Good Enough Is Not Good Enough

“Where are the strong? Who are the trusted?” -Elvis Costello

“A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” -Mahatma Gandhi

We often pretend that only some people lie. People love to tell jokes about how salesmen, lawyers, and politicians are constantly lying to us. We shake our fists at doctors who, trying to dodge potential malpractice, won't tell us exactly what to do. We hate the careful answers of our financial advisors and our mechanics. “Just be straight with me,” we fume.

And while we are complaining to each other about the lack of honest discourse in commerce and in politics, we'll happily fib our way through our day. From our private lives to our workplace to exchanges on the street, we're all carefully navigating how to say what we really think.

The problem is not that we are a bunch of phonies, however. The problem is that in our attempts to avoid calling things as we really see them, we're negotiating excellence. We're sidelining exceptionality.

We can't admire what is not admirable. So how and why are we pushing “greatness” to the side?

Lying: Hey, I Do It, Too

Who hasn't told an easy lie in order to avoid conflict?

-Your best friend is crazy about his new girlfriend. You think she's a total mess and would make a terrible partner. He asks you what you think of her. You say “she seems nice.”

-Your husband finishes the work on the bathroom and you hate the way he installed the faucet. It'll bug you for years and you know it. He looks at you proudly and you say, “Great work, hun. Thanks.”

-Your kid hardly ever practices baseball but wants start on the varsity team. It frustrates you because he's lazy. Later, he doesn't make the team. You say “I'm proud of you for trying.”

We spin it, like political pundits after a debate. And, sometimes, we just plain lie. We say the opposite of what we really think.

Some of us do it in the name of politeness. We don't want to be jerks. Others do it in the name of protection. We think that the truth hurts. Some of us just don't want to go the through the trouble of telling the truth. We're busy. Honest communication takes too much time.

All of this makes sense in our private lives, we think. Who can always tell the truth? It's absurd! We can't pretend that we can be honest about everything. Caring for people sometimes means leaving things out, right?

When No One Is Mediocre, Then No One Is Excellent

But we're lumping all of this together too easily. It's one thing to avoid telling your friend that her ass looks enormous in those jeans. It's another thing to avoid identifying flaws in each other and ourselves. By protecting one another from the discomfort of the truth, we deny ourselves the ability to grow, adapt, and reach for new things. We claim to be helping one another-- but, instead, we are only stunting each other.

This is because honesty demands fixing the broken and improving the improvable. The mediocre becomes plain and not good enough.  Things that work get celebrated and things that don't get identified. Honesty is the fuel of real and lasting progress.

I hear people say “I'm terrible with technology.” What this actually means is “I prefer it when someone else fixes my stuff.” “I can't spell” means “it doesn't matter how to spell things.” “I have no idea who my state senator is” means “I don't want to be involved in decisions about my community.”

We're saving ourselves and one another from unnecessary pain, sure. But we're also avoiding improving things. We're cycling medium.  And our country is paying for it.

The Exception: Complaining

I'd like to allow one caveat. We will tell the truth if we can avoid any responsibility that comes with being honest. This is the machinery of “complaining.”

We are great at complaining. We love to whine about things that don't work when we are removed from making things better. Take road rage. We are astonishingly honest in the isolation of our cars. Someone cuts us off and we are suddenly on truth serum. We'll uselessly scream a suggestion: “use a turn signal, moron!” Something sucks at work; a stupid policy is making everyone unhappy. Everyone will complain and no one will try to fix it, usually because the problem will take a bunch of time, energy, and creativity to fix.

It's so wonderfully easy to complain. Who wants to go through the trouble of confrontation? Of improvement? Our complaining takes the place of being honest.

The Haystack of “Good Enough”

Somewhere in the efforts to be polite, political, and/or non-confrontational, we're not just stunting our progress. We're making it impossible to tell the difference between “mediocre” and “excellent.” We're numbing our ability to identify (and reach for) greatness. And we are doing it most with our children and young people.

Think about that. Our willingness to spin has a special effect on the younger generation. Again, it's not necessarily about hypocrisy. It's about losing the ability to identify the exceptionally good.

Our kids in our culture watch us. When we don't call the average “average” or the weak “weak,” the real casualty is greatness. We extol average!  "I'm just an average guy!"  In the huge pile of nearly meaningless compliments and unspoken critiques, we can't find the exceptional and inspirational.

In schools, we celebrate showing up-- and not even showing up on time. We reward doing the bare minimum. And you know what? We do the very same thing in our lives, day to day. We lower expectations in order to be happier with results.

This isn't just the 'give everyone a trophy' problem. This is more of a 'it's easier to call it good enough' problem. 

It won't matter if our teachers and schools are better if we can't tell our kids (and the parents of those kids) that “not bad” is NOT “excellent.” It won't matter if the kids can't tell the difference between “weak” and “strong.”

Does spelling matter? Should you be able to troubleshoot your own computer? Should you know who your senator is?

Does my ass look big in these jeans?

Is there a difference between “average” and “great?”

It depends on how brave and strong we can be about telling the truth-- in our lives and in our schools.

For further reading on the subject of excellence in schools:

The best high school students in the world are now coming from other countries. The numbers are chilling. Check out this article in The Atlantic from Nov 2011. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/your-child-left-behind/8310

Conducting Electricity

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The State of the Union Address

The Media likes to keep us separated.

Once a year, the highest elected official in our elaborate, ugly-beautiful government gives a speech to the whole of the US Congress-- and to all Americans. The goal of this official: to tell us all how it's going in America.

On Tuesday, President Obama gave his second State of the Union speech. The pundits have been at it for a day and a half, parsing and slicing his words, “explaining” what POTUS meant. There's plenty of praise and criticism for the speech; most of what you'll read and hear about the speech says less about the President's words than it does about the person giving the opinion.

The majority of the media outlets has one goal above all goals: selling advertising. Fox, MSNBC, NY Times, Time, CNN-- they are interested in getting you to tune in to them. That's fine; making profit is the goal of any business. But the pundits are not rewarded with the lion's share of viewers for being balanced. The media does best (in viewership) when they are dispensing hot, sexy, or controversial news.

We live in the world of constant spin. It's not because we all don't care about the truth. It's just that fair analysis doesn't sell as well or as fast as sexy analysis. It's a simple thing. News is entertainment. News is what happens between those small movies called commercials. And the news wants to sell you your favorite brand and flavor of news-- whatever that may be.

Therefore, if you don't read or watch the entirety of the State of Union address, then you will likely get soundbites from an organization that is more interested in getting you to tune in than to tell you what was actually said.  You'll get a targeted version, a bespoke newscast custom made for you and your demographic.

Don't do that with this speech.  The message of this speech will likely be completely overlooked by the majority of the major media. 

The Middle Passage

The President gave a needle-threading pep talk to the entire country. As been his tendency, Obama angered and thrilled people on both sides of the aisle. He spoke mostly about helping industry and business through tax breaks and subsidies. He called for the private sector to lead America. He sounded as pro-business as a President can-- and as right wing as he has ever sounded.

But he also talked about how oil companies don't deserve government money anymore, how the US will pull out of Afghanistan this summer, and how gay people deserve equal rights. He talked about how health care reform was here to stay and that the old fights about it would be left behind. Here he was as bleeding-heart left as a President can be.

He talked about improving consumer protections and being fair to immigrant students and workers. He talked about shrinking and simplifying the corporate tax code but he also talked about repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich. He called for competition between schools and teachers even as he pledged more money to schools.

Take the speech in its totality and you get what is becoming recognizable as vintage Obama:  stuff that pisses off everyone who is a partisan.  Think about it.  Those of us who are most disappointed in him, those of us who most distrust him, those of us who think he's a liar or immigrant or muslim-- are partisans.  He's appealing to the middle.  He's speaking, not to one half or the other, but to as many of us as he can.

The Grown-Up In the Room

Most impressively in the address, President Obama modeled civil conversation. He spoke, as he has before, how a man like himself could become President only in land that celebrates the ideals of hope and progress. He reminded us, once again, of how impressive it was that our nation actually elected him; that we finally smashed that boundary of race for our highest office.

And then the President did something amazing. 


He equated his own success with that of the new Speaker of the House, his Republican opponent John Boehner. Obama dignified one of the greatest critics of his own health care reform by celebrating Boehner's own humble beginnings of “sweeping the floor” in his family's bar.

Why is this such a big deal? Because Boehner has been attacking Obama for entirety of the President's term. Last October, Boehner said "I believe that the healthcare bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best healthcare system in the world, and bankrupt our country.” When Boehner won in November 2010, he told ABC, “there seems to be some denial on the part of the president and other Democratic leaders of the message that was sent by the American people.” On CBS' 60 Minutes, Boehner said that the President shows him “disrespect,” distancing himself from Obama by claiming they “come from different backgrounds.”

The President didn't fight back.  Instead, he reached out.

In this unifying State of the Union, the President is attempting to build momentum for this lagging Union-- and he's trying to find it in the middle. He's working against the partisans on both sides who, frankly, do not want a middle solution. I don't think that the media wants a moderate environment.


The media knows that people love to be entertained by extreme politics.  

And this is why you need to get the media out of the way when you think about this State of the Union speech. Read it and watch it on your own.  Don't let the sound bites do the work for you.


President Obama isn't just speaking about new programs or his political agenda. He's trying to pull us together.

Finding His Ground
Likely, the President will get average marks in the media and by fellow politicians. I'm guessing "B's and C's" It was no barn-burner or roof-raiser. Some say that was because members of Congress, for the first time in generations, did not sit in party sections. Dems and Republicans sat together, diminishing the partisan cheering that often allows for long ovations (and jeers like last year's “you lie!”)

I think it was a nearly perfect pitch for this moment, a poem for the strength of the middle road. Furthermore, the President may have finally solidified his doctrine and found his voice as the leader of the country.

This State of the Union tells us most about Obama as a leader.

He's not the reincarnation of JFK's charisma and wit. He's not Abraham Lincoln's successor as a strategic, war-time Unifier. He's not even the telegenic reiteration of Reagan, whose smile and wit could launch a thousand ships.  To find Obama's historical parallel, we have to leave the Oval Office and go to a colonial printshop. 


We find a man who bucked the media of his day and started his own paper, writing under a pseudonym in order to get people to think. Here's a scientist and a free thinker who flouted conventional wisdom in the name of reason and progress.

We find Benjamin Franklin, practical and charming, who saw his young nation struggling for identity and stability.  He was surrounded by stolid iconoclasts, men who staked their lives on their convictions.   We might as well call the Founders 'The Great Arguers."  Hamilton and Adams hated each other; Madison didn't really like anybody.  Jefferson fought with himself while Washington did everything he could to stay apolitical.  These great men sparred bravely far more than fairly.  And Franklin, while not above the fray, knew that the intensity of the argument could destroy the future of the Republic. 

Franklin told his bickering patriot friends, some of whom were so rancorous they dueled to settle disputes, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

President Obama sees the locked doors between us as more dangerous than obstacles in front of us. Like Franklin, he identifies our diversity as our greatest strength-- but unity as our only salvation.

Undaunted by lightning strikes, standing in a storm, Obama is trying a key.

Sources for Speaker Boehner's comments:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A25DB20101103

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46290.html