New Year’s resolutions for judges, politicians, policymakers and editorial writers

As the new year approaches, we collectively and individually welcome the opportunity in this space provided by The Daily Record to reflect on the past and think about the future.

That said, we hope with the proper degree of humility, as well as a recognition that our hopes and dreams should not be born out of naiveté or unrealistic expectations for ourselves, the three branches of government, or, for that matter, the human race, we offer the following suggested 2026 New Year’s resolutions for judges, politicians, policymakers and editorial writers.

1. Don’t refuse to reference reality when you make personal, political, legal, and even medical decisions. You can aid that process by listening and paying attention to people and ideas with which you do not agree, in lieu of reinforcing or restricting your sights and sounds to those pictures and words which reinforce your previously held views.
2. Don’t even try to defend the indefensible. It won’t work.
3. Recognize that isolating yourself, your community and even your country, if you are a president, governor, legislator, political or community leader, policymaker, or even a judge, will not make the complexity of an increasingly complicated world go away. On the contrary, it will make your decision-making progressively more flawed and exponentially more dangerous to you and those affected by your self-inflicted defective judgment.
4. Recognize that the choices that you desire are often not the options that reality dictates that you must choose from. Wishing otherwise won’t change that reality.
5. Don’t insist that “the other side” accept and subscribe to your perception of reality as a precondition to further communication, whether that “other side” is competing with you or is attempting to collaborate with you. Better to analyze and address your counterparts’ interests in the context of their reality if you wish to move your idea or process forward.
6. If you are trying to persuade a third party of the merits or wisdom of your position on an issue, whether that third party is a jury, judge, the voters of a federal, state, or municipal district or the elected or appointed officials or are put there by the voters to decide your fate or your client’s fate or the readers of a newspaper, do not forget or ignore who those person(s) are and the intellectual world they live in. Doing so will be fatal to your cause.
7. Be intellectually curious if it is within your DNA to be so. If it is not, check with the best and the brightest in the medical profession to arrange a transfusion of DNA from a known intellectually curious person. Your life will be much more interesting and fulfilling.
8. Recognize that there are many “monuments to persistence” whose success in whatever professional, business, or personal field they chose was, in large part, the result of their persistence. Persistence in the pursuit of a good idea is worth emulating.
9. Share in the optimism of Bernard Baruch, an advisor to four presidents, about the future based on his faith “in the power of the human mind to cope with the problems of life.” Share in his conclusion after a lifetime of advising presidents that “To nothing so much as the abandonment of reason does humanity owe its sorrows.” We should therefore heed the warning based on history and experience that our failures as individuals and communities have been and will be the consequences of “action without thought,” which usually follows thoughts unaccompanied and therefore devoid of analysis.
10. Believe, as Bernard Baruch did, that our society can, in fact, solve our problems by placing our trust in the unfettered intellect, reason, wisdom, and compassion of smart individuals not in crowds.

Finally, we would footnote these updated suggested “New Year’s Resolutions” with the following afterthought based on our collective and individual continued observations of all three branches of government and the politics, economics and psychology which drives them – the collective blogosphere, talk radio, cable TV, internet and advocacy groups, politicians, and other public figures, whether they claim omniscience, heavenly blessings or other supernatural powers or origins do not address any reality except their own.

That said, let’s try analytics in 2026 –we might like it. In any case, Happy New Year!

Editorial Advisory Board Members Arthur F. Fergenson and Nancy Forster did not participate in this opinion.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS

James B. Astrachan, Chair

James K. Archibald

Gary E. Bair

Arthur F. Fergenson

Nancy Forster

Susan Francis

Julie C. Janofsky

Ericka N. King

George Liebmann

George Nilson

Steven I. Platt

Angela W. Russell

Debra G. Schubert

Jeff Sovern

H. Mark Stichel

The Daily Record Editorial Advisory Board is composed of members of the legal profession who serve voluntarily and are independent of The Daily Record. Through their ongoing exchange of views, members of the board attempt to develop consensus on issues of importance to the bench, bar and public. When their minds meet, unsigned opinions will result. When they differ, or if a conflict exists, majority views and the names of members who do not participate will appear. Members of the community are invited to contribute letters to the editor and/or columns about opinions expressed by the Editorial Advisory Board.