"Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right....
Here I am... Stuck in the Middle with You..." 

   The press and the public, the city and the country, the betwixt and the between: I was born to be the misunderstood middleman. Anyways, two of the past three U.S. presidential elections have left pollsters, pundits and journalists scratching their heads as they perform a post-mortem on what had been the incumbent party’s chance to win The White House. The soul-searching sparked The New York Times headline “6 Books to Help Understand Trump’s Win,” featuring JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy.” Nine years later, disillusioned Americans are still yearning to understand yet another Donald Trump victory, fueled by the gap of understanding between those of us who live on the coasts and those of us who live in landlocked America. Places mired in the middle like Kentucky, where people’s political beliefs are as ambiguous now as they were in 1861, when the Border State declared itself neutral in the Civil War. 

   Today, this ideological disconnect plays out on a local level at the ballot box and on a national level at the theater we call The Capitol. At the polls, Kentuckians toed the line for Mr. Trump one year after voting in favor of protecting abortion rights. At the rotunda, lawmakers from the Tobacco State are quickly and consistently becoming Mr. Trump's most vocal critics within the GOP. These Republicans represent people who live in the hills bordering Appalachia, the heartland I have the privilege of calling “Home.” My old Kentucky home is where the country’s ideological rubber hits the road–in these southern, serpentine pockets of resistance–where voters tend to lean liberal in local elections and conservative in national elections. “There’s gold in them thar hills,” as my Teamster trucker Grandpa would say. And I ain’t talkin’ bout Fort Knox.

   Previously a life-long Democrat, Grandpa was born the youngest of 11 children in Clay County, Kentucky. The New York Times characterized his hometown as "by several measures the hardest place in America to live." The place Mr. Vance considers "home," is an hour drive away- nearby Jackson, which the Times Magazine ranked as the sixth hardest place to live in the country. Jackson is the very first thing the vice president writes about in his memoir. Reading that first chapter of his New York Times Bestseller on the M train from 30 Rock to Myrtle Avenue feels like a lifetime ago.

     That lifetime was the summer of 2016- when peacock-patterned burgundy carpet didn't distract me from the fresh subway grate scuff on my new black pumps. I grab a pesto panini from my usual guy behind the counter, swipe my badge to pay and walk down the stretch of hallway to the studio bank. Just past the costume-adorned hallway that perches above the “Saturday Night Live” set, a longtime network executive and I chat, with our ninth-floor commissary lunches steaming in their clamshell containers. Knowing I was born and raised in the Bluegrass State, he hands me a copy of Mr. Vance’s book as we wait for the next elevator. 

   I’d remain at 30 Rock another three years before moving on to CBS News where some of the biggest stories of my lifetime unfolded, including the pandemic. ​

"When everything in your world is about to change, reach to your old, best self."
- Peggy Noonan, (July 11, 2024) "If Democrats Are Wise, They'll Embrace the Chaos", The Wall Street Journal

   Ten days before President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Peggy Noonan  encouraged the DNC to opt for a brokered convention in her opinion piece titled, "If Democrats Are Wise, They'll Embrace the Chaos." Ms. Noonan’s advice-- to reach back to your old, best self when everything in your world is about to change-- may have fallen on deaf ears. But I took it to heart. And my heart belonged back in the Bluegrass. So I amicably departed “Morning Joe” and returned to my salt of the earth, conservative, Catholic hometown. During my decade in the city that never sleeps, my life launched me into adventures that are fairly foreign to most Kentuckians and arguably, many Americans. Like traversing the metal decking of One Vanderbilt's 42nd floor before the concrete is poured, sitting in the corner office of "60 Minutes" where the man at the helm indulges you with stories about his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin or sweating in the baptism-by-fire bullpens where control rooms can erupt into an inferno of chaos at any given moment.

   Ahead of arriving on the mighty island of misfit toys that is Manhattan, my world revolved around two families separated by 686 miles: my father’s family in Darien, Connecticut and my mother’s family in Alexandria, Kentucky. Blue bloods in the North and blue-collars in the South. Learning how to shift seamlessly between the worlds of country and country club–​an environment that resembles “Mad Men” and a place that could easily pass for Mayberry–this is my area of expertise. And Lord knows I’ve clocked in my 10,000 hours.

   Living in the space between these two tri-state areas makes code-switching a classic custom for an intermediary like me. “The position of being an intermediary is often a source of power,” according to film aficionado Howard Suber. “You have power granted on both sides precisely because you can go between.” As Americans’ trust in news organizations remains at an all-time low year after year, this power to pass between the press and the public becomes more precious and arguably, more potent. 

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   Being a part of the press and the public can prove to be pretty problematic, especially when friction between those two forces thrusts your tiny hometown into the white-hot spotlight. In 2019, a nationally televised scene unraveled at the Lincoln Memorial, where an activist approached a 16-year-old Northern Kentucky student. Coverage of the incident provoked the teenager’s lawyers to sue eight media organizations. The young man's high school, Covington Catholic (my brothers’ alma mater), counts Mr. Trump’s former impeachment lawyer Pat Cipollone among its alums. And across the street, the all-girls high school Notre Dame Academy (my sister’s and my alma mater), counts Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s most recent opponent, former Marine fighter pilot and Democrat Amy McGrath, among its alums.

   “The deepest source of Trump’s political appeal is his ability to tap into the politics of resentment,” according to Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel. This was Mr. Sandel’s response to a question I wrote in September of 2020 while producing a segment on his book, “Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” “They (the Democratic Party) have to figure out a way to speak to the grievances, to the sense of humiliation, experienced by a great many working people who have seen the dignity of the work they do eroded during the decades of market-driven globalization. The Democrats need an answer to that question.” Certainly, the advent of AI will further fuel this resentment when more American jobs become outsourced.

  My work draws on the wisdom of writers and authentic, credible experts to support my opinions. Folks like literary critic Howard Bloom who is the author of “How to Read and Why.” Asked about his motivation to write this book, Mr. Bloom replied, “I wanted to talk about how desperately we, all of us, need to keep reading… if as a nation, we stop thinking well, someday we will yet cease to be a democracy. It really matters, reading the best that has been written, the best that has been thought ever.” Americans are reading fewer books–a troubling trend for someone like the late, iconic editor Robert Gottlieb. Speaking to a group of students at Columbia University, Mr. Gottlieb gave this guidance, “If you’re going to be a book editor or aspire to be one, I can’t teach it to you. First of all, you have to be a reader. If you haven’t been a reader, don't try to be an editor.” In other words, you can’t be a good editor without being a good reader. To me, Americans are losing their ability to evaluate, edit and verify information.

   My writing seeks to ignite critical thinking and demonstrates my relentless resolve to restore a sense of balance in today’s “ride-or-die” electorate. As 2028 nears, all eyes will be on one of the most popular Democratic governors in the country, Governor Andy Beshear. A top tier Biden donor said Governor Beshear would’ve won the presidential nomination if the 2024 Democratic National Convention had been brokered. In my lifelong journey studying the American political psyche, I must admit our current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue reminds me yet again of Mr. Suber’s words, “The outsider becomes the insider… it goes back to Shakespeare, couldn’t be a more classic dramatic structure.”