Member-only story
How far apart are we really?
Moving the needle on our public life need not be a huge exercise
The collective sigh expressed in the streets of many cities when Joe Biden was confirmed as the next president quickly gave way to a new challenge that’s been percolating for a long time — certainly longer than just the last four years. How far apart are Americans in our outlooks and beliefs and of our opinions about the direction of the country? Can we pull it back together? Prognosticators all say, sure, we can do that because we’ve done similar things before.
But the details each time are different and finding common ground this time requires that we avoid looking for cookie-cutter approaches.
One surprising answer may be that we aren’t far apart at all. It will take some work to convince people of our relative closeness and before we can even make the attempt, we need to understand leadership.
Bringing together seemingly disparate sides in American life doesn’t necessarily start with building a bridge or any other metaphorical device. This time it starts with understanding the nature of leadership and, most importantly, the effect of its absence.
Leadership has two basic identities — one that assumes a leader is already in place — which invites circular reasoning because all that’s…
