Leadership Quote by Stephen Lewis

There is a particular kind of candor that sounds less like confession than crisis management, and Stephen Lewis leans into it. "Still" does heavy lifting: this isn’t a one-off bad day, it’s a recurring weakness that has outlived the usual political cycle of denial, apology, and reset. The phrase "at the end of my rope" is melodramatic on purpose, a colloquial flare that signals distress without naming anything that might trigger immediate speculation. It invites empathy while keeping the details blurred.

The second half is where the real maneuver happens. "I find myself" shifts agency away from a firm admission; it’s the language of someone trying to be honest without volunteering the prosecutor’s timeline. "Not handling things well" is similarly elastic. It could cover exhaustion, irritability, logistics, substances, temperament, even the simple disorientation of constant movement. The specificity of "when I travel" provides a neat frame: the problem is contextual, not characterological. He isn’t saying he can’t govern; he’s saying the conditions of modern political life - airports, hotels, late nights, unsparing scrutiny - expose a fault line.

Politicians are trained to speak in policies, not vulnerabilities. So when one reaches for a domestic idiom like "rope", it reads as an attempt to sound human in an ecosystem that punishes messiness. The intent is both admission and containment: to acknowledge strain, pre-empt rumor, and suggest that the solution is practical (change the schedule, reduce travel) rather than existential (rethink the role, confront deeper instability).