To The Reader’s Forum:

One of the first things I learned at the beginning of my business career was to accept responsibility when you screw up. Everybody makes mistakes so the true character of an individual is revealed when they make one. If you try to hide, blame others, or attempt to cover up you will be caught, your lack of character and honesty will be revealed, and your future, at least with that company, will be short.

Key character traits revealed when owning up to a failure are intelligence at uncovering the mistake, honesty by reporting it, courage and leadership for stepping forward in a difficult situation, and integrity for accepting responsibility. Everyone makes mistakes, what separates leaders are how you react to them. President Truman summed it up nicely with “the buck stops here.”

Recently it was announced that the US manufacturing sector’s output has shrunk for two consecutive quarters. This essentially puts our manufacturing into recession. It was with disgust that I read Donald Trump’s response to this worrisome announcement, “The Federal Reserve loves watching our manufacturers struggle with their exports to the benefit of other parts of the world.” It was a slimy and pitiful response but fully in character by a person wrongfully put into a position of power who repeatedly demonstrates a lack of intelligence, dishonesty, a lack of leadership, cowardice, and a woeful lack of integrity. In addition the response was petty, childish, grossly inaccurate and damaging to the institutions that make up this nation.

Donald Trump is so abnormal to the norms of what a leader should be that after continually exhibiting a complete lack of character we have become numb. We cannot allow ourselves to do so since every time we do, we weaken the Office of the President and the character of our nation. We cannot change Trump, he will continue to be a failure and blame others, but we can get him out of the office he should never have occupied and start repairing the damage he has done to our nation.

Tom Meara,

Jamestown