Most of our greatest leaders were first great failures
Who said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing?” Football fans know that saying came from Vince Lombardi, famed coach of the Green Bay Packers. But is that a true statement as it relates to politics, as it relates to life?
Twenty-three candidates are currently competing for the Democratic nomination for president. Twenty-two of them are going to lose in this year’s election and only one can prevail to become the Democratic standard bearer. One must appreciate that 23-to-1 odds is not good when evaluating one’s chance of winning.
A number of our past presidents including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, ran for president several times before winning the ultimate prize.
One or more of the current candidates who do not win the nomination may well be the winner in a future election. In truth, trying and failing is almost a prerequisite for eventually becoming successful in almost any venture.
We know that there are no Olympics, World Series, Final Four or Super Bowl Champions who have not lost many times. In the entire history of the NFL only one football team has ever finished the season undefeated. Every champion experiences many failures en route to ultimate success. That is also true with successful inventors, business people and politicians.
George Washington, first general of the U.S. military, did not win a battle in the first two years of the revolution. Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections before becoming president of the United States. Washington and Lincoln, both seemed incapable of giving up. In the end both prevailed to become among our greatest presidents.
Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb, was once asked how many experiments it took to discover how to make the electric light bulb. He answered that it was perfected on the 1,067th try. A reporter then asked him how it felt to have 1,066 failures. He said, “We didn’t have 1,066 failures. We just know 1,066 ways not to make an electric light bulb.” Credit Thomas Edison with the insightful saying, “Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who do not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
No person afraid of failure ventures into the unknown. Politicians, even those with great capacity for leadership, who cannot tolerate failure are not likely to run for office. Richard Nixon, who won re-election to the presidency in 1972 by 61 percent of the vote, which was considered a landslide victory, was asked how he reacted to the big win.
He said, “I just wondered what was wrong with the other 39%.” Inventors who cannot tolerate failure will never discover a new way to do something. Athletes who cannot tolerate failure don’t push themselves higher or faster.
We live in a capitalistic society where a basic building block is competition.
We are graded in school, compete for jobs and put our products or services into the marketplace in competition with others.
Sometimes we do well, but much of the time we don’t.
Our greatest contributors to society are celebrated for their ultimate successes which generally come after persevering through many failures. That can be applied to the geniuses of our history, to people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Jonas Sauk, Albert Einstein, etc. It also fits a long list of popular sports figures.
Virtually all of the major contributors to American society would confess to having had many failures in their careers. A willingness to fail appears to be a necessary predecessor to success whether the field is sports, business or politics.
If our history is a predictor of the future, the election process we are watching today may well be helping to identify and perfect our country’s leadership of tomorrow.
It can be said with certainty, “Failure is no more fatal than success is permanent.”