"It's All Connected"
Power Failure: Leadership, and Our Lack of It
The sixth Mayor of Nashville Karl Dean had a familiar saying that became obviously true for a number of important community issues: schools, transit, public safety, housing affordability, and the like.
“It’s all connected,” he would say.
His administration at City Hall (2007-2015) did not succeed in every aspect, but he always seemed earnest in the emphasis he placed on the coordination of smart policy work - understanding how progress on one issue could boost progress on another – or, through inattention, have the opposite effect.
In Nashville, we continue to be in the grip of a winter-storm emergency, wondering how and how soon we might dig out of it.
On Saturday, when much of Tennessee remained stuck under ice (and poor information from NES) it was frankly stunning to read more piling on by two Republicans, Governor Bill Lee and Senator Marsha Blackburn (who might’ve done more themselves when it was possible. They scolded NES, which has earned it over the past two weeks, and took their customary partisan swipe at Mayor Freddie O’Connell in the process. Our Democratic mayor is a favorite target of MAGA Republicans. (One of these is our lay-about Congressman Andy Ogles, who seems incapable of doing little else and nothing constructive. But don’t get me started.)
Bill Lee issued this statement in the afternoon. Blackburn’s office chimed in. Don’t think these two news releases weren’t coordinated.
Reading all that, my main thought was: Hold the phone. At any point in the past year, when the Trump White House was cutting into the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its work force, where were Lee and Blackburn then?
Back in Year 1 of Trump 2, when the unrestrained Elon Musk/DOGE assault on our government was occurring, none of it was challenged - or even questioned - by any Tennessee member of Congress in the majority party. That would have required them to step out of the shadows and stick their heads up. But only silence.
There was no push-back or questioning by Blackburn. No evidence of any cautionary note from Governor Lee, either, to his party’s supreme leader in the White House. Yet, read here how thousands of FEMA employees were targeted to lose their jobs, thanks to the Trump wrecking-ball.
Where were our two topmost political leaders then, when the Trump White House wrecking-ball was doing the serious cutting, vaguely in the name of eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse”? They now, at least, should be asked about their silence then.
Where were their impatient notes and letters asking, on behalf of vulnerable Tennesseans, that FEMA be wisely spared or subjected to a more careful analytical evaluation - given the history of disasters that Tennesseans have endured. (The destruction brought by Hurricane Helene is still being lived by folks in the mountains of East Tennessee.)
I’ll tell you where Blackburn and Lee were: They were laying low, hiding in plain sight, which is what so many Republicans do today – serving Donald Trump, not their constituents.
But none ought to be rewarded now with further public offices, or unquestioning inattention by the state’s news media. At a minimum, reporters should be confronting governor and senator alike about their absence when the cutting was in progress. All of them are so restrained, submissive and subservient to anything Trump mumbles that he wants on a given day.
We can also forget about Senator Bill Hagerty. His own eye seems fixed now on only one prize - the top executive job at TVA in Knoxville. For that, he knows he would need – now more than ever – to stay in the good graces of the fickle President Trump. Trump can flip without warning, and his slightest grimace or thumbs-down gesture in the wrong direction would nix that ambitious TVA job plan in a heartbeat.
Blackburn, of course, has her own plan for the next stop in her years-long career of holding public offices. The path seems greased for her next public position: To follow Bill Lee as Governor. And, for this too, she needs Trump’s blessing also, or else he signals disappointment to his trigger-happy base across ruby-red Tennessee, and her career ends. Her plan could all come undone, too, in a similar heartbeat.
It’s all connected.
Keel, you're right on the money. Every word of your article. Loved your article last week in The Tennessean about Lew Connor. He was larger than life itself! Like everyone in Nashville, we lost power last week. Just now catching up on everything.
Hey! I saw a rare sighting on the TV news the other night. Bill Lee posed for a photo op, appearing to be helping clear tree limbs. I thought for a moment I was seeing Bigfoot as I’d forgotten what Lee looked like. But he appeared to be alive if anyone else is wondering.