âHere I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.â
â attributed to Martin Luther, closing his refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms 1521.
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther sent his Ninety-five Theses (on indulgences) to Archbishop Albert of Mainz; by tradition, he also posted the Theses on the door of Wittenbergâs Castle Church that dayâan act long marked as the start of the Reformation. So Halloween is also celebrated by Protestant and Reformed Christians as Reformation Day. It is also seen as a watershed in the development of Western ideas about conscience and speaking what you think is the truth no matter the consequences.
What really happened during the last year of the Joe Biden presidency? Will we ever get a full picture? If we had a more functional Congress we would have a real investigation.
Despite everything that has happened since 2015 the people hovering around official power in Washington, D.C. still do not seem to get it. Washington remains a place in America where truth is treated as a tactical mistake. Out in the country, people are thirsty for candor. They do not expect perfection from their leaders, but they want to be told the truth plainlyâabout age, failure, power, and trust. Inside official Washington, though, honesty is still a liability. The city runs on euphemism, and when someone finally speaks without it, the system reacts like a body rejecting a transplant. Karine Jean-Pierreâs interview in The New Yorker is the latest proof.1 And the thing I want to address this week, especially after my students dissected it for an hour.
Her story is simple on the surface: she believes President Biden was betrayed by his own party. She calls it indecent, a humiliation of a good man who deserved loyalty and respect. But her appeal is less about politics than about emotion. She speaks in the language of dignity and faith, not data. âThis man is one of the most decent people I know,â she says, and for her that decency should have protected him from the partyâs cold calculus. She tells it as a moral fable, where virtue is discarded by ambition and loyalty is confused for disloyalty. What she offers, really, is a plea for decency in a political culture that rewards cruelty. But that is not what the presidency is about, the president is not in fact a king, but a working chief executive. Can they do the job right or not should be our calculus.
Jean-Pierreâs emotional truth is clear. What is missing is political candor. She wants to condemn the way Biden was forced out but refuses to say whether she believes he could have governed another four years. When pressed, she retreats to the language of feelingââI did not see anything that gave me concern.â It is the reflex of Washington itself: defend the person, dodge the question, and call the dodge a principle. The sincerity is perhaps real; the transparency is not, and we can see it. Thatâs the problem, it is a poison bargain, where Democrats are supposed to say nothing if they are on the same side. It goes for the GOP now as well.
Her identity shapes this dynamic in complex ways: she reads the Democratic Partyâs treatment of both Biden and Kamala Harris through a lens of exclusion. She argues that the party has failed to stand up for vulnerable groups, including her own. That perspective is genuine and worth hearing, but in this interview it sometimes blurs rather than clarifies. Her grievances about how Black women are ânot elevated, not protected, not taken seriouslyâ are do not make sense given the rise of Harris and Stacey Yvonne Abrams in Georgia, and the claim they mixes uneasily with her defense of an aging white president. The reasoning does not flow, and the tension exposes how personal loyalty and identity politics often intersect in Washington to make something plain into something convoluted.
This is why the public is restless. Americans can smell spin the way miners smell gas. They know when they are being handled. From the pandemic to the campaign trail, they have watched officials choose message discipline over moral clarity. Jean-Pierreâs interview is not scandalous because she spoke out, it is tragic because she still would not. Her words expose how hard it has become, even for the well-intentioned, to tell the plain truth in a system that trains it out of you.
I remember the film The American President where this a discussion between the president and his advisor about the presidentâs failure to directly address his critic a politician named Bob Rumson, and therefore ceding the public conversation. The presidentâs approval rating is sliding, and he and his advisor debate what it means to provide leadership:
Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox): They donât have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, theyâll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. Theyâre so thirsty for it theyâll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover thereâs no water, theyâll drink the sand.
President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas): Lewis, weâve had Presidents who were beloved who couldnât find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People donât drink the sand âcause theyâre thirsty. They drink the sand âcause they donât know the difference.
I donât think it is true they donât know the difference. Okay, most people do know the difference. But if everyone is selling sand then I guess you pick your favorite color and flavor of sand if that is all on offer. That does not mean you want sand. In a post-truth moment, the best liar winsâor the liar with enough people in on the deception. The only way to beat that is not a better spin but a better standard. Be the most candid truth teller in the room, without regard for the lies your side has told before. Tear the veil. Let the truth shine on everyone and every party. Do not ration it. Do not lawyer it. The Democrats and the rational Republicans must understand we are in the âpeople are so thirsty they will drink sandâ moment. If leaders will not bring water, the public will drink whatever is there. So bring water, serve up ice cold truth.
In the Star Trek: Picard series there is an alien group of warrior nunsâwait, bear with meâand they bind themselves to lost causes to help those in need, but they have a rule: the Way of Absolute Candor. It is a wild, nerdy ride, but the point that the groupâknown as the Qowat Milatâmakes is that honesty is the only ground on which trust can be built. It seems obvious and yet apparently in our Gotham on the Potomac it is not. D.C. treats candor as a communications riskâan offense, like âyou have committed candor.â The Qowat Milat treat it as both a moral obligation and the most effective way to get things done, because lies waste time and destroy alliances. Keep lying and your cause is really lost. Best to speak the truth and get on with it. The District needs to get the message. The people are ready.
The students by the way were not having it with the interview, the next generation wants authenticity and candor badly.