MARCH 11, 2026 – I remember watching/listening to portions of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2022. She gave a credible account of herself—erudite, respectful, genuine, articulate, and a methodical thinker. Based on her C.V. and on what I observed, I thought—Yes, she seems well qualified to sit on the highest bench in the land.
But what I remember best about the hearing was a soliloquy by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. He related his fraught experience as mayor of Newark, and why his administration had gotten off to such a rough start. Realizing that he’d appointed “the wrong” people to key positions, he replaced the offending personnel but through a much more deliberative process than had been followed at the outset of his term. “What I learned from my mistakes the first time around,” the Senator said, “was that by far the single most important trait of a person under consideration for a position of authority and responsibility is character.” He went on to connect that critical lesson to what he saw in President Biden’s appointee and what Booker thought was her highest qualification for the job—namely, her character.
I agreed wholeheartedly with Senator Booker. As I reflected on my own experiences in the corporate world and inside large law firms and with various non-profit organizations, I realized that I too had absorbed the same lesson; that the most important factor to consider when sizing up a leader—in place or aspiring—was the person’s character. I’d applied this standard to my voting decisions, as well. More critical than policy positions even, was a candidate’s character.
A close second, however, was judgment. Does the candidate for a position of corporate or governmental authority have solid judgment? Inevitably, I’d observed, judgment was interwoven with character.
A corollary to character and judgment being essential leadership traits is the principle that character and judgment are required to assess those very attributes in other people. Someone lacking good character and sound judgment can’t be relied upon to discern the presence or absence of such in others. The stark reality of this two-way street is played out daily in the Trump Administration specifically and the Republican Party generally—with bad character and bad judgment on constant and spectacular display.
Character and judgment are just as critical among eligible voters, who by their participation—or lack of it, as the case may be—put our leaders and their appointees in office.
We now find ourselves at the most dangerous juncture of the entire Trump Era. The “Excursion” we’re on is more aptly described as “a nightmare scenario with potentially world altering adverse consequences.” As the images of war crowd our attention, we are left to guess, argue and speculate as to why we detonated a burgeoning conflict with no cogent, credible and consistent rationale and with no apparent anticipation of its consequences or explanation of its all-in costs. Moreover, despite all the bombs and bluster, we’ve been given no blueprint for what follows the decapitation of a strategically placed country of 92 million people lacking any existing political infrastructure except the one that the American and Israeli warmongers seek to “decimate.”[1]
If our military personnel, top to bottom, are American patriots, the civilian leadership over them are an American catastrophe—in character and judgment. The absence of these critical traits led us into war, and ironically, a surplus of these qualities is required to get us out of the mess. But November is almost eight months away—and assumes that “we the people” have the character and judgment to do what the nation needs to survive and redeem itself from the rogue’s gallery of aggressor nations.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Meanwhile, what’s happening in Venezuela? The silence—among mainstream media and from the White House or State Department—is proverbially deafening. And dare I ask, “Is Greenland safe from American aggression?”
