We’re done celebrating America at 250. Now comes the question: What should we be able to celebrate when America turns 300?
In my new piece for The Hartford Courant, I argue that the next great civic advances should prioritize three goals:
These are the next reasonable steps. By our 300th, we should be judged on whether Americans can participate fully and fairly in the life of the country.
This article also appears in O'Dywer's PR.
In their New York Times opinion piece (The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week, June 22, 2016), Adam Grant, Marissa Shandell, and Courtney Elliott offer a sharp explanation for why many bosses want employees back in the office full-time. Their argument centers on narcissism: some leaders who crave attention, status, and control may prefer workplaces where employees are physically present, visible, and available. The office becomes a source of validation. The boss walks through it and sees proof of authority.
Anyone who has worked for a status-conscious executive can recognize the pattern. Some leaders do not simply want work done. They want their importance affirmed, and a full office affirms it. Empty desks feel like rejection, and remote work can feel like a loss of relevance.
But narcissism may not tell the whole story. The push to return to the office also reveals a broader failure of leadership.
Remote and hybrid work require managers to do what good leaders should have been doing all along: set clear expectations, define success, communicate priorities, measure outcomes, and hold people accountable. When those disciplines are weak, the office becomes a substitute for management.
A leader who cannot articulate expectations may prefer a workplace where everyone stays within sight. A leader who cannot judge performance by results may rely on visible effort. A leader who has not learned to delegate may feel calmer when employees remain within reach. The office serves less as a place for collaboration and more as a tool for reassurance.
I learned this lesson the hard way. In the late 1990s, I led a successful department at a global PR agency. People wanted to join it. The team was engaged, the work was strong, and the business was highly profitable. I did not consider myself a micromanager, and by the usual definition, I was not. Yet my hands ended up being in nearly every project.
When senior management asked me to attend a leadership retreat run by the Center for Creative Leadership, I was initially offended. Why send me? No department seemed more energized, and none was delivering stronger financial results.
The experience changed my view. A team can be successful yet still be constrained by its leader. My close involvement had helped build the department, but it could also limit its growth. The business would only expand so far if every major decision, risk, or opportunity still passed too closely through me.
I became a champion of letting go. That did not mean abandoning standards or disappearing from the work. It meant trusting the people I had carefully chosen. It meant giving them more autonomy, more accountability, and more room to take risks, while making sure they knew I would back them up. The result was no less control in any meaningful sense. It had greater capacity, more initiative, and more opportunities for the team and the business.
That lesson applies directly to today’s office mandates. Trust is at the center of the debate. Remote work requires leaders to trust adults to act responsibly. Trust does not mean neglect. Employees who miss deadlines, avoid responsibility, or perform poorly should face consequences. But treating an entire workforce as suspect because some managers fear abuse is not leadership. It is anxiety turned into policy.
Anxiety also undermines delegation. Leaders who cannot trust employees outside their line of sight tend to hoard decisions, second-guess work, and create bottlenecks. They ask people to take ownership, then reclaim authority the moment work occurs outside their direct line of sight. A return-to-office mandate gives leaders a sense of control without requiring them to share power.
Presence can be valuable. Some conversations and brainstorming sessions work better face-to-face. Mentorship matters. New employees often learn by watching experienced colleagues navigate clients, meetings, setbacks, and internal politics. Creative work can benefit from time spent together in the same room.
Those are arguments for purposeful office use, not blanket mandates. A well-led company can decide which tasks benefit from proximity and which do not. A weaker company defaults to a rule.
The result is corporate theater. Desks are occupied, conference rooms are booked, and hallways are busy. Executives can walk through the office and feel reassured. But movement is not progress. A crowded office can still produce shallow work, weak decisions, and slow execution. A quiet home office can produce focus, judgment, and results.
Another motive deserves candor: real estate. Many companies signed costly long-term leases. Headquarters became monuments to ambition, status, and permanence. After the pandemic, empty floors made those choices look wasteful. Bringing workers back helps leaders justify the cost to themselves, their boards, and their shareholders.
That does not make office space worthless. It means office space should serve work, not the other way around. Leaders should ask which teams need shared days, which meetings require in-person attendance, how mentoring will be conducted, and what employees gain from commuting. “Because we have the space” is not a strategy. A lease is not a leadership strategy, and sunk costs should not dictate employee policy.
Grant and his co-authors are right to highlight narcissism among some executives. For some bosses, the office is a stage, and employees are the audience. But the deeper problem may be less theatrical and more pervasive. Many bosses want employees back because they have yet to learn to lead with trust, clarity, and results.
The office can support good leadership. It cannot replace it.
The ruling was important enough to inspire a song. “Black and White,” written in 1954 by David I. Arkin and Earl Robinson, later became a major hit for Three Dog Night in 1972. But the group’s version omitted lyrics that directly celebrated the Court’s role:
“Their robes were black, their heads were white,
The schoolhouse doors were closed so tight,
Nine judges all set down their names,
To end the years and years of shame.”
Those lines captured a moment when the Supreme Court exercised its authority to expand freedom and strengthen the promise of equal citizenship. The Court did not solve America’s deepest problems. It did not end segregation on its own. Indeed, the backlash to Brown was fierce, sustained, and often successful. But the decision gave constitutional force to the idea that public institutions could not lawfully degrade children on account of race.
That is what makes today’s contrast so painful.
Instead of building on that legacy, the current Supreme Court’s conservative majority has too often moved in the opposite direction. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to new voting restrictions in several states. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion and leaving access subject to state law. Citizens United v. FEC helped unleash more outside money into American politics. Taken together, these decisions reflect not only legal reasoning but also a broader retreat from the spirit of inclusion and equality that Brown embodied.
The Court has also made it harder to challenge partisan gerrymandering in federal court, limited LGBTQ protections in public accommodations, made it harder to defend gun-safety laws, constrained environmental regulation, and expanded presidential immunity, all of which threaten basic democratic accountability. For example, after Shelby County, Texas and other states quickly implemented strict voter ID laws and reduced polling places, these measures disproportionately affected communities of color.
These are not isolated decisions. Proponents argue that the Court is restoring constitutional limits, protecting individual liberties, and correcting earlier judicial overreach. Critics see something very different: a broader legal and political project that shifts power away from voters, workers, consumers, people seeking health care, marginalized communities, and regulatory agencies — and toward corporations, wealthy interests, religious-liberty claimants, gun-rights advocates, and executive authority.
Reasonable people can disagree about constitutional interpretation. But we should not pretend the Court is merely calling balls and strikes. The judiciary is shaping the nation’s future as surely as Congress and the president. When the Court narrows voting rights, democracy suffers. When regulatory power weakens, public health and the environment suffer. When it removes protections people have relied on for generations, trust in the law suffers.
Brown reminds us that courts can open doors, but it also reminds us that progress is not inevitable. It must be demanded, defended, and renewed.
The lesson of Brown is not nostalgia. It is a responsibility. I still remember learning about Brown in school not as a dusty legal milestone but as proof that American institutions, however flawed, could be pushed toward justice. Progress happens when people organize, vote, litigate, teach, write, march, and refuse to accept injustice as settled law.
Seventy-two years ago, nine justices helped open the schoolhouse doors. Today, democracy requires us to keep them open — not through nostalgia, but through vigilance, voting, and organizing, and by refusing to treat the erosion of rights as normal. The promise of Brown endures only if we defend it together.
X recently suspended my account for “violating our rules against inauthentic behaviors.” That was the entirety of the explanation. X cited no specific post, identified no pattern of misconduct, and offered no definition of what, precisely, it considered inauthentic about my activity. There was no warning. I appealed, asked for specifics, and followed up. I received nothing in return. X’s own policies state that its authenticity rules target manipulation through fake accounts, coordinated behavior, and deceptive content — and that users may appeal suspensions made in error. In my case, the appeals process has led nowhere.
That silence should concern more than just me.
Today is the anniversary of the Civil War’s opening shot. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, beginning a bombardment that would launch four years of slaughter. That war did not erupt because America had settled its deepest racial contradiction. It erupted because the country had postponed it — and postponement, in America, has a way of becoming a habit.
America has settled into a troubling rhythm: roughly every hundred years, the nation makes a major formal advance against racial injustice — only after long resistance, bitter struggle, and blood. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 gave us the principle. The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 dismantled segregation and legal discrimination. None arrived cleanly or uncontested.
Start with the Declaration. Americans rightly celebrate it as the nation’s statement of human equality. But even at its creation, the promise was narrowed by political cowardice. Congress deleted Jefferson’s passage condemning slavery and the slave trade — in part to satisfy South Carolina and Georgia, and in part because northern commercial interests were implicated. The founding document offered a universal creed while shrinking from a full confrontation with human bondage. The first great American statement against inequality was compromised before the ink was dry.
Then came the century of evasion, rationalization, and bloodshed. Defenders of slavery wrapped themselves in the language of property, local control, and constitutional restraint. But the historical record is unambiguous: secession was driven by the determination to preserve slavery. Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens said so plainly — the Confederacy, he declared, rested on slavery and white supremacy as its cornerstone. Even emancipation was denounced as ruinous, lawless, and socially catastrophic. Yet the 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery nationwide. It was a giant step, but one taken only after war, slaughter, and years of arguments designed to make justice seem impossible.
A century later, the country had to fight again over whether Black Americans would enjoy rights already promised on paper. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in public accommodations, addressed employment discrimination, and promoted school integration — but it did not emerge from consensus. It came after years in which Southern states and local authorities met civil rights demands with arrests, beatings, police dogs, fire hoses, and organized obstruction. In Birmingham, police attacked young demonstrators with dogs and high-pressure hoses. In Mississippi, Freedom Summer volunteers faced beatings, arrests, bombings, and murder. In Selma, state troopers brutally assaulted peaceful marchers on a bridge the whole country watched. The law passed, but force was used again and again to delay, block, and punish its moral logic.
That is the real pattern. America does move — but only after making the targets of injustice endure another generation, or three, of excuses. The 1770s gave us the promise. The 1860s abolished slavery. The 1960s dismantled legalized segregation. We should take hope from that progress, but not comfort from its pace.
A hundred years is too long to wait for another leap forward. We should not resign ourselves to hoping that the 2060s will finally bring the next great breakthrough. The pattern has repeated twice. A country that has already postponed justice through slavery, segregation, and generations of excuse-making forfeits the moral right to postpone it again. Refuse to let the pattern repeat a third time. Demand change now — not after another century of delay.
The federal government recently agreed to pay roughly $1 billion to TotalEnergies to abandon offshore wind projects in U.S. waters. Those projects were expected to power more than a million homes. Instead, that capital is being redirected into dirtier, less sustainable oil and gas development. This is not deregulation. It is a deliberate, taxpayer-funded intervention to halt one form of domestic energy production in favor of another.
That alone should give pause. But it's part of a pattern—across energy, science, public health, civil rights, and institutional governance—that suggests the country is pulling away from the very foundations that built its strength. And not by accident.
Science and Research
Energy decisions make headlines. Science policy rarely does. But the consequences of underfunding it outlast any news cycle.
For decades, American leadership has been built on sustained investment in research through institutions like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, investments that produced the breakthroughs defining modern life, from cancer therapies to semiconductors. Recent funding constraints and disruptions are already affecting research pipelines. Universities are scaling back. Grants are stalled. Researchers are reconsidering where to build their careers.
This isn't theoretical. It's arithmetic: slow the investment, slow the innovation, lose the ground. China has spent years building out its research capacity. The EU keeps deepening collaborative funding. The U.S. doesn't need to outspend them. But walking away from the table is a different thing entirely.
Public Health
The costs in public health are the most immediate. The United States spent decades creating a system capable of responding to outbreaks, developing vaccines, and protecting population health. It took a long time to build. It’s taking a far shorter amount of time to break.
Recent shifts in vaccine policy and public health messaging are accelerating that erosion. Growing political interference in agencies like HHS, combined with amplified skepticism toward vaccines despite overwhelming scientific consensus, is undermining the institutional confidence that makes public health systems work. Vaccines are one of the most effective tools medicine has ever produced, and the trust behind them took generations to earn.
Eroding confidence in that system doesn't create freedom. It creates a specific kind of vulnerability—the kind that shows up as outbreaks, as misinformation taking hold, as people dying from diseases we know how to prevent. And once that trust is gone, it doesn't come back easily.
Environmental Policy
Not every regulation is worth keeping. Some rules are outdated, some are redundant, and a serious case can be made for trimming them. But that's a different argument from what's actually happening.
Efforts to weaken water protections, emissions standards, and pollutant tracking may reduce compliance costs in the short term. But many of these protections were established after costly failures: industrial contamination, unsafe air, widespread health consequences. Rolling them back doesn't eliminate risk. It shifts it onto communities and future taxpayers. When guardrails are removed, the consequences tend to arrive later and cost more.
Voting Rights and the Press
A country's strength depends on whether people trust the system that governs them. The proposed SAVE Act would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. Noncitizen voting is already exceedingly rare, yet millions of eligible Americans lack ready access to such documentation—rural voters, lower-income individuals, many married women whose legal names differ from their birth certificates. When barriers rise, access falls. Policies that reverse the trajectory toward broader participation reshape who governs and who does not.
The same pressure is bearing down on the press. The First Amendment isn't an abstraction—it's the mechanism by which power gets scrutinized, challenged, and held to account. When the government threatens broadcast licenses, targets specific media organizations through regulatory pressure, and repeatedly labels journalists as enemies of the state, the effect is a press that pulls its punches. A country without independent journalism doesn't become more stable. It becomes less informed, and more easily misled.
The Pattern
Each of these areas can be debated individually. But taken together, they point in the same direction: away from investment in the future, away from scientific expertise, away from broad democratic participation, and away from the independent institutions that hold power accountable. That is not a neutral shift. It is a deliberate one.
And because these systems are connected, the damage doesn’t stay in one place. Weaker research means slower medical breakthroughs and fewer competitive industries. A less trusted public health system means a less healthy, less productive workforce. And when people stop trusting institutions, the effects are harder to trace but impossible to ignore.
It's tempting to view these developments as inevitable, as if they're simply the product of forces too large to name or change. They're not. They are the result of decisions made by elected officials, supported by voters, and enabled by disengagement.
Many Americans supporting these policies are doing so in good faith, responding to legitimate concerns about economic security and eroding trust in government. But good intentions don't guarantee good outcomes. In practice, these policies often work against the very interests they claim to serve—gutting research slows the medical breakthroughs that save lives, weakening public health infrastructure puts families at greater risk, and turning away from future industries shrinks the economy those families depend on.
This isn’t really about left or right. It’s about whether the choices being made actually serve the people they’re supposed to serve.
The United States is not in irreversible decline. It remains one of the most dynamic and capable countries in the world. But direction matters.
Spending $1 billion to shut down offshore wind development is not the defining policy of this era. But it’s a clear signal of what the priorities are—and those priorities reach well beyond energy. Countries don’t usually fall behind all at once. They do it gradually, through decisions that each seem defensible on their own but add up to something much harder to reverse.
That process can be reversed. But it won't reverse itself. It takes attention and engagement—and if left unaddressed, it can last for a generation.
The future of DTC should foster understanding, trust, and improve clinical conversations.
Prescription-drug commercials have been a recognizable part of American TV for nearly 30 years. Their production values have kept up with the rest of the advertising world, and in the costliest broadcast spaces, they now look almost identical to ads for consumer tech, cars, and sports betting. As The New York Times reported, spending on direct-to-consumer drug advertising is rising again, driven by competition in high-profile therapeutic areas – a reminder that DTC advertising is not fading but growing in scope and influence.
I have been writing about DTC pharmaceutical ads for nearly 20 years, and the dissonance – cavorting cartoon characters or people climbing mountains while vital information is voiced over – has remained remarkably consistent. Patients and clinicians often start the clinical conversation inside a narrative that the advertising has already shaped.
DTC advertising is the biggest untapped resource for public health education in the country. The concern isn't about the presence of risk information; it's whether the overall experience helps people understand what those risks mean and how they should affect treatment choices.
An ad for Vanda Pharmaceuticals’ antipsychotic Fanapt highlights this disconnect: a calm voice lists stroke risk, cardiac complications and sudden death while smiling, anime-style characters move through bright, cheerful scenes. The disclosure follows regulations but trivializes the seriousness of the condition and distracts from the importance of the adverse-event information.
Regulators have started to recognize the gap between mere compliance and actual understanding. The FDA’s letter to Novo Nordisk about a TV commercial for oral Wegovy criticized how the ad implied broader emotional and lifestyle benefits than the evidence supports. In another letter concerning a commercial for argenx’s Vyvgart Hytrulo, the agency noted that “attention-grabbing visuals, frequent scene changes and background music” might hinder understanding of the major risk statement. That language matters because it acknowledges that production techniques influence how risk is perceived. However, it stops short of addressing the core creative decision in most branded campaigns – whether the story enhances the safety message or competes with it.
Direct-to-consumer advertising grew rapidly after the FDA relaxed its broadcast guidance in 1997 and finalized the approach in 1999. Drug names became part of everyday conversation. Awareness increased, but public trust in the industry did not follow the same trajectory. The American Medical Association’s 2015 call for a ban on DTC advertising reflected ongoing concerns that brand narratives can influence the clinical encounter before a diagnosis is made. Physicians interviewed by The Times this week described spending valuable visit time recalibrating expectations created by advertising – explaining why a widely promoted therapy may not be suitable or why its risks and benefits are more complicated than the commercial suggests. That debate is unfolding at a time when trust in health institutions remains fragile.
The conversation still tends to frame DTC as a choice between maintaining the current model and eliminating it. But this overlooks a bigger issue. The pharmaceutical industry now controls some of the most influential health-communication platforms in the country – including television, streaming, social media, search, and digital video. How this multi-channel infrastructure is used has huge implications for how patients understand their health.
That reach is most visible during the Super Bowl. In 2024, Pfizer chose not to promote a specific therapy but to “celebrate science” on its 175th anniversary. Instead, the message was muddled and abstract. Pfizer missed an opportunity – not because its creative execution was weak, but because the platform’s power far exceeded the depth of what it chose to say.
That same media moment has also shown what a different objective looks like. Novartis’ Super Bowl LX screening initiatives and Bayer’s heart-health risk campaign used the industry’s most expensive media real estate to encourage early detection and informed action. They are not simply creative templates for branded advertising; the regulatory environment is different. They demonstrate that when education takes priority, storytelling shifts – and viewers leave with knowledge rather than just an impression.
Branded advertising operates within stricter regulatory constraints, but it still makes choices about tone, pacing, and imagery. These choices determine whether safety information is incorporated into the story or hidden beneath it. The issue is not about fair balance. It's whether the surrounding narrative trivializes the disease and distracts from the risks that should influence treatment decisions.
In many product campaigns, the narrative reassures, while the safety information warns. The viewer receives two emotional signals at the same time and must reconcile them. This split may work well for recall, but it weakens the credibility on which long-term brand success now depends.
Eliminating DTC would remove a source of awareness that has encouraged patients to seek care earlier and discuss stigmatized conditions with their physicians. The opportunity is to use it more effectively. A better approach would replace distraction with decision support – focusing on the moments when a patient and clinician weigh options, reassess progress, and adjust the course if a therapy is not suitable. In this model, safety information is not an interruption; it becomes part of the narrative.
This isn't a call for longer risk language or more data on the screen. It's a call for creative alignment. When tone, imagery, and narrative support the medical reality instead of competing with it, the advertising sets the stage for the clinical conversation rather than pre-empting it.
That shift has business implications. The industry has long argued that informed patients achieve better outcomes. In a crowded and scrutinized market, credibility remains one of the few durable advantages for brands. Creative work that distracts from risk might boost short-term recall, but creative approaches that aid decision-making builds trust with patients, clinicians, and regulators.
Direct-to-consumer advertising has become a permanent feature of American culture. Its future credibility will rely more on whether it bridges the gap between marketing and medicine than on disclosure adherence. In a medium where a 30-second story can reach tens of millions, aligning the message with medical truth is no longer optional; it is essential for understanding.
For some leaders, refusing to apologize is a sign of strength. Apologies are often seen as a weakness or as proof that a leader has lost control of the narrative. The louder the criticism, the more they resist saying “I’m sorry.”
Recent events show how flawed this mindset is. After Donald Trump shared – and later deleted – a video showing a blatantly racist clip of Barack and Michelle Obama, criticism came quickly from across the political spectrum.
But what prolonged the controversy wasn’t the post itself; it was the response. When confronted, Trump stated flatly, “I didn’t make a mistake.”
That statement perfectly illustrates why so many public apologies fail before they even start. What’s notable, however, is that this refusal to accept responsibility is no longer just personal; it has become institutionalized. Trump operates a communications apparatus designed to quickly and aggressively deflect blame or dismiss it as media distortion.
Karoline Leavitt gave a clear example when she scolded the news media, saying, “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.” In such an environment, offering an apology isn’t merely discouraged; it is fundamentally incompatible with the messaging strategy.
A helpful way to think about apologies comes from an unlikely source: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In communication, especially with issues and crisis management, we constantly question whether a response is too much, too little, or just right. Apologies are no different. Does the situation call for one? And if so, will it land as too weak, overly apologetic, or just enough?
The problem isn’t that we apologize too often. It’s that we apologize poorly – or avoid it altogether.
As the importance of apologies has grown, so has the demand for them. But not because society has become more sensitive or civil. Increasingly, apologies are used as leverage – a way to put someone on the defensive. Perceive a slight? Demand an apology. In today’s world, it’s easy to see why leaders become defensive and why a blanket “never apologize” stance can seem appealing. Mitt Romney embraced that stance right in the title of his book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. There’s an argument that we’re entitled to this because of all the good the country has done in the world. But a history of good deeds, whether personal, corporate, or national, doesn’t shield anyone from responsibility when serious mistakes occur. Banking goodwill may buy some benefit of the doubt, but it doesn’t excuse causing harm.
After years of studying political, corporate, and personal apologies, I’ve realized it’s partly a discipline rather than a reflex – something that can be learned, refined, and measured. That realization led me to create what I call the 6 A’s of Apology:
No apology can begin without acknowledgment. When a leader says, “I didn’t make a mistake,” the process ends before it starts. No acknowledgment, no acceptance, no empathy, and no repair. What may feel like defiance to the speaker often registers as indifference to the audience.
Bad apologies generate headlines of their own and can cause real harm. Actions that should help heal can instead deepen wounds. Silence, defensiveness, or half-hearted apologies often do more damage than saying nothing at all. A slow, insensitive response can overshadow good intentions and magnify the fallout.
Good apologies, however, can defuse tense situations and reduce media attention. They tend to shorten controversies rather than prolong them. They reaffirm shared values rather than challenge them.
This is where so-called “tough guys” often go wrong. They confuse apology with submission and assume that admitting fault means losing power. In reality, refusing to apologize often signals insecurity – fear that acknowledging error will shatter a carefully constructed image of dominance. When that fear is reinforced by an institutional communication strategy built around denial, it predictably fuels escalation rather than projecting strength.
Leadership isn’t about never being wrong. It’s about how you respond when you are, since responses determine both the extent of the damage and how long it lasts. How you say “I’m sorry” might matter more than the original mistake.
A sincere apology doesn’t weaken a leader. It demonstrates confidence, emotional intelligence, and moral clarity. The real weakness isn’t in apologizing; it’s in the inability – or unwillingness – to accept responsibility when it’s necessary.
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