September 2019

If You’re Good, You Only Need One: The Al Capone Strategy By Leonard Zwelling One of my great guilty pleasures of all time is the movie The Untouchables by Brian DiPalma, starring Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness. It’s a fictional account of how a small band of government agents fought the Chicago mob and the […]

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound Of My Voice By Leonard Zwelling I have two sons. They are aged 39 and 33. They know the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen. Who they know less well is Linda Ronstadt. Linda Ronstadt is still quite alive despite having been most popular over

Upside Risks Vs. Downside Risks In Determining Policy Alternatives By Leonard Zwelling Often, when formulating policy, when faced with two alternative paths, one must make a choice in which one alternative proves of greater risk than the other. Although taking great risk can be the mark of great leadership, those risks should never be simply

Some One Still Has To Decide: You Can’t Lead Using Social Media Alone By Leonard Zwelling There’s a new kind of leadership. It makes statements and pronouncements on Twitter. It awaits feedback. It then changes its original position and the cycle starts again. Eventually, some position is sort of assumed by the leader who started

The Israeli Election Did Have A Result: It Just Had No Winner—Yet By Leonard Zwelling There is a lot that America can learn from the Israeli election of September 17. In Israel, each person votes for a party, not a candidate. Then the 120 seats in the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) are apportioned based on

Vaping By Leonard Zwelling E-cigarettes were just on the horizon when I was working on the tobacco legislation in 2009 in the Office of the Ranking Member of the U. S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. I don’t really remember considering the effect of the proposed Democratic legislation that eventually passed or

Too Far By Leonard Zwelling It should come as no surprise to readers of this blog that this blogger views Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal as the most clear thinking of editorialists. Her entry on September 7, 2019 is no exception and it is from that that I got the title for this

Why Netanyahu Keeps Winning By Leonard Zwelling Matti Friedman says a lot in his editorial in The New York Times on Monday, September 9. He talks about the unspoken reason Israelis keep returning Mr. Netanyahu to the prime minister’s office year after year and may well do it again on September 17. In a word—security.

Leaders As Media Stars: The New Normal Thanks To Donald Trump By Leonard Zwelling John F. Kennedy was the first TV star president. Until the photogenic young leader held those memorable press conferences filled with his singular good humor, no one had ever seen a President of the United States seem like another human being.

The Loudest Voice By Leonard Zwelling He was Trump before there was Trump. He understood the power of the media and he also understood that most mainstream media was not speaking to a large portion of the American people. He was Roger Ailes and he invented Fox News. The Showtime original seven-part miniseries The Loudest