How I’ll decide this election
Published 10:47 am Monday, April 9, 2012
Well, the preliminaries are pretty much over for the presidential race and the serious stuff is just starting to crank up. There will be plenty of “stuff” flowing at us from every media source, your e-mail networks, social networks and your friends, neighbors and enemies until that first Tuesday in November. God Bless you all, because it is going to take patience, tolerance, love, determination and divine guidance to get through this one with dignity.
To tell you the truth, I don’t have any advice other than, no matter which side of the argument you’re on, “bite your tongue” and listen. Being a strongly opinionated person, this is the most difficult thing that I do (ask my poor wife who gets the worst side of me). When I was a city councilman and a mayor, I was not always successful “biting my tongue,” but when I did, I learned so much. That doesn’t mean that I agreed with what I heard; what it means is that I began to understand why people believed or opined the way that they do. There were always viewpoints that provided knowledge and wisdom I didn’t have before I listened. This skill has helped me successfully run international businesses even when the “owners and stock holders” were “top down” pounding their viewpoints while the “union” was pounding their viewpoints. Wisdom only comes when you listen and do the right thing for business, America and the people.