Pesdential Leadeship

PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP

“Warfare creates neither leadership nor cowards, it simply reveals them”

(source unknown)

My obsession with history, as with most things, began with my father. My interest in ‘leadership’ dates back to my most basic of Air Force basic training. In pursuit of these interests I have observed and studied both successes and failures of leadership on many levels of authority and in varieties of situations. These are some observations regarding Presidential leadership in other times of national and worldwide cataclysm.

Following the disastrous 1961 failure known as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, President John Kennedy quoted: “Victory has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan”. He had inherited the invasion plan from the prior administration, and it was presented to him as a fait accompli by “experts”. As President of the United States of America Kennedy accepted responsibility for failure. This is what Presidential leadership looks like.

In October 1962 President Kennedy faced the greatest crisis in human history, the Cuban Missile crisis, which threatened 30-million first-wave deaths. Among other acts of leadership he personally spoke to the Captain of the ship at sea whose guns would fire the first salvos of World War III. The President of the United States personally ordered the Captain he was not to fire except on the direct voice command of the President. If western civilization was to end then and there, the President would accept responsibility. This is what Presidential leadership looks like.

In this observation, if President Kennedy had not had the courage and integrity to accept responsibility for the Bay of Pigs, the nation might not have united behind him in our hour of greatest crises.