CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, focuses on young people in the United States, especially those who are marginalized or disadvantaged in political life. CIRCLE's scholarly research informs policy and practice for healthier youth development and a better democracy.
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Father-Daughter Bonding: The Art of Disagreeing Well
Sep 08, 2026
From the moment my youngest daughter was born, she carved out her own space in my world. I remember the pediatrician remarking on her long eyelashes, my brief panic when she didn't cry right away, and then the overwhelming relief and joy of holding her as she looked up and seemed to smile.
Growing up in the United States, most children called their fathers âDad.â She chose something different. She called me Nannaâthe Telugu word for father. It was a small, sweet choice that signaled the unique intellectual and emotional bond we would share. I have three daughters, and while my relationships with her older sisters are deep and powerful in their own ways, this is the daughter who shares this particular story with me.
Our linguistic bond went even further. When she was three, my own mother passed away. In my grief, desperate not to lose the word I cherished mostâAmma, the Telugu word for motherâI began calling my little daughter Amma. We both loved it. It became our private sanctuary of language and affection, a tradition that has evolved so that nowadays I sometimes call her Madre, the Spanish word for mother.
Even as a child, she possessed a rare ability to think with striking objectivity and plan far ahead. At twelve, she mapped out her life timeline: she would marry at twenty-seven and have two or three children soon after. Life followed her plan almost exactly; she married at twenty-eightâdelayed slightly by the pandemicâand now has two children, precisely on schedule.
While my wife and older children looked on with amusement, I often found myself asking this little girl for advice. When I spoke to her, she gave me her full attention and responded with complete sincerity. Over the years, she wrote me beautiful letters. One of them moved me so deeply that I framed it; it still hangs on my office wall. Titled âThe Special Relationship between My Dad and Me,â it recounts a childhood trip we took to the Secret Garden in Las Vegas. Even then, she observed the world with clear eyes, writing about how we stood before the gorilla exhibit and discussed the biological similarities between primates and humansârealizing, through that shared logic, just how closely our minds operated on the same wavelength.
By the time she was seven, I sensed she had the makings of a leaderâan ambition she wrote about in a second-grade essay we still treasure. When I proudly told a professor at a university event that I was encouraging her to become a CEO, he smiled and remarked, âAh, so you want her to start from the top.â
Because our relationship was built on mutual respect and freedom, she discussed everything with me, including her dating life. When it came time to choose a husband, I offered only the loosest of boundary criteria. Eventually, she became deeply excited about a young man and invited him over.
I took him on an hour-and-a-half walk around the lake in the park next to our home. I interviewed himâprobing his personality, his technical ability, his career potential, and his capacity to be a good father. He passed with flying colors. Only after the wedding did I learn a delightful truth: my new son-in-law knew exactly what I was doing and was actively working to impress me. I felt a wave of joy realizing my son-in-law had outsmarted the father-in-lawâa testament to my daughterâs sharp objectivity in choosing him.
Her personalityâa delicate balance between wanting to make others happy and harboring a strong inner driveâbecame especially clear when it was time to choose a university. She was accepted to both UCLA and UC Berkeley. Sensing her wavering out of a desire to please us, I reframed the question: âWhich choice will make you less unhappy?â With a very narrow margin, she admitted that Berkeley would make her less unhappy. Hearing that narrow truth was all I needed. I told her she must go for the best option with zero compromise. She chose Berkeley, and later, medical school in Chicago.
Today, she is a practicing psychiatrist, a dedicated wife, and a mother to two young children. Her life is beautifully full. Yet, despite being exceptionally busy, she makes time to read the articles I write. When I gently told her not to feel obligated, she shook her head. She told me she reads her Nannaâs articles not out of duty, but because she genuinely loves themâeven if it is just a small part of an essay each day.
We know each other as close friends. We still laugh and reminisce about the exact names and quirks of every tourist who shared an unforgettable eleven-day European bus tour with us. We are keepers of the same memories.
This brings us to the polling booth.
Politics is a subject we discuss thoroughly. We agree on most things, but when we diverge, it is a matter of perspective rather than logic. My daughter feels a deep, personal connection to the DACA program, having gone to medical school alongside brilliant classmates whose careers and lives in this country were constantly under threat. When she reads the news, she feels that vulnerability acutely on behalf of her peers. For my part, while I understand and respect that passion completely, I tend to view the same issue through a broader policy framework.
There is a small, quiet part of me that once wished I could bring her around to my perspective. Not out of ego, but out of the lifelong habit of wanting to share every conclusion with her the way we once shared every idea. But that small sting is quickly overtaken by something larger. I raised all three of my daughters to be independent thinkersâto pursue their passion without compromise, to follow their own conviction wherever it leads. That was always the goal. So when she stood her ground on her vote, armed with genuine reasoning and conviction, I felt the deepest possible pride. She was not agreeing with me. She was proving that I had succeeded as a father.
We both understand and appreciate how the other person arrives at their conclusion. Because our relationship has always been anchored in a lifelong habit of critical and integrated thinking, we respect each otherâs cognitive processes entirely.
On Election Day, we climb into the same car, the atmosphere filled with warmth and easy conversation. We joke that we are driving all this way for a ânet zeroâ benefit because our ballots will neutralize each other. But beneath the laughter lies a shared sense of satisfaction.
We walk into the polling booth side by side. Standing next to each otherâseparated only by those thin cardboard dividersâwe exchange a glance that needs no words. Then we cast our ballots for two different candidates.
As we walk back to the car, we do not feel defeated; we feel a quiet, powerful wave of pride. We have fulfilled our responsibility as good citizens. More importantly, we have proven that different perspectives do not mean a divided heart. We may cancel each otherâs votes, but we amplify each otherâs lives.Meda Parameswara Reddy, Ph.D., is Director of the Reddy Center for Critical and Integrated Thinking. A former R&D executive with 30 U.S. patents, he focuses on analyzing human behavior, public health, and global affairs, drawing on an interdisciplinary background. He has published in multiple RealClear platforms, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., The Humanist, AFRO American, South Asia Monitor (on the editorial board and host of a show), and others.
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A Navy veteran turned NY State Assembly staffer reflects on youth, bipartisanship, and why good government is still possible in 2026.
AnnaStills/Getty Images
I Left Government More Hopeful Than I Started
Sep 08, 2026
Friday was my last day working for the New York State Assembly. While finishing my Master of Laws at Columbia, only a month after leaving the military following ten years as a Naval Aviator, I saw on LinkedIn that an Assembly member was looking for a District Director. I applied for the job, got it, and, with a semester to go, took it. It was my first job out of the military, and it was absolutely wonderful. At a time when trust in government is lower than it's been in almost seventy years, I was part of a team that made me believe, more than ever, that government can be a force for good. I want you to believe it, too.
My boss was the kind of politician one dreams of: hardworking, earnest, and incredibly smart. He was an absolute model of public service and neighborliness, who grounded us in the mission that anyone who ever came into contact with our office should walk away with more faith in government. He did his best to show up everywhere and for everyone; I watched him give every ounce of himself to serving his constituents in Manhattan and representing them in Albany. Sometimes they called and complained anyway. Most who observed his effort became enamored. I can say confidently that New York is better for having had him in the state legislature.
His Chief of Staff was one of the savviest managers I have ever met. She had come from tech and quickly became a political force; we should be glad she chose public service when it is clear she could do anythingâshe would have made a formidable military officer because she is such a natural mission commander. She optimized the entire office, reminding us to set boundaries to prevent burnout, but calling us out if she knew we could do better. She brought out the best in us. We never wanted to disappoint her.
The legislative team was composed of two policy savants. One of them entered the office as an expert in computer science and artificial intelligence, while the other quickly became one. Together, they were behind an incredibly impressive legislative agenda that included the most progressive AI safety law in the country. These two will shape the future of AI regulationâif we're lucky. They are also funny.
Our director of constituent services is perhaps the most empathetic person I have ever met. She took call after call from neighbors on their worst days and worked tirelessly to help them solve their problems. On top of that, she managed a schedule that was busier than the governorâs, according to a staffer who would know. She also made sure we were all taken care of emotionally and that the office was stocked with snacks. On my last week of work, she gifted me a tote bag she had hand-embroidered with colorful hearts and the words âHATE HAS NO HOME HERE.â
We did not agree with each other on everything. Our office was not an echo chamber, but we addressed tension with compassion and curiosity to move things forward. We trusted each other, and recognized that ultimately we won and lost as a team. I canât help but think that such an office mindset played a role in the Center for Effective Lawmaking giving our boss the highest freshman effectiveness score of any New York City legislator, and the second highest in the entire state. Teamwork is useful for more than just morale.
By the way, every single bill my boss passed had at least one partner across the aisle. I think this must be thanks in part to legislating with that same collaborative mentality, allowing for bipartisan cooperation. It turns out, lawmakers who build coalitions across party lines are simply more effective at passing legislation than those who don't, regardless of which party controls the chamber. In fact, political scientists at the University of Arkansas found that âthe states where legislators were the most civil towards each other passed roughly twice the number of bills that the most uncivil legislatures passed.â To illustrate the point, in 2023, Congress passed only 27 bills total. In only four years, my boss passed 35 himself (and theyâre good ones).
Moved by the effort of everyone on the team to ensure we were operating at maximum efficiency, and blown away by the efficiency itself, I have tried to internalize what made it possible. It does feel relevant that the oldest person in our office was 43. Younger generations may be better equipped to address many important issues of our time, and not just because of their vitality. It was the 23 year old in the office, after all, who taught me how to use and optimize Claude. More Gen Z adults report owning crypto than any other generationâthat fluency could be an asset. The legislative duo I described are geniuses, so who cares that even the older one was born only three weeks before September 11th? While elder knowledge is critical and intergenerational exchanges are important, it's hard not to think our youth was a factor in that efficiency.
Unfortunately, young people are strikingly scarce in government. Of the 2 million people in the federal government, roughly only 7% are early-career individuals, while that demographic makes up 20% of the broader American workforce. Millennials made up more than a quarter of the voting-age population but only about 7% of the 117th Congress. Now, theyâve increased to 15%, but Gen Z still sits at .2%. We should identify and remove the hurdles keeping young people out of public service. Itâs the right thing to do, and it might even lead to significant improvements in government effectiveness.
Our government has a lot to fix before it can earn back the peopleâs trust. It will be more important than ever to elect the right people to represent us. Before you exercise your civic duty of voting, consider asking yourself: how much energy do these candidates have? And what kinds of coalitions do they build? If we want to elect leaders capable of meeting the moment, a capacity to work hard and an ability to work with others should count at least as much as a good resume or simply incumbency.
I want to live in a world where a high functioning government doesnât feel like the stuff of fantasies or The West Wing. After getting a yearâs worth of eyewitness evidence, however, I leave New York affirmed that this is achievable, that good people are among us, and that progress is not just possible but within reach. Our office wasnât perfect, but we gave it our all every day, and we have a lot to show for it. I know weâre not the only ones. If you feel called to serve, go find your team.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.
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Voters cast their ballots on November 5, 2024 in Jefferson, New Hampshire.
John Tully/Getty Images
Non-Popular Vote Presidents: Conservativesâ Pathways for Abandoning Fiscal Responsibility
Sep 08, 2026
In political science and macroeconomic analysis, conservative administrations that win governance through the Electoral College without securing the national popular vote (historically exemplified by administrations like George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016) navigate specific structural, ideological, and strategic pathways that often lead to the abandonment of traditional fiscal restraint.
Supply-Side Supremacy and "Starve the Beast"
The Theory: The core tenet shifted from "balance the budget first" to "cut taxes to stimulate growth". Proponents argue that lower tax rates generate enough economic expansion to eventually make up for lost revenue.
The Fiscal Outcome: In practice, major legislative actionsâfrom the Reagan era to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and subsequent budget reconciliation moves permanently lowered revenues without corresponding spending cuts. This has structuralized trillion-dollar deficits as a regular feature of governance.
The "Starve the Beast" Failure: The strategic rationale was that cutting taxes would starve the federal government of funds, forcing it to shrink. However, while revenues decreased, the political appetite to cut actual federal spending never materialized.
Populist Realignment and "Entitlement Untouchability"
The Electoral Reality: The transformation of the conservative base into a more working-class movement created immense pressure to protect mandatory spending programs.
Protecting the Safety Net: Major components of the modern conservative platform explicitly oppose cutting core entitlement expenditures like Social Security and Medicare. Because these entitlements, along with Medicaid, comprise roughly half of all federal spending, making them untouchable mathematically eliminates any viable pathway to a balanced budget without massive tax increases.
The Redefinition of "Government Size" over Deficits
Redefining the Problem: Influential conservative factions and think tanks like American Compass have reframed the definition of limited government. This view posits that the true measure of government overreach is its overall expenditure and economic intervention, rather than how that spending is financed.
The Rhetorical Pivot: Under this pathway, deficits and national debt are treated as secondary management issues. Debt is effectively tolerated as long as it funds core conservative prioritiesâsuch as defense spending, border security enhancements, and domestic tax reliefârather than expanding progressive social welfare programs.
Strategic Weaponization (Minority vs. Majority Dynamics)
Opposition vs. Governance: Analysts note that fiscal conservatism frequently functions as a highly effective opposition strategy rather than a governing blueprint.
The Behavioral Pattern: When in the minority, conservative lawmakers routinely weaponize the deficit, leveraging debt ceilings and appropriations processes to block the opposition party's agenda. However, once they secure unified control of the executive and legislative branches, leadership regularly abandons these strictures to avoid the electoral backlash that comes with cutting popular public services or federal agencies.
Political scientists, economists, and historians outline these specialized pathways to explain the divergence between conservative fiscal rhetoric and actual deficit spending:
Coalition Maintenance via Asymmetric Polarization
Presidents facing structural popular majorities against them rely heavily on maintaining absolute cohesion within their geographical and coalition boundaries (the states and districts that secure the Electoral College).
The Mechanism: Government spending is targeted or maintained to insulate core voting blocs. For instance, modern populist-conservative realignments explicitly reject cuts to social safety nets that support their working-class bases.
The Fiscal Outcome: The administration protects agricultural subsidies, defense contracts, and entitlement spending relevant to their coalition, while cutting taxes, resulting in a systemic compounding of the national debt.
The Institutional "Mandate" Substitution
Presidents who ascend to office without winning the popular vote lack a broad democratic majority mandate. To assert governing legitimacy and solidify their political base, they frequently substitute a popular mandate with an ideological mandate.
The Mechanism: Rather than compromising on consensus-based fiscal policy to appeal to the popular majority, these administrations prioritize high-impact, base-satisfying legislative victories.
The Fiscal Outcome: Unfunded tax cuts and maximized defense spending are fast-tracked to signal strength and unified partisan alignment, shifting focus away from the lack of popular vote consensus.
The adoption of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), without a constitutional amendment, is an ideal push-back by voters across the political spectrum, betrayed by Non-Popular Vote Presidents, a function of the winner-take-all (WTA) regime Electoral College regime.
The NPVIC is an agreement among U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the overall popular vote in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It is considered a pragmatic, state-based initiative because it aims to ensure the winner of the national popular vote wins the presidency, operating within the existing Electoral College framework by utilizing states' constitutional authority to appoint electors. The NPVIC has been adopted by 18 states and Washington, D.C., representing 222 electoral votes. It needs 48 more electoral votes to reach the 270-threshold required to go into effect. Member states enact legislation that legally binds them to award their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of whether that candidate won the majority in their specific state.
November 3, 2026, opportunity: elect governors and state legislatures, regardless of their party affiliation, that will adopt the NPVIC, a viable pathway to reform especially in the following states, won by Trump-47 in 2024:
Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona.
Hugh J. Campbell, Jr., CPA, is a Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) professional and a student of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician often credited as the catalyst for the Japanese economic miracle after WWII.
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U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump is traveling to Long Island to tour law enforcement facilities in Nassau County and rally support for local Republican candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections
Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself
Is it possible that our President has simply not traveled enough?
Born and raised in Queens and attending Fordham University in the Bronx, Donald Trump has no record of traveling outside New York until he was over 20, when he transferred to a college in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. Were his formative years amiss, then, in his learning about other places and other people?
Is his view akin to the famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg, an illustration of the United States with New York City as the epicenter of the country and the Hudson River the border of the known world? We can now at least add Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago to the map of âthe realm.â
Our President has now traveled some, but what we recommend is another kind of travel. Not a state-sponsored trip or a venture to scout locations for future Trump Towers. This would be a genuine travel experience, enriching and eye-opening, showcasing other cultures and ways of living.
It will extend far beyond viewing military parades, hobnobbing with such âunderstandingâ world leaders as Kim Jong Un, or taking tea with the King.
WHERE, then, should the President go? As Elon Muskâs Starship spacecraft is not yet ready to take passengers to Mars, perhaps he could explore our own vast country?
Maybe he could travel to âflyover country,â the farming states, where his ying-yanging tariffs and trade restrictions have played havoc with rural economies. Or possibly to California, number one in homeless U. S. citizens, and while there, regale homeless veterans (approximately 32,500 nationwide) with tales of his brave exploits invading and bombing foreign countries.
Or he might tour the Great Lakes, and rename the other four?
WHEN should he go? This will be tough, as he is very busy building his ballroom and renaming bodies of water.
How about a trip in early November, around the midterm elections? Despite the long-discredited accusation of widespread voter fraud, it would be reassuring to know he might be so caught up divvying out ladles of soup in a soup kitchen somewhere that he wouldnât remember to deploy the military for âelection security.â
HOW will he travel? He should definitely not take his Qatari-donated, newly renovated 747, especially after last time, when he had to be smuggled off clandestinely in a catering truck. Itâs unlikely any traveling companions, like the Secretary of State or of the Treasury, are going to fall for the ruse a second time. Besides, we may need those people. No more decoys!
Perhaps the President could fly commercially, although this likely would expose him to undue suffering. Without gold bathroom fixtures and maple wood floors, the trip will be no âLuxury Experience.â If only he still had his âTrump Shuttle,â bought with a massive loan he later defaulted on, saying then, âIâm smart. I got out at a good time.â
Considering the potential pitfalls, maybe itâs best the President travel incognito, disguised perhaps as an elderly woman wearing a lot of bronzer.
Wherever, whenever, however: our President needs a vacation.
Moreover, we need a vacation from him.
If the President refuses our travel suggestions, hereâs another idea:
Letâs get him a pet! He has never owned a pet. As we know with our children, pets teach essential life lessons: compassion and empathy; they instill a sense of responsibility. There is a well-established connection between those who can care for a pet and those who can care for people.
So, which pet should we choose? A puppy? A kitten? A boa constrictor?
Imagine, the President may even decide he likes having a pet. After all, what is more obedient than a well-trained dog, besides possibly the Cabinet? And what is more docile than a sweet kitten, other than plausibly the Supreme Court?
The President may even become more mellow with a pet afoot and less likely to slap tariffs on our allies, or attempt to annex our neighbors, or bully our Congress. (Realizing, of course, a bully requires active participation from the bullied to maintain his status.)
Maybe we should do both: get the President a pet and devise a travel plan for him. (Do you think we could possibly convince him to leave his phone at home?)
Letâs go for it! After all:
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. (David Mitchell)
And for our President, that would likely be the most profound discovery of all.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austenâs âPride and Prejudice."