In “Leadership in Turbulent Times,” author Doris Kearns Goodwin teaches us how four presidents — Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson — “set a bar for all of us … and from them (we) gain a better perspective on the discord of our times.”
Four dimensions of leadership can be distilled from her narrative: the ability to make alliances with people whom you believe to be wrong; the possession of a unifying vision for the country, and the ability to persuade Congress and the people to embrace that vision; the putting of collective interest above personal ambition; and the handling of defeat with defiance and victory with magnanimity.
There is no better example of making alliances with adversaries than Lincoln during his first term. Instead of a Cabinet of acolytes, he chose the most able, independent-minded men he could find. Three of them had opposed him for the presidency, and all thought themselves superior to this country lawyer from Illinois.
How he brought them around to his decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation is a lesson in self-assurance, patience, humility and affection. He got to know each of them and did not ignore their concerns or publicly ridicule them.
Regarding the communication of a unified vision for the country, there is no better example than that of Johnson and passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the greatest advance in civil rights since the Civil War. It taxed him to the limit.
Powerful Southern congressmen chafed at federal attempts to “forcibly change local laws and customs that govern daily life,” and kept bills in committee and later filibustered them on the floor. But as with Lincoln’s Cabinet, Johnson courted his congressional adversaries indefatigably. He never lost his vision or engaged in trivial self-inflation or petty put-downs. He invited his Southern colleagues to the White House, regaled them with his stories and asked for their support.
Johnson had a clear vision and realized that demagogy would not work. Persuasion would and did.
Finally, how great presidents reacted to defeat and victory are also measures of their presidential leadership.
As young men, both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt abruptly faced the cold brutality of fate that threatened to dash their promise and their ambition. Theodore lost his mother and his wife within 12 hours of each other. Franklin contracted poliomyelitis and became a paraplegic overnight. But both modeled the “defiance” that Winston Churchill meant by “in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.”
Theodore went west to North Dakota and transformed his body and his mind. Franklin developed his upper body, and by trial and error became more mobile. For both, these experiences came to define their political careers.
As for magnanimity in victory, both men were able to put aside impulses to self-congratulate or to derogate their former antagonists. Theodore, after single-handedly mediating the coal strike between uncooperative coal barons and coal workers, later praised the representatives of the barons for their eventual concessions. Franklin, after chastising the bankers who precipitated the Great Depression, later invited them to take part in the discussions on reopening the banks.
As you consider whom to vote for, rather than age, I suggest you look for those qualities of presidential leadership so vividly shown by some of our greatest presidents. Choose deliberation over demagogy, vision over vendettas and principle over politics.
Richard Jones is professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science and Geography at The University of Texas at San Antonio.
A version of this op-ed appeared in the San Antonio Express-News.
