Common ground.

AuthorRock, Robert H.
PositionLETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN - Political comflicts in United States

The presidency of Donald Trump has raised hopes, concerns and questions in the boardroom. Directors are hopeful that his administration will be pro-business, and his rapid fire repeal of rules and regulations, as well as his initial staffing of government oversight agencies, have buoyed business confidence. However, many directors are concerned about his positions on immigration and healthcare, and they have questions regarding where he will come out on tax reform and trade. Moreover, most are troubled by his demeanor and worried about his temperament, and all are loathe to get in his cross-hairs.

To try to understand what the Trump presidency will mean for their business, boards are calling in all sorts of experts, prognosticators and soothsayers who supposedly can help predict where Trump's programs and policies will end up. But the deviation in their potential outcomes makes any predictions uncertain and therefore unreliable. Furthermore, directors are having difficulty addressing the Trump presidency among themselves as discussions often descend into rancorous debate.

At a recent board dinner, my fellow directors initially focused on the tumultuous early days of the Trump administration, but after a few contentious volleys, we quickly pivoted away from politics. In the past, dinner-time conversations often centered on politics via civil debate. But now, political discussions get heated, so to save our friendships, the topic's generally avoided but never completely left unsaid. Those directors who lean to the right seem incapable of avoiding references to "media bias," "the deep state" and "we won, get over it;" while those on the left seem incapable of avoiding references to "crazy tweets," "Russian meddling," and "we won the popular vote."

Our country has been spiraling further apart, riven by partisanship promoting diametrically opposed political ideologies and social philosophies. The anger and mistrust between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, frequently seems bitter.

The current state of our political dialogue seems to be nothing less than civil war by...

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