Speech to a consortium of Florida universities and colleges "Campus Leadership Retreat" (2006)

"LEADERSHIP MATTERS"

Robert P. Watson

So, can one person make a difference? Absolutely! History is full of individuals like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King, Jr., men and women whose choices left an indelible mark on the country and the world.

Consider Rosa Parks who refused to abandon her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama and, in doing so, changed the world. Before the Civil Rights Movement, the city's public buses – like most transportation systems throughout the American South – were segregated. White passengers were given the seats in the front of the bus, while black passengers sat in the back of the bus. In fact, so segregated were the buses that, after entering the bus to pay the driver, black riders had to then exit the bus, walk outside to reenter in a side-rear door, and then take their seat. They could not even walk down the center aisle past white passengers! The law required that, if the front of the bus filled, the driver or a white passenger could make black passengers forfeit their seats and relocate to seats further in the back, often sitting several people to a row.

December 1, 1955 was one such day. Ms. Parks was seated in a row with three black men when a white passenger asked them to move. The men did so without incident, but Parks refused the order and was arrested for defying the passenger, driver, and the city's segregation code. After posting bond, Ms. Parks and fellow parishioners gathered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in downtown Montgomery to challenge the system of segregation.

From this point, the story is well known. The church had a new 26-year-old preacher by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. who emerged as the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association's peaceful boycott of the city's buses, which in turn, helped give birth to the Civil Rights Movement. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It is worth noting the historical irony that Rosa Parks was a petite, uneducated, seamstress who happened to be a black woman. The lesson here is twofold: you do not have to be rich or powerful to change the world; and leadership matters.

I am often asked what constitutes real leadership or what are the keys to leadership? Scholars study great leaders and compile lists of the traits thought to be keys to greatness – intelligence, inquisitiveness, charisma, oratory skills, moral courage, and so on. But leaders come from all walks of life and, it might be said, all shapes and sizes. Indeed, there is no secret recipe for greatness or successful leadership.

The individuals who changed America represent the rich and diverse tapestry of the country and made life for all the rest of us better is so many different ways. This includes presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman; generals like Ulysses S. Grant and George Marshall; activists like Jane Addams and Jeanette Rankin who promoted, respectfully, housing for the poor and family planning for women; leaders of social movements like Frederick Douglass who championed equal rights for former slaves and Alice Paul who fought to extend voting rights to women; and citizen advocates like Cesar Chavez, the voice for migrant farm workers, and Ralph Nader, who brought to the country's attention the plight of unsafe products.

America faced perhaps its worst crisis when, shortly after the election of November 1860, eleven southern states seceded from the Union. The future of the nation, its people, and constitutional government lay in the balance over questions of slavery, states' rights, and the meaning of union. The outgoing president, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, ironically perhaps the man most qualified for the office in U.S. history, was not only unable to stop the march to dissolution but was unwilling to do so. After largely giving up on the job and allowing the ugly forces of irrational hate and narrow economic self-interest among slave owners to govern, it became clear that, quite simply, Buchanan was ill-suited on a personal level for the job. His narrow view of the U.S. Constitution led him to the belief that he was not empowered to act to save the nation.

Passion governed, and she never governs wisely. For example, Leroy Pope Walker of Alabama – the Secretary of War for Jefferson Davis' Confederacy – was but one of the scare-mongers fanning the flames of fear and division among his fellow southerners. Everything the South cherished, warned Walker, would be lost if they did not secede, "First our property," then he warned "our liberties," and ultimately even "the sacred purity of our daughters" at the hands of "pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans."

Fortunately for the nation, a surprising upset in 1860 resulted in the election of a self-taught lawyer from the prairie named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, arguably the man least qualified to be president in the history of the office, made the wise choice to save the Union, and with a mix of heretofore unseen moral courage, conviction, a broader understanding of presidential powers in the Constitution, and the necessary personal magnetism and political savvy, he did just that.

After the bloody battle at Gettysburg in July of 1863, it was clear that the tide of the war had swung to favor the North. Yet, when Lincoln was called to speak at the dedication of the decisive conflict on November 19 of the same year, he reminded his audience – and the nation – that "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate" the battlefield. Rather, "the brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it…" The President chose words of humility while offering the nation a challenge and a choice:

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

As the war was winding down, in his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, Lincoln again challenged the country to both end the war and learn the lessons of it, praying:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

Although the young country had lost a generation of men on both sides and her Commander-in-Chief would pay the ultimate sacrifice, the American experiment in self-government endured and was made stronger.

Adlai Stevenson, the former two-time presidential candidate and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, used to note that "a wise man does not try to hurry history." With all due respect to the late statesman, he was wrong. Men and women of great vision – like Abraham Lincoln and Rosa Parks – have often "stepped up to the plate" to lead righteous movements and causes. More often than not they have encountered legendary opposition in attempting to bring the rest of society – kicking and screaming – to share their vision.

But it is also true that once-radical concepts have often become so readily accepted by us today as to appear commonplace, thanks precisely to such wise and courageous leaders. The challenges of sectionalism and slavery were eventually remedied, as were the challenges of inequality and discrimination, although both required great sacrifice and bloodshed.

This is the story of the great American experiment in self-government. Throughout the country's first two centuries leaders have been labeled as "being ahead of their time," but they also end up being on "the right side of history." Such leaders not only defined their times and captured the imaginations of their fellow citizens, but their words, deeds, and choices on behalf of the unfolding American experiment still influence our own time. We have much still to learn from them.

Although we do not like to admit to it, bad leadership also matters. For every Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin America has produced, so too have there been leaders lacking in flexibility, ethics, compassion, competence, and other traits necessary for greatness. The "other side" of the American experiment includes: the legacy of Joseph McCarthy, the ham-fisted U.S. senator whose crusade to rid the country of Communists in the 1950s resulted in baseless claims against innocent Americans whose civil liberties (and lives) were trampled; and George B. McClellan, the pompous Union general during the Civil War who refused direct orders from his commander-in-chief to fight and thereby added to the suffering and loss of life of the protracted war between the states.

Leadership is also about making the right decision, about accepting tough choices. Throughout America's history, many of the country's greatest challenges have been bad choices made out of fear, emotion, and misunderstanding. Americans have embraced such wrongheaded measures such as: the undemocratic Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it a crime to utter "any false, scandalous, and malicious" criticism of the government; and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which allowed escaped slaves to be "reclaimed" by their masters on the basis of nothing more substantive than the master's sworn testimony.

Such blunders were done at one time with public support but with tragic consequence to the great American experiment in democracy. So too have there been momentous choices – court cases, political decisions, events, speeches – that have fundamentally improved the lives of Americans. This includes: court cases like the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended over a half-century of legal segregation; and John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address of 1961 that challenged Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

History has rendered its cold judgment on these great and tragic choices and on the leaders who made them. But it remains to be seen which leaders in contemporary times will be remembered as great or failed, and which choices turn out to be celebrated or lamented. What will history have to say about America's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? Our efforts to secure the homeland and reform immigration? Tax cuts? Standardized testing in schools or school vouchers? Free trade pacts? The decision to, or not to, drill for oil in ANWR? Or stem-cell research? These are the choices before us.

In closing, let me reiterate that leadership matters, and so do our choices matter. Every so often, the United States has found itself at the proverbial "fork in the road." At least two distinct paths have presented themselves, offering dramatically different directions for society. Sometimes our leaders boldly sought the path less traveled, and sometimes they chose caution and conformity. Sometimes their decisions turned out right, other times they did not.

America is an ongoing experiment in self government – an experiment that can fail if the people and leaders fail, or if the wrong choices are made. And yes, at times this experiment in popular government required bloodshed, but so too has it survived a bloody civil war, a great depression, and some really bad leaders.

Along the way, the experiment has been tweaked, prodded, and improved since the Founding. The true genius of the Framers was that they not only recognized that choices would have to be made, but that they established a system of governance allowing for change. The distinctly American principles of equality, freedom, and individual rights were not innate. They needed more than inspired words. They needed leaders to realize the dream.