An American Statesman-Lee Hamilton

Lee Hamilton 1931-2026

     Any list of the greatest to serve in the US Congress will include Lee Hamilton.

     Hamilton served with distinction from 1965 to 1999 and during that tenure was chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and after leaving congress co chaired the 9/11 Commission. Presidents and potentates sought his advice. He was universally admired by Democrats and Republicans. He was considered one of wisest and most even dispositioned to serve in US History.

   He was presented the Lifetime Contributions to Diplomacy Award by the American Foreign Service Association. He was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Despite his renown and international credential he was always down to earth, sincere and a great listener.

    In 1965 I was on duty on the news desk of an Indiana radio station when the buzzer on the door sounded. As I opened it there stood a tall man, with a short cropped haircut in an open trench coat with a stack of papers in his hand. It was Lee Hamilton, newly sworn into office, back in the state delivering a "Newsletter" on the congressional session underway. That was the beginning of a relationship that became a friendship.

    Until I retired from journalism and broadcasting Lee Hamilton was a source of knowledge and information that helped me translate and report to viewers and readers events on a global scale, in the inner rooms and offices of the national security, intelligence and diplomatic realms, and in American politics. A Lee Hamilton inspired character figures into the plot line in one of my historical intrigue novels. 

    Hamilton was also a good man, a decent and admirable human being. He evinced an integrity and was a watch dog for the principles of the democratic republic delineated in the Constitution. But he was a sober eyed realist in a world that seems bent on self destruction.  As we sat in a little known chamber in the capitol dome he told me "there are things that must be done that may not look so positive in the light of day." He was discussing the options that must be available for the conduct of a sound foreign policy. He served in the depth of the cold war. 

    Though he was born in Florida, he was a pure Hoosier, imbued with common sense, a questioning mind, and bedrock virtue. He was also a hoopster. He led his team to the state finals in 1948, when Indiana High School Basketball was legendary. He was injured, but tried to play until forced to the sideline. They lost the championship. He won, what is considered by Indiana basketball aficionados and purists, the greatest award,The Trester Award for Mental Attitude.

    One of my favorite memories with Lee was the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. The Indiana delegation, staying in Buckhead, hosted a party one night. I was there with the media as we mixed with the political stars and delegates. It wasn't long before Lee, Frank O'Bannon, soon to be Lt. Governor and eventually Governor, and this writer found ourselves at one of those little basketball games using a miniature ball and a bright score board. O'Bannon had been a good player in his day. So here we are, three guys, long beyond their prime getting very serious about who was hitting the most shots. An evening passed filled with many chuckles and stories of games and anecdotes. I can't recall who won, but I was happy not to have been last.

   Back in that Cold War era, my late investigative colleague Ben Strout and I worked months to expose a KGB officer, posing as a cultural attache, who was seeking to infiltrate staff of important US officer holders before an upcoming summit. Lee's congratulations, after the exposed officer was recalled, was a point of immense pride.

    Those who were in attendance will attest to the brilliance of a remarkable evening. I was president of the Indianapolis Press Club and we hosted an evening conversation with Senator Richard Lugar, a brilliant foreign policy light and power in his own right, and Lee Hamilton. It came as the USSR was collapsing, the wall coming down, a new world order being established. Those hours of those two men, off the cuff, both with first hand experience, chatting and debriefing each other was one of those moments than can occur only once. The brilliance of the analysis that night was beyond your imagination. 

  And so it is, Richard Lugar, joined in eternity by his friend Lee Hamilton.

Stars in the firmament of wisdom, decency, and the dying breed of Statesman. 

   See you down the trail. 

He’s nuts, he’s not speaking for us, he needs to be gone

 

The speech at Davos should be the breaking point. Everything about it is a warning signal. Everyone with an interest in tomorrow needs to engage the conversation of how can he be removed.

WHAT HAS COME BEFORE

 

His deceit, divisive plans, retribution and revenge are warnings enough, but they’ve been normalized. That’s a bad sign. World leaders, repulsed by him, attempt to placate him with phony praise. That’s a bad sign. Republicans joke about him, but dare not speak against him. That’s another warning and it bespeaks the cowardice and lack of character of the republican party who have willingly allowed him to sodomize the GOP. They will be remembered as quislings but that is of little help to the rest of the world now.

 

His ignorance, wrapped in his arrogance, his instability abetted by sycophants, possibly the least qualified and oddest assortment of administration players in history, leave us all exposed to dangerous potential.

 

How many times have people said if only Hitler had been  removed, how many million lives could have been saved? The same is said of Joseph Stalin, and for that matter about tyrants throughout history. 

 

WHEN WARNINGS ARE IGNORED

He was dangerous enough when he decided not to govern a United States, but to champion the grievances of MAGA. When a man says “only he can do,” you have there a neon warning. This unfit and unqualified man is where he should never be. When a leader seeks revenge and retribution, you live in a dangerous nation. A leader who orders extrajudicial murder is an outlaw. When a man who has evinced racist characteristics repeatedly, turns an army of masked agents and thugs loose to terrorize people of color, including US citizens, you are getting a full on warning this man has to be stopped.

NOW THIS

 

And then the speech at Davos. Has a world leader ever been so incompetent, intellectually bankrupt, abusive, threatening, incoherent, foundering, deceitful,  or embarrassing while looking and acting like a carrier of catastrophe? 

 

Watch it, or read it, or view as many clips and analysis as you can. The world can have no clearer warning, no more obvious signal, Donald Trump is a clear and present danger, full stop. 

 

It’s time for America to begin to pull him away from power and to begin a national conversation about the ways that can be done. When a man says the only thing that can restrain him is his own morality, when that is said by a cheat, fraud, sexual predator and malignantly narcissistic vulgarian, with his record,  it’s the most obvious warning sign the cosmos can offer.

WE OWE IT TO A FUTURE

 

Donald Trump is not to be trusted. He is not well. He is not rational. He must be stripped of power. 

See you down the trail. 

Sun Kissed

 

I'm confident we need national therapy. The history we are making is offensive, brutal and in our faces, loud and ugly.

I went looking for a few moments of distraction. Trying to capture those few precious seconds when fractions of a subject are bathed in sunlight to the point of illumination.

I wish you could have been here to see it for real, glistening, shimmering, dancing in the light. Anyway, here's a few kisses from the sun.

Take these and a couple of deep breaths and be strong.

Resist.

See you down the trail.

Reaping the whirlwind.....

     We are reaping the whirlwind. 

    This is why many of us, including the best of our national security and intelligence communities, diplomats, the best of those who have served in cabinets and in congress, the best of our historians, a bipartisan chorus, said Donald Trump was unfit for office. 

    In the last year he has whirled like a destructive storm through convention, norm, legality, morality and American values. 

    We said long ago he was a danger to the US.

    He's now breaking international law and convention and neither he nor his ignorant minions and sycophants understand or refuse to ponder the consequence.

   Xi or Putin, or the Iranian Holy Council or others have been invited to do to Trump what he has done. 

   A nation, or a rogue proxy could target JD Vance, or Steven Miller, or Marco Rubio or the pole dancer Sec Def, and with impunity, not that convention or accords or practiced principles that have held the world together hold any sway as of today.

  Where, for God's sake, are senior Republicans who could rebuff and begin to control this man? For that matter why haven't former President's Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden spoken to the world and said, this is not the American way.

  Donald Trump is an aging and sick narcissist who has deluded himself into thinking a nation is like a business and his business has always been hustle and fraud, lining his pocket first.

  Donald Trump is a vulgar and small minded man who is being used by a cabal devoted to breaking or destroying the federal government and recently have been acting as thought they are motivated by Klan and Nazi beliefs. When would we ever expect to allow masked zealots or bounty hunters to openly abduct people of color from their homes, schools, churches, work places and even courthouses?

    The right wing Federalist strategy has been effective in breaking the domestic government, but these "true believers" lack the knowledge, experience or intelligence to understand the intricate and complicated sphere of international relations, diplomacy and world affairs. They are right wing wet dream fantasists but the security of the world is well beyond their latent fascism. 

    A President cannot order and should not order our troops to kill extrajudicially, or gin up false rationale to provoke. A President certainly cannot start a war so he can again line his pockets while crowing about making America rich. That policy is as sick and addled as is he.  

    Now you understand why media and analysts made the point of saying there are "no adults in the room," no one with sound judgement. The only people around this president are those who have pledged fealty to the mad would be king. This is an era of Presidential insanity.

  I have no idea how we pull back from this one.

  Unfit, unqualified and a danger to the US. Today he is a danger to the world.

  He wants an Old Testament world where he is the King. Who knows what furries he has released. Karma, like payback, can be a bitch.

   See you down the trail.