I think people are often stronger and more capable than they realize. Insecurity causes them to underestimate themselves and is self-limiting. It also prevents them from pushing hard enough to reach their full potential. Many people are more powerful than they are in their day-to-day lives. If you never push yourself to your limit, you don’t have to acknowledge your limit—that’s the good news. The bad news is that you don’t realize your full potential. For most people, this is a choice we make subconsciously.
Sometimes life brings you to a point where you either give up or push harder and dig deeper to find an unrecognized strength in your character. My divorce, political loss, and public humiliation did that to me. It was terrible, and it all happened at once. My life was upended: no home, no job, no prospects, my reputation trashed, my family embarrassed. It felt at the time as if things couldn’t be any worse. It wasn’t just my perception; objectively, it was a very bad time for me. I knew I had a choice: I could either give up, or I could look inside and work through how to change.
When I was starting to get stronger, after my darkest days, my father said to me, “What you went through was really brutal, and I told your mother I wouldn’t blame him”—me—“if he spent the rest of his life on a barstool.” He didn’t mean it literally, but was just communicating that he felt my pain and respected my resilience. He was not the most emotionally fluent man, but I heard him and I appreciated his sentiment.
The adage “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is true, and many people are stronger than they know. They just need the reason to reach their true limits. I also believe we are better, kinder, and more loving than we realize. Showing love makes us vulnerable, and we don’t want to be vulnerable. We are also socialized to think showing love is showing weakness—especially men. I have gotten past that. I am an emotional person and I show it very openly in my personal life.
After what I went through, I became much more emotionally expressive. I wanted to fully communicate how I felt and understand the feelings of others. I try to ask questions to understand what makes other people tick. But in politics, I have remained what I would call emotionally reserved. Politics can be nasty. Opponents seize on any weakness. The press is always looking for any controversial statement or action to exploit. They said Vice President Al Gore had no sense of humor. They were wrong. I know him and he is as smart as people think he is and as honorable, but he is also witty and funny. He is a respectable pool player, too, and I have lost money to him. So why doesn’t he show that side of himself in public? Because it is perilous. Emotion in politics is a risky proposition. It can always be misconstrued, and there are many forces looking to do just that.
This crisis, and the briefings, communicated my genuine self publicly. The trauma we were dealing with was emotional. It was driven by fear, anxiety, loneliness, and doubt. Quarantine specifics and testing protocols were not the only major issues to be processed. People were on emotional overload. How do you help others deal with the sense of fear and vulnerability? Show your own vulnerability first. Discuss your emotions and fears. And that’s what I did in the briefings. It was authentic and real. I felt the same emotions so many people were feeling, and I would acknowledge them and show them. It was risky to do this, but I didn’t really have a choice. First, I am emotional, and the situation did not allow me control or reservation. Also, I needed to connect with people where they were. I had to go to them—they would not come to me. If I was going to succeed, I would have to try. If it didn’t work or backfired, I would fail. But if I didn’t try, I would fail anyway. It was an easy choice.
That’s where I was. If I expressed vulnerability and emotion and got criticized or mocked, I could handle it. I had been mocked before and survived. My kids would still love me. But if I didn’t connect emotionally with the people, they would never have the trust and confidence in me to follow my proposals. To believe in me, they had to know me as a person and not as a government official. In the briefings I spoke the way I would speak to a close friend or to my daughters. I said the same words that I said to my mother and brother. Everything I communicated was true, unrehearsed, unscripted, and spontaneous. If people rejected me, so be it. That’s the only way I could do it. I gave my heart in the briefings and people gave me theirs. The letters, emails, smiles, and thumbs-up on the streets were them showing their love because I showed my love. And there is nothing better. I learned that even in the public arena vulnerability is always worth the risk, because without it there’s nothing. I learned that in the right circumstances people can reach a higher level of trust and goodness. Sometimes it just takes the other person to go first. So I’ll go.
—
GOOD QUARTERBACKS IN football can throw the ball brilliantly but can also take off and run the ball. I had always striven to be a “complete” government official. I worked to connect with people, motivate people, and drive a dialogue. But I also wanted to be a great executive with a government of extraordinary performance.
It quickly became clear that the claim that we had fifty-three thousand hospital beds
