats will learn not to recycle bad candidates.

It would also help the Democrats if they started to look around and run on actual issues.

The Harris campaign whistled inside-the-Beltway terms of “democracy in danger,” “women’s health at risk,” “no guardrails,” and “Project 2025” and expected the electorate to follow like Pavlov’s dog. Of course the electorate they needed to target has no clue what these phrases mean—my Project 2025 is planning my 60^th birthday celebration. What drives voters is their pocketbooks and personal safety. Apparently, eye care still isn’t covered under Obamacare, because anyone looking north of the Rio Grande could see outright lawlessness from an invading army of illegal aliens for whom taxpayers are being asked to shell out for their housing, food, and legal defense. It turned Texas into a route against the Democrats and opened up Arizona and Nevada for Republican gains.

It also didn’t help the Democrats to demonize an entire class of the population—that is, men. The logical extension of their abortion argument, not lost on men, is that if you aren’t with Democrats for full abortion rights, then you hate women. Yet when the Dems lose the critical male vote, they then blame it on…men. It’s a circular firing squad against the voters they need most. And because of the premise that abortion is the first, foremost, and only issue, the idea that many Americans are facing diminishing purchasing power and sky-high mortgage rates gets completely missed. Maybe the Dems can’t see this clearly from all the pot smoke they are trying to legalize.

Beyond aggravating the overall electorate, the Democrats were their own worst enemy with their candidate. They had someone to run, namely the democratically elected nominee and current President, Joe Biden. Instead, like a Sopranos mob war over garbage hauling routes, they whacked the boss. Somehow elite media didn’t seem to think this was a threat to democracy What the Democrats also forgot is that when you stage a coup, you kill the former leader or at least exile him to a third country where he ends his days in isolation enjoying his ill-gotten gains. Instead they kept their petulant former boss in the White House and sent him to Delaware for the weekends. So today’s New York Times headline describing the country as “America Hires a Strongman” drips with so much irony you would need a stack of napkins to wipe it off your face as if it were a melting ice cream cone. An organic, lactose-free, free-range non-binary cow ice cream cone, naturally.

One last point for the Dems Project 2028, especially if they field another woman, is the concession speech on election night (or the early morning after). It’s the most painful thing to address friends and family after losing—I’ve had to do it as a candidate myself. But this year and in 2016 neither Kamala nor Hillary could do it. Heck, Hillary had even called Trump to concede. Man up and face the people when you know you are done. Talking to cameras and some dour-faced staffers the next afternoon  makes for a terrible last image of your campaign. The voters expect it, and men respect it.

On January 20^th, trucks will roll into the two most secure residences in Washington, D.C. Men will get out of the cabs with reflective vests over their cold-weather gear. Look closely, because they are the movers taking away the previous occupants’ possessions; it’s understandable if you mistook them for taking out the garbage, but that would be deplorable.

© 2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved

My Editorial Endorsement…

 

While my 1996 New York City Council campaign may not have lit up the political world, I still scored a Willy Wonka-style golden ticket: The New York Times editorial interview. Running as a Republican, even on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was still running in enemy Democratic territory—doubly so at Times headquarters. Undeterred, my consultant prepped me: don’t worry about discussing lower crime during the Giuliani years, improving business conditions, or decreasing taxes. All they care about is public campaign financing. Also, nobody is going to see this; the Times’ own research shows that only 8% of people read the editorial page.

And there it was—I was just going through a clickbait exercise, even before there was such a thing as clickbait.

The point, as the numbers pointed out, wasn’t for the legions of readers to go to the polls with my name burned in their minds from the editorial page. The point was to talk about the endorsement, as if the election gods had now spread their fairy dust of approval. The morning after editorial endorsements came out, candidates would print up stickers to slap on their signs and send out fundraising mailers heralding the news. Of course this was for a very select audience. Miguel the bodega owner in Spanish Harlem didn’t read the Times, probably didn’t even sell it, and cared more about lowering crime, improving business conditions, and keeping his hard-earned money. Miguel didn’t know public campaign financing even existed.

All of this comes to mind with major newspapers stopping their editorial endorsements. Conservative critics see this as mere window dressing, a small concession to hide the blatant bias behind the overall op-ed section, much less the slant of everyday reporting. Credit the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post for going endorse-less. For various reasons the publishers and/or owners of these and other papers concluded that the business of journalists should be journalism, not political endorsements. Another way of putting it is that democracy doesn’t die in darkness, but newspapers do when they can’t pay their electricity bills. And the business of newspapers is not thriving. Economically, the biggest losers in all of this are the political consultants and PR folks now that “editorial endorsement outreach” is one less fee they can charge their clients. But worry not for this working class; there’s an endless stream of Instagram postings, polling research, and other activities to make up for the lost income.

Worry, however, for the journalists. Not worry for the people, but the profession. Writers for both the LA Times and Washington Post went ballistic. Editorial board members resigned. Cries of how dare the owner commit the act of making a business decision rang out. If it all sounds like petulant children crying because nap time was over, or any college student complaining that their avocado toast wasn’t both organic and certified sustainable, you would be right. But what would you expect? These same elite coddled children who need even more coddling (a.k.a. “support”) in their elite colleges are now the ones posing as journalists. They forgot that Marx’s maxim of the workers owning the means of production stopped at the classroom and capitalism started when Jeff Bezos started writing your Washington Post paycheck.  

As for the Times, they proudly declared that they would no longer make endorsements except for major national races. As only the Times could, they perfectly encapsulated both their hypocrisy and entitlement. New York is not worthy of their time, just the entire nation. They’ll continue their tradition of avoiding reality (remember their second endorsement of David Dinkins for mayor in the 1993 race) to maintain their self-defined moral superiority. A part of me will miss this messy scrum of local politics—for little campaigns it was a small chance to shine. For my own race, the outrage from my friends and family wasn’t over my opponent getting the expected endorsement but that the Times accused me of being a lawyer. Even back then, fact checking at the Times wasn’t a big thing.

On the upside, without spending time on editorial endorsements, maybe journalists will focus on all the news that’s fit to print. Some people might even buy that paper.

© 2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Crossfire

 

Going up a small fight of steps, the entrance was on my right. To my left, a path of grass maybe 20 feet wide opening up to rows and rows of trees. I knew where I was going, but still asked which door I could use. Could is the key word here. They said I could go in the right-hand door, the implication being they wouldn’t stop me but wouldn’t vouch for what happened inside. I didn’t need to push my luck, so I chose the left-hand set of doors. And by “they” I mean two Secret Service officers, both in tactical fatigues, one with spotter’s binoculars, the other prone on the ground, .50 caliber sniper rifle resting on a bed of sandbags, facing those trees. And behind the right-hand door, the sitting Vice President of the United States, his staff, and Secret Service detail.

It wasn’t as if I shouldn’t have been there. I was working advance for the event, my “S” pin was firmly visible on my lapel, my look completed with an earpiece for my radio comms. I was used to crowds of large men with service pistols around me, but that sniper rifle had only one purpose, and I had no interest in finding out how the business end of its discharge felt. While taking place in Kalamazoo, Michigan, it was a Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore moment.

Much has been already written, and even more will come, about Saturday’s assassination attempt on President Trump. The immediacy was shocking, the intimacy of the photographs unprecedented, and the reaction came at warp speed. If circumstances had been different, I might very well have been walking around that rally could have been caught in the crossfire. What is important to keep in mind is to let the facts of the investigations come through, watch any testimony, and read the reports. Nobody has all the answers now; we still don’t seem to have a whisper of motivation for the shooter’s actions. There’s also an uncomfortable truth: despite the seeming glamor and wall of firepower, the Secret Service is still a government operation.

If you are lucky, the only government you have to face is filing your taxes. Yet as everyone knows, this is a process with rules, regulations, and paperwork. Presidential protection is no different. The highest levels of protection are for the sitting President and Vice President; further down are nominated candidates, declared candidates, and then somewhere in the mix are former Presidents and other dignitaries. As the sitting President, the setup in Butler would have been very different and far more encompassing to eliminate potential site lines of attack. As a candidate, the level of coverage is not as far reaching—hence much of the discussion about responsibility between local police and the Secret Service around various perimeter levels. Exactly who was supposed to do what, and what may have been missed will be the subject of multiple investigations and reports.

Unlike filing taxes, I found my dealings with the Secret Service professional, thoughtful, and filled with hard-working men and women performing a tough job under difficult circumstances. I was witness to (and mercifully not the target of) animated discussions about, yes, outdoor venues and how to maximize security versus visibility to the crowds. Experienced hands, however, always came to an understanding and the events moved forward.

But with a government operation comes political players, and none was more in the spotlight than Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. She met with President Trump, which was an expedient move to reassure a protectee, as well as show leadership. Less reassuring was her surprise walk around the floor of the Republican National Convention, where her presence was met with the warmth given to vegans protesting in a cattlemen’s convention. Maybe she was scoping out how it will feel for the upcoming Congressional hearings.

As I’ve said, I want to sit back and take in as much information before I will place blame. This was right until published reports said that the Secret Service dissuaded President Trump from attending the funeral of Corey Comperatore because they couldn’t “secure the nearby forest.” Toto, I’ve seen the sniper’s nests outside the forest—it has been secured before and can be again.

© 2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Jetlagged

 

My wife and I like to travel. We’re not the go off to Borneo and hike around the jungle for two weeks types. It’s more like we can carve out 72 hours, so let’s zip over to Rome for a long weekend. After landing and dropping off our bags during day one, we did the Colosseum, Forum, and three museums before sundown. Sure it’s tiring, but with a little planning and some determination, you can pack much more in a day than you think possible. It helps that we get airline upgrades to aid with sleep going over and we cash out points for nice hotels once we are overseas. Getting back stateside, we spent six days in the Maryland hills in a well-guarded retreat recuperating and preparing for our television appearances. You see where this is going.

If the 2016 election was the reality show election come to life, 2024 is reality showing what life is really like. Despite choosing the channel, conditions, and time, Joe Biden managed to show the world how feeble he is, both mentally and physically. Among the many excuses Joe had were jetlag from his D-Day trip two weeks before, suffering from a cold, and, I think, the dog ate his talking points. All I know is that I’d be happy to borrow Air Force One for overseas jaunts if Joe finds it too much work.

Like Capt. Renault in Casablanca, supporters expressed how shocked, shocked! they were at the utter deterioration of the President. Since liberals block Fox News from their cable boxes, they wouldn’t have seen the cornucopia of decline that defines Joe’s existence—endless stairway tripping, wide orthopedic sneakers, blank stares, and meaningless muttering.

Now the words of crisis, panic, and catastrophe are used to describe the Democrats, this time by the Democrats themselves and the mainstream media. There’s an entire rabbit hole to go down about scenarios—Biden drops out, and Republicans start hearings about officials covering up Joe’s fitness for office; Biden wins but then resigns after the inauguration, and Republicans start hearings about officials covering up Joe’s fitness for office; on and on and on. You would think that Democrats might be a touch more worried about stubborn high inflation, high mortgage rates hurting the housing industry, oil prices touching historical highs, and America’s humiliation in international affairs, especially from Muslim countries. History, however, shows the Democrats are oblivious to it all.

Think back to 1980, with Jimmy Carter leading a nation with stubborn high inflation, high mortgage rates hurting the housing industry, oil prices touching historical highs, and America’s humiliation in international affairs with the Iranian hostage crisis. In this bleakness the Democrats overwhelmingly renominated Carter. Maybe it was post-Watergate hubris lurking around the party; even a young, thin, and energetic Ted Kennedy couldn’t make the needed headway as an alternative nominee. The Reagan years were about to begin.

But with barely a bump in the road, primarily because Joe barely traveled, Democrats overwhelmingly delivered the delegates for Joe’s second nomination. Yet here’s the unimaginable thing, the multi-twist pretzel scenario of where we are: without too much effort (not that Joe has much to give), Biden can win. Look at the numbers.

There are, effectively, six or seven swing states that will decide the election. This isn’t news, but it’s well worth remembering. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are the biggest names. Sure Florida and Ohio are out there, but the trend isn’t so blue. Joe took Michigan and Pennsylvania by multiples of Hillary’s loss margin. Maybe loosened mail-in ballot laws helped, but those are numbers to remember. Wisconsin flipped by the same margin of Trump’s 2016 victory. Republicans have screwed up the party in Nevada and particularly Arizona so much that they may blow the gift of the illegal alien invasion as a central campaign issue. And who knows about Georgia.

Most of this is the number crunching, inside political baseball that keeps something on the air for 24-hour news stations. We are just under four months from election day and anything can, and probably will, happen. Heck, in three weeks the Yankees went from league-leading juggernaut to old men needing help down the steps.

My suggestion is everyone take a deep breath, get some sleep, and be patient with this long ride—Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this election isn’t getting an upgrade anytime soon.

© 2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Requiem for the Pac-12

 

Of the thousands of baseball games, from t-ball to the bigs, that were played over the past long weekend, one stood out. It wasn’t for some solemn Memorial Day remembrance, but for lowering the flag on a sports icon. In Scottsdale, Arizona, the University of Arizona beat USC on a walk-off single, marking the final conference championship game of the conference of champions. That final hit to left with the runner just beating the catcher’s tag closed out the Pac-12’s existence.

Growing up, New Year’s Day in the Stephens household was nothing special. My parents did not do big New Year’s Eve bashes, preferring to raise a glass on London time, some six hours before midnight. New York City’s inevitable grey, chilly start to the new year hardly inspired long hours running around outside. But come late afternoon, one immovable and sacred ritual held forth: watching the Rose Bowl.

I have no idea why this was so important to my father. His Harvard Crimson had not contended for a bowl berth since before WWII. But we sat in awe of the spectacle on our TV screen: warm sunshine, scrubbed stands, and a mountain backdrop—Hollywood perfect on Hollywood’s doorstep. And there was that sense of continuity; another year of the Pac 10 and Big 10 champions fighting it out as the California sunset closed the first day of the year. And in true movie style, the games seemed to be sequels of either USC or UCLA playing Michigan or Ohio State.

In the era before everyone-gets-a-trophy bowl games, it was also a proud regional display. Long Slavic names barely fit on the Big 10 linemen’s jerseys; tufts off blond hair stuck out from the helmets of the Pac-10’s quarterbacks. Dazed Michigan fans couldn’t understand how the sun lasted so long in the sky at that time of year; Angelenos wondered if the traffic would be bad getting home. Sure I exaggerate and even stereotype for dramatic effect, but look back at the video and you would say I was a lot closer to the truth.

Like so much else, maybe college sports is just morphing into the homogenized world of GAP and Walmart. The irony is that these stores are now more mall geographical points than drivers of taste—the exact opposite regional character. What’s left of the remaining power conferences looks more like the route map of this country’s major airlines—going to all sorts of places in seemingly random ways.

I’m not against some of the bigger changes in college sports, as NIL’s, stipends, and now flat-out revenue-sharing payments are here to stay. And especially for athletes who won’t get to the pros, there will be significant financial support during their student years. More importantly, gone is much of the NCAA’s hypocrisy and flat-out corruption. But are super-sized conferences with “students” swapping teams through the transfer portal really part of college? Are those in the stands really cheering on their team or just a show assembled by money-tossing boosters? It’s a recipe of nihilism swirling in a cauldron cynicism—hardly what today’s youth needs.

Many a columnist has said that college sports have not died but are just changed forever, and I’d like to believe that. But when the teams are just employees playing for money, directed by men and women making even more money, all of whom are subject to the whims of fan fashion and management change, you are left to call it that most American thing: Hollywood. Unlike the movies, the Pac-12 found out there is no happy ending. In fact I’m not even sure how interested I am in watching the Rose Bowl next year, even if it keeps the memory of my father alive.

© 2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

From The River To Graduation

 

In the spring of 2020, life handed high school seniors lemons. A big, stinking, rotting bushel of lemons. With the finality of their graduations in sight, Covid cancelled graduation ceremonies, eliminated sports championships, and otherwise wiped out all semblance of the normal rights of passage to adulthood. The only thing resembling lemonade was adult society pissing on these students’ dreams. Even worse, as history shows, all the restrictions, not only during that spring but in the ensuing years of college, were very, very wrong.

You would think that from this mess students would hold fast that, four years later, nothing would screw up their college graduation. For students and many of this country’s elite colleges and universities, you would, again, be very, very wrong.

Let’s be very clear what’s happening on the college campuses from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans: thugs masquerading as social activists are, successfully, shaking down America’s universities to line their own pockets in the form of scholarships for Palestinian students and jobs for Palestinian faculty (courtesy of my alma mater, Northwestern). They are playing on, and winning big, at the game of liberal guilt and its related recoiling at conflict.

But why would college seniors let this issue and these agitators get in the way of their commencement? I won’t romanticize the era of Vietnam protests and the actions of students then. There were, however, direct consequences to graduating, which was that the men would be in the draft and have a good chance of fighting in a rice paddy. There are plenty of students and faculty who have direct or indirect family ties to Israel and Gaza, and this conflict is intensely personal for them. And sure, there are larger geo-political issues at play as well. Still, for the vast majority of graduating college seniors, even from elite universities, the greatest challenge next month is finding a reasonably-priced apartment to rent while working at their first professional job.

So what accounts for the lack of any pushback from the vast majority of unaffected students? I think the answer is students these days have no idea how to oppose. It’s less brainwashing than brain deadening. Students are masters of liking on social media and signing digital petitions. The normalcy of Zoom life has dulled any sense of indignation.

In the big picture, should America worry about a bunch of students who didn’t get to wear a funny hat and walk across a stage to get a piece of paper? No, this class will survive, if not annoyed by yet another disruption to their lives. But America should be very, very worried once this class gets out into the workplace and starts to ascend to positions of leadership. What have been the life lessons from these college year? What examples were set for them? How did they overcome an utter vacuum of adult “leadership” that offered neither hope nor competence? In the next decade or two we will learn how badly these years have thwarted their development. It’s not a stretch to think that this will be in complete contrast to what comes out of China where, for better or worse, nothing gets in the way of their pursuit of global domination.

It is said that West Point’s class of 1915 was the “class the stars fell on” with the record number of graduates becoming generals. Of course these men were at the perfect place in their careers when WW II broke out. Timing, even if they had nothing to do with it, was everything. And it isn’t to say that each and every general (or admiral from the Naval Academy) was the greatest ever. But they were pretty damn good, and rose to the challenge of defeating tyranny across the globe.

For the college class of 2024, they can’t event get a glass of lemonade.

© 2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.