Character --- the Currency of Success

John Wooden, the famous UCLA basketball coach stated once: "Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but what you should have accomplished with your ability.”  As we watch the unfolding of the Peyton Place drama and all the bashing, threats, fear mongering, I decided this afternoon to step back and do an environmental scan; my own person MRI of the situation and its players as I view it.  Here is what my MRI has shown me clearly ...

• Tom Coburn --- man of great character, Senator from Oklahoma, medical doctor by trade, honest, frank, deals with facts, tough when needs to be, seems fair and listens well.

• Oren Hatch --- man of great character, Senator from Utah I think, honest, frank, deals with facts, tough when needs to be, seems fair and listens well.

• President, 435 House members and remaining 48 Senators ... lack any apparent character, game players, deal makers, gutless, unfair and listens to what I have no clue.

So assessing this view from Coach Wooden's perspective, which I respect, he would have the entire government of the United States on the bench I believe and trying to win with two men that have and are showing the resilience the others seem so blatantly to lack.  Why is that?  They, all of them, are not fools, they are smart men and women, they have good careers, they work hard, have great staffs for the leg work but the team is losing ... sort of like the Cleveland Browns, right?  The core issue,  I have pretty much decided is that all the great people leave their States for Washington and are shortly sucked into the turbines of a Culture of Losing.  Getting lost in the vortex of the Beltway is a pitiful obituary heading isn't it?

If you have been a student of mine or ever will be or if you just would humor me, Google Plato's Cave for that allegory written many hundreds of years ago is absolutely the case.  A reality change is being mandated exampled by the apparently ineptitude of really smart people. It is a cultural issue which is, for me the sum total of the behaviors of the Congress and the Executive Branch.  This is a dangerous game of BIG CHICKEN and we all lose and there are no golden eggs for if they were with the price of gold headed toward $1700, we should sell a few of them and apply the proceeds to the national debt.

Here is the sad global fact, ready?  The only reason the US is solvent now, assuming we qualify for that term, is that the rest of the global economic forces are either still too small / impactful or they are worse off than the USA. In other words, our successful "status" is due to the US being less bad that the other major nations in the world. Now doesn't that make want to go out and shout at the Goodyear blimp as she passes over?

We are better than this. We are better than this. Ah, WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS!