The rhetoric is getting pretty thick these days. We've heard about how people have died for certain freedoms. We've heard about the principles upon with the United States was founded. Always, what we hear is a message that supports whatever legal maneuver is underway at the moment. No one, it seems has died or sacrificed for the other side's freedoms or positions. None of the founders stood for anything like what the other side supports.
The other night, in fact, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World and I played a little game. We listened to commentary and tried to see who was the quickest to name the party affiliation of the speaker. We didn't play long. There was no excitement to the game. The only people we heard were supporting a particular party. They spoke the party line. None of them sounded like the people I talk to every day.
The people I talk to are torn. They support some positions taken by one party and others taken by the other. They find the entire process of litigation less and less like the world they live in. There are lots of differences.
For one thing, no one I know has the money to hire battalions of lawyers to represent them. I wonder if anyone has done even a rudimentary estimate of the number of lawyers involved in the suits and appeals on both sides. It must be hundreds. All billing at hundreds of dollars an hour. The total billed amount, if directed elsewhere, might even be enough to rework the voting equipment and processes across the country.
Most of us don't have the money to simply use the legal system until the results turn out our way. And, for most of us, winning is only one of the important things in life.
OK, I understand that the Presidency of the US is a big deal. It's the "most powerful office in the world" and all that.
And, yes, this is a zero sum game. There will be a winner and a loser. One guy goes to the White House and the other guy goes home. There's no consolation prize. There's no second place.
But is it worth it to gain the presidency if you do so at the cost of principle and common sense? We're told that we're subject to the rule of law. But we're not. Increasingly, it seems that we are subject to the rule of lawyers, that we will sue and seek legal remedy until we have exhausted every resource available. We will mis-state and misconstrue and excerpt the truth so that the only words which pass our lips are ones which help us win.
Does the end justify the means? Is winning so important that how you do it doesn't matter?
There are lots of folks who think so, even if they're not running for president. Vince Lombardi is quoted as saying that "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." I've never seen the context of that quote and I'd like to. I have a hard time believing that a man with the deep faith and value roots that Lombardi seemed to have would mean that in the way that so many others have used it.
A couple of years back I heard Pat Riley, now the coach of the National Basketball Association's Miami Heat, but then coach of the New York Knicks, say that if his team didn't win the championship, the season was a waste. What nonsense. What pernicious nonsense. Did he really mean to say that the games played and the sacrifices made and the team members supporting each other didn't matter unless they won the championship?
Those kind of attitudes are what also bring us all those warfare metaphors. One of the increasingly interchangeable representatives of these increasingly interchangeable candidates was on TV the other night saying that. "This is war," he said, "This is life and death."
It's not. As far as I know, no one in politics or business has sat, holding a dying buddy's head in his arms, listening with straining ears for the sound of the medevac helicopter. War is about life and death. Sometimes police and fire and rescue work are about life and death. But politics is about power and winning.
Life is about winning, too, but it's also about other things. In one of the greatest speeches in the history of oratory, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior said that he dreamed of a world where "my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Life is about character. If there's no character, then it's only a contest.
When I was a young man, heading out for an evening of fun, my mother always said the same thing to me. "Remember who you are," she said.
She meant remember your values. Remember that everything you do reflects on your character and on us. Remember that how you achieve your goals is every bit as important as what you achieve.
One of the best books on leadership that I know is Edgar Puryear's study: "Nineteen Stars: a study in military character and leadership." In that book, Puryear devotes a chapter to the linkage of character and leadership. Leadership without character, you see, is dangerous.
It is character that the leader reaches down into, late at night, to get the strength to do what is right, even when it is difficult. It is character that stretches out for compassion when the galleries cry for blood. Character is Grant at Appomattox, allowing the vanquished soldiers of the Confederacy to keep their horses
Character is what gives life and vibrancy to leadership. Character is Dr. King, standing before us, not with a proposal or a platform or a couple of good ideas, but with a dream.
Character is the willingness to set the example, to lead by showing us the right thing. Character is Douglas MacArthur, asked why exposed himself to shellfire, responding, "If I do it the generals do it. And if the generals do it, the colonels do it. And if the colonels do it the captains and lieutenants do it."
It's character that I want in my leaders, friends. I want that more than fancy speeches, spin doctors, or a war chest as big as the Ritz. Whoever becomes president from this quagmire of an election will make decisions that affect lives. One those decisions might be to commit our Army to battle, an Army where my son-in-law serves. I pray that never happens, but if it must, I want to be able to trust the heart of the president that makes the decision.
This feature appeared on 11 December 2000
