A dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, locked down during COVID, he called, surprised me asking: ‘Ford beat Reagan in the first 5 primaries in ‘76 – how on earth did Reagan beat Ford in North Carolina?’

The day we lost the Vietnam War mothers and fathers who’d lived through World War II, watching Russian tanks roll into Saigon, got a shock. Three months later giving a speech, reminiscing, Reagan talked about the ‘tap, tap, tapping’ of Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella on the cobblestones of Munich, warned détente wasn’t going to end any better than appeasement – the room fell dead silent.

Reagan became the voice of a river of people. In the end lost to Ford by whisker – came back to beat Jimmy Carter four years later.

My phone rang again: ‘Jesse Helms trailed by 25 points in 1984 – how’d he beat Jim Hunt?’

I remembered our pollster Arthur Finkelstein dropping a poll on my desk, looking from me to Tom Ellis, lips set: ‘It’s time you two learned something new.’ I learned character mattered more than issues.

Shutdowns rolled on, calls rolled on – after we won the Cold War people relaxed, leaned back smiling, the river vanished. Politics changed. The global economy took off, Wall Street, Silicon Valley boomed but, in the heartland, mills and factories shut down; working fathers sitting at kitchen tables on Friday nights, avoiding their wives’ eyes, stared at stacks of unpaid bills.

And Washington sunk into a cesspool of corruption, politicians swapping favors with lobbyists. Politics changed again.

Trump walked onto the stage – hardly a soul saw him as a politician. He won. Boasted he’d drain the swamp – but didn’t. Patting himself on the back bragged he was a ‘smart, stable genius.’ But spinning tales didn’t seem to matter – then Covid struck.

Clutching both sides of a podium Trump boasted, We have it under control – promised the plague would go away. Death rates soared. Spinning tales backfired. Trump lost. Afraid he’d be seen as a loser spun another tale – the election was stolen.

Not liking Trump, seeing Biden as a Washington politician, my friend asked: ‘Alright, we’re in a ditch – how do we get out?’

‘That takes a crisis – probably.’

Neville Chamberlain made a deal with Hitler in Munich, flew home to England, boasted he’d ‘brought peace in our time’ – people cheered a tale. A crisis struck – Hitler invaded Poland, cheers stopped. Politics changed. An outcast for telling the truth people didn’t want to hear Winston Churchill became Prime Minister.

But other times a crisis spells doom – flat on their backs after World War I, trapped in the Great Depression, Germans cheered Hitler. Paid a price.

‘What’s the bottom line: Is the problem politicians lying – or lack of character?’

‘That’s two sides of the same coin.’

In 1972 Nixon won in a landslide, two years later got caught on tape lying about Watergate, had to resign. But it wasn’t Watergate that sunk Nixon – it was the lie. Back then liberals, moderates, conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, saw politicians telling lies to fool voters as wrong.

Trump slammed Zelinsky for starting the Ukraine war – almost everyone knew he wasn’t telling the truth. But people cheered. That’s a character problem. And the root of that problem isn’t Trump. He lies because people cheer lies.

The gospels tell us pride and lying are sins – ministers in pulpits warn that God is Truth and the loss of truth leads us away from God.

We’ve rolled downhill from Trump to Biden to Trump again – a lot of people are ready for that to change. But healing won’t start unless Americans wake up, stop cheering lies, and go back to respecting the truth.

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Telling stories, in his memoir Carter Wrenn follows The Trail of the Serpent twisting and turning through politics from Reagan to Trump. Order his book from Amazon.