1.18.2005
A Road Map to Making History
What lifts a president to greatness? The answers are not as elusive as you might think. Some lessons from those who have reached the pinnacle
By Jon Meacham
«Newsweek»
Jan. 24 issue - The inauguration was a quiet affair. Sixty years ago this week, on Jan. 20, 1945—a cold Saturday in Washington—Europe had been at war for nearly six years, America for just over three. Three months away from death (he privately remarked that he felt like "boiled owl" much of the time), Franklin Roosevelt decided the fewer the festivities, the better. There was no parade (the military was overseas), and so little chicken in the salad at lunch that most guests could be forgiven for thinking they were eating a celery dish. After taking the oath on the South Portico of the White House—one of the last times he ever stood, his steel braces locked in place—FDR delivered what has become an unjustly obscure fourth Inaugural Address, one long overshadowed by the majestic 1933 speech in which he told America that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
To understand the 21st century, however, Roosevelt's 1945 Inaugural is essential reading, an encapsulation of his conviction that politics and leadership are not clinical but human enterprises, America an unfinished experiment, the world a neighborhood with friends and foes close at hand. "Our Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet," he said that day. "But it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men, of all races and colors and creeds, could build our solid structure of democracy." Engagement, not isolation or hesitancy, was the right road ahead. "We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent upon the well-being of other nations, far away ... We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that 'the only way to have a friend is to be one'."
As George W. Bush begins his second term this week, he finds himself pursuing causes Roosevelt defined as quintessentially American: the spread, by force if necessary, of democracy abroad and the management of a complex federal government at home. A history major at Yale and a reader of serious popular biographies (from James MacGregor Burns to Michael Beschloss to William Manchester), Bush enjoys emblems and themes from the past. There are busts of Churchill and Eisenhower and portraits of Washington and Lincoln in his Oval Office; Bush particularly likes to refer to the bronze Churchill, evoking the prime minister as the archetypal soldier of steel. "He knew what he believed," Bush has said of Churchill, "and he really kind of went after it in a way that seemed liked a Texan to me."
He went after it. With his swaggering syntax, Bush is talking about leadership, about the way in which great men define the direction of the age and then mobilize others to follow until the race is done. The president likes boldness; the question for history, naturally, will be whether his bold course leaves us better off than we would have been if we had taken a different path.
Leadership is one of those words that make some people feel the way Justice Potter Stewart did when he weighed the term "pornography": he knew it when he saw it. It is true that masterstrokes are often not seen as such until long afterward, and that winning strategies—no matter how thin the margin of victory—are hailed as works of genius even if they very nearly fail. After reading a profile in which an aide of his was described as "coruscatingly brilliant," John Kennedy remarked, "Those guys should never forget, 50,000 votes the other way and we'd all be coruscatingly stupid."
Yet what makes a president great is not as mysterious as we sometimes think, and the art of strong White House leadership sheds light on lessons for those in charge of other enterprises in other fields, from business to education to any kind of institution, large or small. Never get too far ahead of your followers, FDR used to say, for you might look back and find that there is no one there. A few principles from history might help keep Bush—and anyone else in charge of others—from that fate.
PREPARE TO BE UNPOPULAR. Virtually all truly transformative presidents—Jackson, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan are good examples—inspire both great affection and deep animosity. Jackson and Lincoln had to confront the threat and then the reality of civil war, yet both left the nation stronger and more democratic than they found it. For decades, huge swaths of the country harbored scorn, skepticism and outright hostility toward FDR and Reagan. And while both could overreach (Roosevelt and the court-packing scheme, Reagan and Iran-contra), both accomplished great things, from World War II to crucial arms-control deals.
Leaders who want to take their followers to new heights—heights the followers themselves may believe out of reach—must be ready to wave away criticism without becoming defensive or isolated. (See Nixon, Richard, for how not to react to the press and to political opponents when leading in difficult times.) Naysayers and second-guessers, Churchill once remarked, spin "round with the alacrity of squirrels," and the leaders who understand that today's skeptics will soon be equally hysterical and hyperbolic about something entirely different stand the best chance of enduring and prevailing. In an interview the week the disputed 2000 election was settled, NEWSWEEK asked former president George H.W. Bush how his son could quell doubts about his new presidency's legitimacy. "It's going to be difficult, and he knows that," Bush said. "But soon all the pundits and experts and professors are going to be talking about something else all the time. Maybe world peace. The subject'll change." He was right. It always does.
SPREAD THE GLORY WIDE. Everyone is the star of the movie playing in his head and wants to believe himself vital to the survival and success of whatever enterprise is at hand. The leader who invests the present with grandeur (but not grandiosity) often brings out strengths a people may not have even known they had. Churchill did something like this in 1940, wrote Sir Isaiah Berlin, when as prime minister he lifted "a large number of inhabitants of the British Isles out of their normal selves, and, by dramatizing their lives and making them seem to themselves and to each other clad in the fabulous garments appropriate to a great historic moment, transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armor." Greatness is democratic, and a leader's script must include speaking parts for all, for only then, really, will all unite in a common production.
CAUTION CAN BE UNDERRATED. Strong leadership is not incompatible with sound stewardship; in fact, the two are linked, and the best leaders are those who understand that the dramatic gesture is not always the wisest. "When Winston's right, he's right," Churchill's friend F. E. Smith once said, "but when he's wrong, well, my God." The Churchill example of a long career of noble failures followed by a shining triumph has long been misread to justify all kinds of recklessly bad, if grand, bets.
KNOW THE DETAILS. "I am a juggler," FDR liked to say. "I never let my left hand know what my right hand is doing." Clever—but in Roosevelt's case, his juggling was more than Machiavellian. As assistant secretary of the Navy during the Wilson administration, he had learned the ins and outs of bureaucratic life, and liked poking holes in budgets and memos that reached him as president. The senior President Bush had the same deep experience in government and was an exacting, if cheerful, chief. "In briefings, he could destroy my day because he would ask the one question I hadn't thought of," an old aide to 41 once said.
While leaders can get trapped in minutiae (see Carter, Jimmy), there is much to be said for mastering one's subordinates' duties. Grasping the essence of what others do enables you to ask the right questions and can communicate a sense of security to others who may at times feel overwhelmed or anxious. Shrewd parenting is the model here: reassure that all will be well, no matter what, without fostering dependence. Facing a potential civil insurrection in South Carolina in 1832-33 over tariffs and slavery, Andrew Jackson explicitly linked the presidential and the paternal: "I call upon you in the language of truth, and with the feelings of a father, to retrace your steps."
Roosevelt closed his long-ago address with a benediction, one that resonates amid another war six decades on. "The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways," he said. "He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world." Let us pray, too, for heart and strength enough to lead us through our own blessed yet anguished time.
By Jon Meacham
«Newsweek»
Jan. 24 issue - The inauguration was a quiet affair. Sixty years ago this week, on Jan. 20, 1945—a cold Saturday in Washington—Europe had been at war for nearly six years, America for just over three. Three months away from death (he privately remarked that he felt like "boiled owl" much of the time), Franklin Roosevelt decided the fewer the festivities, the better. There was no parade (the military was overseas), and so little chicken in the salad at lunch that most guests could be forgiven for thinking they were eating a celery dish. After taking the oath on the South Portico of the White House—one of the last times he ever stood, his steel braces locked in place—FDR delivered what has become an unjustly obscure fourth Inaugural Address, one long overshadowed by the majestic 1933 speech in which he told America that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
To understand the 21st century, however, Roosevelt's 1945 Inaugural is essential reading, an encapsulation of his conviction that politics and leadership are not clinical but human enterprises, America an unfinished experiment, the world a neighborhood with friends and foes close at hand. "Our Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet," he said that day. "But it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men, of all races and colors and creeds, could build our solid structure of democracy." Engagement, not isolation or hesitancy, was the right road ahead. "We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent upon the well-being of other nations, far away ... We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that 'the only way to have a friend is to be one'."
As George W. Bush begins his second term this week, he finds himself pursuing causes Roosevelt defined as quintessentially American: the spread, by force if necessary, of democracy abroad and the management of a complex federal government at home. A history major at Yale and a reader of serious popular biographies (from James MacGregor Burns to Michael Beschloss to William Manchester), Bush enjoys emblems and themes from the past. There are busts of Churchill and Eisenhower and portraits of Washington and Lincoln in his Oval Office; Bush particularly likes to refer to the bronze Churchill, evoking the prime minister as the archetypal soldier of steel. "He knew what he believed," Bush has said of Churchill, "and he really kind of went after it in a way that seemed liked a Texan to me."
He went after it. With his swaggering syntax, Bush is talking about leadership, about the way in which great men define the direction of the age and then mobilize others to follow until the race is done. The president likes boldness; the question for history, naturally, will be whether his bold course leaves us better off than we would have been if we had taken a different path.
Leadership is one of those words that make some people feel the way Justice Potter Stewart did when he weighed the term "pornography": he knew it when he saw it. It is true that masterstrokes are often not seen as such until long afterward, and that winning strategies—no matter how thin the margin of victory—are hailed as works of genius even if they very nearly fail. After reading a profile in which an aide of his was described as "coruscatingly brilliant," John Kennedy remarked, "Those guys should never forget, 50,000 votes the other way and we'd all be coruscatingly stupid."
Yet what makes a president great is not as mysterious as we sometimes think, and the art of strong White House leadership sheds light on lessons for those in charge of other enterprises in other fields, from business to education to any kind of institution, large or small. Never get too far ahead of your followers, FDR used to say, for you might look back and find that there is no one there. A few principles from history might help keep Bush—and anyone else in charge of others—from that fate.
PREPARE TO BE UNPOPULAR. Virtually all truly transformative presidents—Jackson, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan are good examples—inspire both great affection and deep animosity. Jackson and Lincoln had to confront the threat and then the reality of civil war, yet both left the nation stronger and more democratic than they found it. For decades, huge swaths of the country harbored scorn, skepticism and outright hostility toward FDR and Reagan. And while both could overreach (Roosevelt and the court-packing scheme, Reagan and Iran-contra), both accomplished great things, from World War II to crucial arms-control deals.
Leaders who want to take their followers to new heights—heights the followers themselves may believe out of reach—must be ready to wave away criticism without becoming defensive or isolated. (See Nixon, Richard, for how not to react to the press and to political opponents when leading in difficult times.) Naysayers and second-guessers, Churchill once remarked, spin "round with the alacrity of squirrels," and the leaders who understand that today's skeptics will soon be equally hysterical and hyperbolic about something entirely different stand the best chance of enduring and prevailing. In an interview the week the disputed 2000 election was settled, NEWSWEEK asked former president George H.W. Bush how his son could quell doubts about his new presidency's legitimacy. "It's going to be difficult, and he knows that," Bush said. "But soon all the pundits and experts and professors are going to be talking about something else all the time. Maybe world peace. The subject'll change." He was right. It always does.
SPREAD THE GLORY WIDE. Everyone is the star of the movie playing in his head and wants to believe himself vital to the survival and success of whatever enterprise is at hand. The leader who invests the present with grandeur (but not grandiosity) often brings out strengths a people may not have even known they had. Churchill did something like this in 1940, wrote Sir Isaiah Berlin, when as prime minister he lifted "a large number of inhabitants of the British Isles out of their normal selves, and, by dramatizing their lives and making them seem to themselves and to each other clad in the fabulous garments appropriate to a great historic moment, transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armor." Greatness is democratic, and a leader's script must include speaking parts for all, for only then, really, will all unite in a common production.
CAUTION CAN BE UNDERRATED. Strong leadership is not incompatible with sound stewardship; in fact, the two are linked, and the best leaders are those who understand that the dramatic gesture is not always the wisest. "When Winston's right, he's right," Churchill's friend F. E. Smith once said, "but when he's wrong, well, my God." The Churchill example of a long career of noble failures followed by a shining triumph has long been misread to justify all kinds of recklessly bad, if grand, bets.
KNOW THE DETAILS. "I am a juggler," FDR liked to say. "I never let my left hand know what my right hand is doing." Clever—but in Roosevelt's case, his juggling was more than Machiavellian. As assistant secretary of the Navy during the Wilson administration, he had learned the ins and outs of bureaucratic life, and liked poking holes in budgets and memos that reached him as president. The senior President Bush had the same deep experience in government and was an exacting, if cheerful, chief. "In briefings, he could destroy my day because he would ask the one question I hadn't thought of," an old aide to 41 once said.
While leaders can get trapped in minutiae (see Carter, Jimmy), there is much to be said for mastering one's subordinates' duties. Grasping the essence of what others do enables you to ask the right questions and can communicate a sense of security to others who may at times feel overwhelmed or anxious. Shrewd parenting is the model here: reassure that all will be well, no matter what, without fostering dependence. Facing a potential civil insurrection in South Carolina in 1832-33 over tariffs and slavery, Andrew Jackson explicitly linked the presidential and the paternal: "I call upon you in the language of truth, and with the feelings of a father, to retrace your steps."
Roosevelt closed his long-ago address with a benediction, one that resonates amid another war six decades on. "The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways," he said. "He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world." Let us pray, too, for heart and strength enough to lead us through our own blessed yet anguished time.
