Standards

A guy named Hugh showed me a long time ago that it's my responsibility to set the expectations of others in regard to my performance.

About a decade later, a guy named Ryan introduced me to the Scotty Principle. It's named after the Star Trek character. The conversation would go something like, "Scotty - how long until the engines can achieve warp drive."

"I dinno, Captin. It might be 48 hours for the shape my lady's in."

Kirk would then urgently bark into the com: "We don't have 48 hours!"

And then miraculously Scotty had it fixed in five minutes.

It's about setting expectations.

I have a slide in my seminar where I say that a Republican playbook requires Republican players, and if you're not choosing the members of your team, they might not be the players you need. Too often in politics, we see our players run to the wrong end zone. We see the label "REPUBLICAN" and imagine that they will do Republican things. That's the expectation.

What we end up getting usually is a few Republican things. "See? I'm conservative!" they tell us in their marketing. Mailers arrive, ads are cut, social media boasts of their few, modest Republican achievements.

But think of a two-parent household. Imagine the wife is away on a trip and the husband is home alone. When the kids need to be fed, do their homework, have clean clothes for tomorrow, and teeth brushed and put to bed, and the husband orders pizza and but doesn't ensure the rest is accomplished and fails to put away the dishes or tidy up, should the wife be excited when she returns home?

When measuring our representatives, it's not about whether they did something; it's about whether they did everything that needs to be done or could be done.

"Babe, I was just exhausted. The best I could do was order pizza." You know that won't fly.

We live in a time when low standards aren't enough. The times demand high standards. We can't afford to give a pass to bad incumbents who order pizza and expect praise when there is far more that needs to be done.

As I work with candidates readying for the 2026 primary, it's important to set the expectations of the voters, not just for the challenger, but for the incumbent. It's important to reset the bar. The bad incumbent wants to set the bar low, step over it with a few accomplishments, and then coast to easy victory to accomplish very little in the cycle.

The needs of our country, our state, and our family demand much more. The wise challenger addresses this.

How it could have been: the husband not only makes a good dinner, helps the kids with their homework, pushes them to clean up so that the house isn't a mess, and gets them ready for bed on time, he has dinner in the microwave set to reheat for his wife when she comes home. He aims to surpass her expectations because she deserves that. Because he cares about her and loves her.

We hire our representatives to act as we would. Very few speak as we would speak, act as we would act, or feel the urgency that we do. The truth is that they are not representative of anything. They move to protect their low-bar colleagues quicker than they move to protect our families.

We either have standards, or we don't. The standard is not a few Republican things. The times demand far more... or we won't have a Republic at all.

8 Comments

Paulette (May 20, 2025 8:29 AM):

Well said!

Kathy Satterfield (May 20, 2025 8:32 AM):

Well put

PJ Jackson (May 20, 2025 9:12 AM):

Good piece, Brett. I don’t want an ‘average’ representative any more than I want an ‘average’ spouse. We should all reach for the best! Why settle when there’s that individual out there who will do their absolute best for us? To settle for less says more about us than it says about them.

Randy Reeves (May 20, 2025 9:17 AM):

In my opinion the first test is, did you vote for the house rules as presented by a speaker elected by majority Democrats? If so, you set the course for failure long before the Texas House session started.
A compass reading done improperly by a traveler is his first step for failure.

Daniel Hunt (May 20, 2025 10:17 AM):

Wise words from a wise man!!!

Roy Getting (May 20, 2025 11:17 AM):

We have 2 "Republicans" in Dallas who use the name but don't live up to our standards and are facing the consequences but still haven't adjusted their actions.

Kim Spain (May 20, 2025 3:03 PM):

Very good article. It's not sufficient to look at what an elected representative did but what he didn't do. Sure he may have voted for and passed some good things but let's look at what he voted against, what legislation he killed or stalled in committee, what amendments he voted for that waters down conservative legislation. That tells us much more about the quality of "Republican" they are.

Beth Counts (May 20, 2025 9:05 PM):

Very good. Having an R next to your name is no longer the requirement for the job. We need people who do what the R stands for all the way down.