WILL WE EVER TAKE LESSONS FROM THE PAST?
MURRAY WILLIAMS PUBLIC leaders have been warned – by those who’ve walked through the fire themselves.
Because today, anyone with a phone and a few bytes of data can tap into the distilled wisdom of thousands of years.
It’s then for the leader to decide: to understand and learn? Or make every mistake again?
Of all lineages of leaders, the US’s 45th president is probably the most documented. As that supposed beacon of hope splutters, one’s reminded of presidents past:
“May the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country’s peace and prosperity,” warned James Polk, US president No 11.
“One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to be supplied is light, not heat.” – Woodrow Wilson, No 28.
“Chins up”! – said No 34, Dwight D Eisenhower: “Pessimism never won any battle.”
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” – No 33, Harry S Truman, quietly.
No 18, General Ulysses S Grant, was blunt: “In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.”
John Quincy Adams, No 6: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
In the end, said No 15, James Buchanan: “The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”
That’s just one set of voices, from just one of 196 countries.
We’ve a whole world of leaders’ lives for our incumbents to learn from. Have they? But what counts far more is the wisdom of a country’s people.
In the words of US president No 9, Martin van Buren: “There is a power in public opinion in this country – and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers – which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens.” Sounds familiar. Have South Africa’s people learnt a thing, from the disastrous decade past?
And will Americans learn megafast too?