THE AMERICAN POSEIDON ADVENTURE

Anthony Scaramucci, known as “the Mooch,” recently expressed surprise at how many holes our Constitution seems to contain, holes that Trump has chosen to drive through. I disagree. Our problem is not the form of the Constitution. It is the character of the people entrusted with managing the government it created.

In a democracy, leadership is elected by the people. The governed are charged with selecting those they want to govern, to manage the workings of government and set its course. Elections are the mechanism through which the people make those choices and hand over the keys. But when the people give the keys to careless or unqualified drivers, the bus often ends up in the ditch. That is where we are now.

Institutions are only as good and effective as the people who manage them. An institution is an intellectual creation. Try going outside and grabbing an institution. You cannot make one bleed or cry. Institutions depend upon laws, policies, traditions, and norms to guide the people who lead them. It is those people, and the decisions they make, who ultimately produce the outcomes.

If you hire a one-eyed carpenter, chances are your picture frames may be hung off-center. If that is the way you like them, then a one-eyed carpenter may be perfect for you. But if you want them dead center, either hire a two-eyed carpenter or make sure the one-eyed carpenter has an assistant. The choice is yours. The outcome depends upon the choice.

Clearly, unless you like everything hanging off-center, the choice of Old Bone Spurs (OBS) and his MAGA Congress was a poor one. Trump, supported by his MAGA enablers, has thrown much of the country off-center and in many cases has kept promising to hang the picture without ever getting it on the wall. There are so many aspects of America’s core that OBS has diminished, weakened, or damaged that recovery will take years. As I have said before, one thing OBS has demonstrated clearly is how easy it is to destroy and tear down. Building is much harder.

And in a democracy, building is harder still. It requires intelligence, patience, compromise, competence, and personal integrity. Our Constitution was constructed with the assumption that the people entrusted with power would possess some measure of integrity and patriotism, not merely greed and a desire for personal profit. But the Framers also built safeguards into the system in case we mistakenly elected a bozo interested primarily in power, adoration, or enrichment.

The structure is there. Where we have failed is in the choices we have made about the people placed within it. We have made bad choices before. We have elected people who made terrible policy decisions even though they were neither crooked nor emotionally unstable. Some of those decisions were shortsighted and left scars, economic pain, anger, resentment, and a lingering desire among people to be made “whole again.” That longing is natural. In its better form, it is part of what the Declaration of Independence speaks to when it identifies our rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But America is hardly the first nation whose people have been hoodwinked by an ambitious egomaniac presenting himself as the savior of people who were hurting and searching for better times. We know many of the names.

Adolf Hitler promised Germans national revival and rebirth. He produced dictatorship, another world war, the Holocaust, and ultimately the destruction and economic ruin of Germany.

Benito Mussolini promised Italy greatness and dreams of restoring the glory of the Roman Empire. Instead, he dismantled democracy, took his country into disastrous wars, and left Italy devastated.

Joseph Stalin promised to modernize the Soviet Union and create a better socialist society. His rule brought purges, terror, forced collectivization, imprisonment, and famine in which millions died.

Idi Amin in Uganda, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and Mao Zedong in China all claimed, in one form or another, that they would make life better. None of them campaigned by promising to make life worse. That is the point.

Authoritarian leaders do not ordinarily come to power announcing that they intend to destroy institutions, impoverish people, suppress dissent, or lead their nations into disaster. They promise prosperity. They promise security. They promise national greatness. They promise to restore what has supposedly been stolen. They tell frightened or frustrated people that only they can fix it.

And history teaches us something else: such leaders never rise alone. There are always enablers. There are politicians who know better but remain silent. There are business leaders who believe they can profit. There are legislators who surrender responsibility for the sake of political survival. There are citizens who excuse behavior they would never tolerate from the other side because they believe the leader is fighting for them.

And then, gradually, the guardrails disappear.

Look at what OBS’s promises have brought us.

We are now in a war that OBS chose to enter, a conflict I believe has been driven as much by ego and his desire for a place in history as by any coherent strategy for America. Individual rights are at risk, prices have risen, uncertainty has increased, and the greatest financial benefits continue to flow disproportionately toward the wealthy and politically connected, especially the circle surrounding OBS himself.

Meanwhile, America has spent tax dollars, strained alliances, damaged its international credibility, and weakened friendships that took generations to build. Look at Canada. This entire episode is a joke, a clown show that should never be allowed to continue and wouldn’t if Congress was responsible and concerned with America.

At the same time, OBS continues to speak admiringly of Vladimir Putin even as Putin strengthens Russia’s relationship with Iran.

The New York Times reported on September 1, 2026, that Putin met with the Iranian president and praised the Iranian people’s “courage and resilience” in defending what he called their national interests. Putin also emphasized Moscow’s assistance to Tehran during its conflict with the United States:

“During this difficult time, we are trying to provide you with the assistance you need,” Putin said. “We have discussed this with you and are supplying you with the necessary goods.”

Think about OBS’s contradiction, the violation of an oath!

Our president attacks Iran while repeatedly treating Putin with extraordinary deference, and Putin responds by assisting Iran. Why?

There are endless theories about Trump’s relationship with Putin, financial connections, past business dealings, personal leverage, mutual political interests, ‘pee pee tapes’ or simple admiration for authoritarian power. We may never know the complete answer. But ultimately, the explanation matters less than the result.

What matters is that our country’s credibility, alliances, stability, and future are being squandered and those consequences will be inherited not merely by us, but by our children and grandchildren.

OBS is only one man. That is why I return to Scaramucci’s observation; the fundamental problem is not the weakness of our Constitution. The problem is the weakness of the people operating within it and the failure of others who possess constitutional authority to restrain them.

“We the People” elected them. And “We the People” can replace them. It is time for those who supported OBS and his congressional enablers to say:

ENOUGH.

It is time to protect the future of our families rather than the power, ego, or bank accounts of politicians. November is getting closer.

VOTE!!!

RESIST!!! & EDUCATE!!!