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Leadership: In Turbulent Times

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Last accessed on Thursday June 6, 2019

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Leaders in every field, Roosevelt later wrote, “need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.”

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Lyndon appeared to his students “a human dynamo,” “a steam engine in pants,” driven by a work ethic and an unlimited enthusiasm that proved contagious.

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“How miserably things seem to be arranged in this world. If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.”

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To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

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He realized that he had been held back not only by financial insecurity but, as he told Speed, by untenable imaginings of love, by “dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize.”

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The key to Lincoln’s success was his uncanny ability to break down the most complex case or issue “into its simplest elements.”

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Though his arguments were “logical and profound,” they were “easy to follow,” fellow lawyer Henry Clay Whitney observed. “His language was composed of plain Anglo-Saxon words and almost always absolutely without adornment.” An Illinois judge captured the essence of Lincoln’s appeal: “He had the happy and unusual faculty of making the jury believe they—and not he—were trying the case.”

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Lincoln warned, the lawyer must not rely on rhetorical glibness or persuasiveness alone. What is well-spoken must be yoked to what is well-thought.

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For although he eschewed politics and professed no great interest in returning to the national fray, his pursuit of knowledge was anything but random. It was directed toward understanding the role and the purpose of leadership.

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Eloquence without judgment, however, counts for nothing, and without the will to sustain both, leadership would fail. What made Clay, in Lincoln’s mind, “the man for a crisis,” was the fusing of these leadership qualities with crucible moments in the country at large.

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“His speaking went to the heart because it came from the heart. I have heard celebrated orators who could start thunders of applause without changing any man’s opinion. Mr. Lincoln’s eloquence was of the higher type, which produced conviction in others because of the conviction of the speaker himself.”

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Once again, Lincoln’s personal aspirations were dashed, but he accepted loss with equanimity. Days later, while “the emotions of defeat” were still “fresh” upon him, he wrote dozens of consoling letters to his supporters. Characteristically, it was he who consoled them rather than the other way around.

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Lincoln’s magnanimity (in contrast to the enemies Seward and Chase had created in their climb to power) had brought both men to his side in abiding friendship.

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Pursuing a strategic policy of self-restraint, he remained in Springfield throughout the entire campaign. Aware that anything he said or wrote would be taken out of context to inflame sectionalism for partisan purposes, he simply pointed to the party platform and his many published speeches when asked about an issue; these carefully crafted documents, he maintained, fully represented his opinions on the central issues of the day.

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This victory was the culmination of a different ambition than that of a twenty-three-year-old who had striven to bolster his self-worth by the esteem in which he was held by his fellow men. He now emanated the quiet sense of responsibility he had found in his role model, Henry Clay, regarded by all as the “man for a crisis.”

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“It was a grim and evil fate, but I have never believed it did any good to flinch or yield for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from working.” Two days after the funeral, Roosevelt returned to the Assembly, telling a friend: “I think I should go mad if I were not employed.”

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He hoped his example of acquired courage would prove instructive, persuading other men that if they could consider danger “as something to be faced and overcome,” they would “become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness.”

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What had become of the singular ascending ambition that had driven young Roosevelt from his earliest days? What explains his willingness, against the counsel of his most trusted friends, to accept seemingly low-level jobs that traced neither a clear-cut nor a reliably ascending career path? The answer lies in probing what Roosevelt gleaned from his crucible experience. His expectation of and belief in a smooth, upward trajectory, either in life or in politics, was gone forever. He questioned if leadership success could be obtained by attaching oneself to a series of titled positions. If a person focused too much on a future that could not be controlled, he would become, Roosevelt acknowledged, too “careful, calculating, cautious in word and act.”

Note:Rohit?

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“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are,” he liked to say. In a very real way, Roosevelt had come to see political life as a succession of crucibles—good or bad—able to crush or elevate.

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Roosevelt’s leadership style was, in actuality, governed by just such a series of simple dictums and aphorisms: Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.

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Roosevelt regarded the spoils system as a cynical corruption of the democratic idea that every man should be judged on his merits.

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Any man who has been successful, Roosevelt repeatedly said, has leapt at opportunities chance provides.

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He succeeded in keeping Long’s trust by remaining “beguilingly honest and open” about their differences of views. Of paramount importance was simply to acknowledge who was in charge.

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“If it had not been for Roosevelt we should not have been able to strike the blow we did at Manila,” the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations remarked. “It needed just Roosevelt’s energy and promptness.” American army officer Leonard Wood later observed that “few men would have dared to assume this responsibility, but Theodore Roosevelt knew that there were certain things that ought to be done and that delay would be fatal. He felt the responsibility and he took it.” For Roosevelt, being a subordinate was never confused with being subservient.

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“Alger considered this an act of foolish self-abnegation on my part,” Roosevelt later said, “instead of its being what it was—the wisest act I could have performed.” Central to Roosevelt’s decision was not the title he would enjoy, but the ultimate success of the regiment in which he would share command.

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To stimulate the “fellow feeling” he believed essential to the success of the mission, he deliberately arranged the tents at the training ground in San Antonio in such a manner that cowboys and wranglers slept side by side with the scions of financiers. He assigned Knickerbocker Club members to wash dishes for a New Mexico company and brought easterners and westerners together in the daily chores of washing laundry and digging and filling in latrines. Eventually, a common denominator emerged throughout the entire regiment—a leveling of money, social status, and education under the aegis of teamwork.

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Roosevelt recalled, for “it is the greatest possible mistake to seek popularity either by showing weakness or mollycoddling the men. They never respect a commander who does not enforce discipline.” Experience taught him to strike the right balance between affection and respect.

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“I have played it in bull luck this summer. First, to get into the war; then to get out of it; then, to get elected. I have worked hard all my life, and have never been particularly lucky, but this summer I was lucky, and I am enjoying it to the full.

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“The routine was simple,” Ray Moley recalled. The atmosphere at dinner would be pleasant and casual. Roosevelt encouraged his visitors to talk about their work, their families, and themselves, making each person feel that “nothing was so important to him that day as this particular visit, and that he had been waiting all day for this hour.” Dessert done, they moved to the governor’s small study where “random talk came to an end.” There Roosevelt would throw questions to the experts “at an exciting and exhausting clip.” As the night wore on, the questions became “meatier, more informed—the infallible index to the amount he was picking up” in the course of the evening. Moley marveled at “the amount of intellectual ransacking Roosevelt could crowd into the evening.” From hindsight, it was clear to Moley that Roosevelt “was at once a student, a cross-examiner, and a judge.”

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He could understand a problem, Perkins realized, “infinitely better” when baffling statistics and facts could be translated into a human story.

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Simplify the concept that “we are trying to construct a more inclusive society” into “we are going to make a country in which no one is left out.”

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So now, as Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency, he built on his own long encounter with adversity: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

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The Congress of the 1940s rewarded a slow and steady accretion of power within a seniority system based solely on longevity. Key congressmen had invested years, even decades, to facilitate their rise to leadership positions. In such an institution, one requiring an extended period of resigned waiting, Johnson’s strengths (his instinctive ability to seize an opportunity, his capacities to work harder and faster than anyone else) were neutralized.

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He had lost the sense of purpose that had accompanied his drive for power, the doubleness of ambition so central to genuine leadership.

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Regardless of one’s impressive title, power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership.

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“We have to do the best we know how to do at the moment. If it doesn’t work out,” he assured Perkins, “we can modify it as we go along.”

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While admitting that civil rights had not always been his priority, he had come to believe that “the essence of government” lay in ensuring “the dignity and innate integrity of life for every individual”—“regardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex, or age.”

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From the outset, Lincoln wanted to establish the healing tone that must prevail in the months to come. “Enough lives have been sacrificed,” he said. “We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union.”

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The dying president had warned long before that lawlessness, murder, and mob rule would create fertile ground for a Caesar or a Napoleon, men of towering egos who would seek distinction by “pulling down” rather than “building up.”

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