Thread by @stevenpmillies

Dear @POTUS @JoeBiden @WhiteHouse,

1/ I've been an admirer since the 1980s when I would've identified as @GOP. Joe Biden always seemed like one of our smartest and most decent public servants. You were my 1st choice in 2008 & I was very happy when you were chosen as VP.

2/ Obv I supported you in 2020 & was able to help advance that campaign in small ways. Having a good person for the nominee was a happy bonus. But overall it was a crisis that called all-hands-on-deck. I would've helped anybody.

That crisis still is here. It hasn't gone away.

3/ Now as we near the halfway mark of the #BidenAdministration & #Midterms2022 the crisis actually has worsened. Things have gotten worse, not better in #Biden years. Now is an urgent, maybe last chance to muster the nation to meet the crisis.

I'm worried you're not doing that.

4/ What is the crisis? In short, it is the growing division not btwn @GOP & @TheDemocrats but what's become embedded in that division, a loss of confidence abt whether we want constitutional govt at all.

It's too simple & wrong to say 'Dems want const govt, Repubs don't.'

5/ More Dems do than Repubs, maybe. But the truth I think is nearer this:

Too many Americans would rather their side prevail, the other side lose, at ANY cost as long as their desired outcome is achieved.

That certainly is Trumpism, we've seen it in @SenateGOP & #SCOTUS.

6/ But especially since #Bruen, #Dobbs, #WVvEPA there is a panicked recklessness among Dems that would restore what's been lost by any means too. I'll add—those Dems aren't wrong to feel that way, this is dire.

But this is the crisis—practically nobody trusts the process at all.

7/ This, I regret to say, is a place where your Administration has not been doing what it needs to do.

I'll say—you entered office facing more crises than any POTUS since FDR and you've done well. But this MOST urgent crisis is the subtlest & I worry you've missed it.

8/ We've needed presidential leadership to restore our constitutional system by restoring trust in the system and each other. We've needed an imaginative, all-in, multi-prong strategy with a generational vision.

I hoped for this in 2020. It has been disappointing not to see it.

9/ But this wknd as the Court's end of term, #Jan6Hearings, #gasprices, #inflation, and all the rest collide with #July4th, the urgency feels so great it compels me to write this way.

The American people feel but largely do not understand this crisis or our role in meeting it.

10/ We need an explainer-in-chief to lead us.

I am saying, "restoring the soul of America" isn't something that happens piecemeal or simply by operating a more conventional White House. This needs strategy, it needs resources. And it needs them now or never. That's where we are.

11/ I could suggest a lot of things. A blue-ribbon commission. A #Sputnik civic education initiative. A series of public and private WH mtgs with leaders to hear & enlist them. Lots of things.

But my saying or doing any of this is incidental. This demands presidential attention.

12/ Being perfectly honest I am not sure we have enough time for this to work anymore. But I am sure that a time soon is coming when I will be sure we don't.

Please, Mr. President, heed this warning. Many of us are losing confidence anything can be restored at all.

13/ Make use of this #4thofJulyWeekend to reflect on your predecessor's admonition when he recalled a battle that took place in these days of 1863—

14/ Those are the stakes. That is our calling. We have to be up to it.

You have many who will help you.

Sincerely,
Steven P. Millies
@stevenpmillies

CC: @VP
@WHCOS
@emmyruiz46
@JohnWMcCarthy