I share David Gergen’s admiration for Winston Churchill.  Churchill was a great leader and destiny placed him in the right place at the right moment.

During the debt-ceiling crisis, I hoped President Obama would issue an executive order and contain the damage.   I looked for leadership.

But there is leadership and there is leadership.  There have been leaders who got it all wrong.  Hitler had leadership.

So while I fully agree with Professor Gergen that America needs the tough leadership of a Winston Churchill, it seems that the imperative at the moment is education.  Better-educated and shrewd Americans would not have elected Tea Party members into office.

Let me qualify my statement.  The person I consider as better educated is not only a scholar, but a person who can smell a rat, when a rat appears, and can also tell moral and intellectual superiority when it stands before him or her.  He or she is a person of sound judgment and clever.

It is crucial, therefore, that ordinary Americans develop a more analytical approach to events and decision-making. They must also so adopt a set of values that can benefit them and their nation.

To my mind, the golden rule is mostly as Jeffrey Freedman, an exceptionally talented writer/screenwriter (Vivaldi), told me:  treat others as you wish others to treat you. Indeed, all human beings deserve respect, whatever their color, creed, age, sex, sexual preference, station in life, etc.

David Gergen is a very, very fine person.  He makes well-balanced and perceptive commentaries.  Moreover, despite the above, I think, as he does, that America currently needs very strong leadership, which it would have if the nation were a nation and stood behind its leader, which is not the case.

I hope last week’s circus and ensuing debacle will be sufficient proof that certain Republicans,Tea Party members in particularly, have disgraced themselves and should leave Washington.  These individuals lack an education as do the people who support them.

Americans, not foreigners, voted Barack Obama into office.  He is their President.  He has faced a great deal of obstructionism from panic-mongering and inept elected officials, but enough is enough.   He must now be allowed to lead.   Not only is he President, and qualified to be President, but he is also a compassionate, polite, and honest person, a good father to his children, a good husband to his wife and he is endowed with that rarest of qualities:  understanding

In short, the problem is not that President Obama and his administration lack leadership.  The problem, I believe, is that too many Americans and the persons they elect into office lack a sense of nationhood.

I wish President Obama well and send my best regards to Mr Gergen.