I watched “Ike” starring Tom Selleck last night. Eisenhower’s primary job was not the planning of the invasion because he had hundreds of people doing that. His job was to hold all the countries and the huge egos together. The result of his work has been to hold not only those countries together but add many others.

            Several years later many of the same countries and others helped us in Korea. We weren’t alone in Viet Nam and in some of the brushfire wars, as well as Desert Storm. When we were attacked during September 9, 2011, most of the world’s countries came to our aid in Afghanistan. Some of those we had considered unfriendly like Iran and Russia assisted by closing the southern border to block the Taliban escape or allowing us to overfly sensitive areas with bombers, fighters, and transport planes.

            After almost four years of antagonizing and belittling their leaders and countries, I doubt that even the United Kingdom or Canada would help us. Instead of leading the free world we are outsiders. Our President was shunned by those in the G-20 meetings. Military cooperation is kept quiet so our President and his sycophants could not stop it.

            President Biden will be faced with a huge number of major problems needing to be solved but none are more important than rebuilding the trust and cooperation we once had with our allies and to let our enemies know we have regained our former leadership role. If we are attacked again and have to go into another war we will need their military, their intelligence, and their support like before. Let us hope President Biden can put the free world back together.

I have been reading a non-fiction book about a period of time. It has a paragraph describing the personality of one country’s leader. This is written straight out of the book except the name is change to “he”. The evaluation comes from people very close to him.

“He was deeply suspicious of any hint of opposition or challenge to his authority, this showing itself in pathological persecution mania, to the extent that he saw conspiracy and enemies everywhere. He was particularly skillful in assessing others and exploiting their weaknesses, pretence, and deceit. What he said, he did not necessarily mean, and what he meant he did not necessarily say, which made for difficulties with his immediate circle where everyone hung on his words, avoiding any expression of opinion before he had spoken, and then hastening to agree with him. He had a brutal willpower and a livery, cunning, devious and dexterous mind. He’s obstinate and malicious, taunting and cynical mind, capricious and mercurial. His mind was apparently cramped by narrow dogmatism when he dealt with political, social, and economic questions. He could be very genial when it suited him. His immediate circle lived in great fear of him.”

This may describe our current President but it is actually the description of Joseph Stalin in the “Russo-German War 1941-1945.” The author left off his narcissism and having to be the center of attention and desiring control of all foreign and domestic media. Later the author said he used a minority to influence the majority.

Does this sound like someone you know?

I don’t know when I first saw a picture of President Harry Truman sitting at his desk with the desk sign in front of him. It said “The Buck Stops Here” because he said he was responsible for what people did who worked under him. He had no ego and he was fair in his working relationships. Truman worked hard, abhorred publicity and listened to his advisers.

Today we have a President who adores the limelight and, far too often, doesn’t have a clue about what he spouts. He never accepts the blame for his mistakes and either denies he said it or blames somebody else. When everyone saw the tsunami virus coming Trump took a long weekend to his Florida resort to celebrate his son’s girlfriend’s birthday and golf, all the while, getting in front of the camera and tweeting about the hoax virus. Since he had fired all the Obama Pandemic people without replacing them, it took many precious days to find some experts to put in charge of coordination. The major problem the experts have is his saying things that aren’t true and then having to try to get the correct information out. His only desire is to make himself great and get re-elected.

He personally wouldn’t allow European virus tests to be used here and demanded they be American made! The first ones were bad delaying the issuance by more precious days and saying “my administration” will give out the first million by Friday, when it was weeks before that happened. He said he would send out respirators and ventilators so the states wouldn’t compete. A week later he said states were responsible, and the next week he said the states were causing prices to sky-rocket. Where is a Truman when we need him?

According to my mother, when I was a little boy I used to blame all my faults and errors on my imaginary friend. Many adults still blame others for their mistakes. I have made a great many small and large ones and I have taken responsibility for my own screw-ups. I changed when Mom explained to me what the sign of President Truman’s desk meant. “The Buck Stops Here” is what is required of a leader, not blaming everyone else for my own mistakes. When the people I supervised made an error, I took the blame because I must not have trained them properly. That is leadership.

Today we have a President who accepts no blame for his actions and statements. Just like a little child he often says “I didn’t say that.”, “The crooked media is lying”, and of course “It’s a hoax.” The documented number of lies and half-truths he has said is over 17,000 and rapidly increasing.

Why didn’t his mother teach him morals? Are his children taught to lie to get ahead and to avoid responsibility? How can 40% of Americans believe a liar? In November we will see how many people can accept having a liar as our country’s moral leader.