What's Wrong with the Social Sciences?

Where Was Our Demosthenes?

Since the 19th century, democracies have put increasing faith in the social sciences to help formulate public policy. Leaders and administrators draw from diverse academic fields -- economics, political science, international relations, sociology, anthropology, social history, geography, psychology, legal studies, business administration -- whose methods explain and predict patterns of behavior in human populations.

There is much to commend the social sciences. I value my training in the social sciences. As a historian and commentator, I honor Adolphe Quetelet's stunning discovery that much human behavior can be described by the bell curve. Yet during the last century, when democracies have been bullish on the social sciences, its practitioners have failed to see some of the most dramatic storms on the horizon. Consider how the status quo was suddenly upset by the following events, not one of which was forecast by an appreciable number of social scientists:

1. The outbreak of the First World War after a century of relative peace in Europe.
2. The Stock Market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.
3. Nazi rearmament and the outbreak of World War II in the 1930s.
4. The achievements of the Civil Rights movement and President Johnson's Great Society were to end the most dire effects of poverty and give hope to citizens in our inner cities. Yet between 1965-68 America's inner cities exploded with rage.
5. There was the first OPEC embargo in 1973, which sent the West into a panic.
6. Also in the 1970s, modernization theory told us we lived in an increasingly secular age in which religion would become attenuated as a social force. Yet in 1976 a new voice arose in American politics, that of evangelical Christianity, whose civic engagement helped elect Jimmy Carter in '76 and Ronald Reagan in '80 and '84. (Remember the Moral Majority?) Even as late as 2004, George W. Bush's surge in the last week of the campaign was attributed to evangelicals. Few social scientists saw any of this coming.
7. The developing world was also supposed to be modernizing and secularizing after World War II. But then in 1979 the Iranian Revolution erupted, and all of a sudden Islam re-emerged as a world-historic force with which to reckon. Few social scientists saw it coming.
8. It was not just the reassertion of religion in geopolitics that went missing on radar screens. Back during the Reagan years the U.S.S.R. was supposedly here to stay. Our nation was spending $30 billion annually in universities, government intelligence agencies, think tanks, and exchange programs to understand Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Yet the rapidity with which the Berlin Wall fell on 11/9 surprised everyone, social scientists included. Prior to the autumn of 1989, hardly anyone predicted that the U.S.S.R. would end up on the ash heap of history (President Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn excepted). Why didn't the experts have a clue?
9. Before December 2007, where were economists to warn us about toxic mortgages and bundling? Why didn't more experts see the Great Recession coming and how severe it would be?
10. Prior to January 2011, no one seemed aware that Egypt -- our "cornerstone of stability and security in the Middle East," according to Secretary of State Clinton -- was on the verge of exploding. Yet explode it did. Few experts saw it coming.

Besides posing the obvious question -- Where was our Demosthenes when we needed him? -- these ten examples raise a host of philosophical issues. To what degree is scientific knowledge of society possible? In what ways are the social sciences predictive? When it comes to public policy, should the social sciences ever supplant the humanities or ignore the historical record?

Such questions were almost unthinkable when I was an undergrad. Back in the 1970s, I was taught that the social sciences had more cache than narrative histories because they were predictive; human behavior could be plotted on a bell curve. In grad school in the 1980s, most of my profs marched to the same drumbeat, arguing that history was better when informed by the methods of the social sciences than by those of the humanities; cliometrics uncovered patterns that had greater analytical and descriptive power than, say, biography or Thucydides.

I do not doubt the efficacy of bell curves, cliometrics, and compelling social scientific methods that have been developed over the last two centuries. Great analytical and predictive powers can be claimed on their behalf. And yet, very few smart people in the social sciences predicted some of the most defining events of our recent past.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall on 11/9/89, social scientists began seriously debating the limits of social science. Clearly social science did not turn out to be the "social physics" that Auguste Comte hoped. Nor was it the "religion of prediction," as one headline put it. Immanuel Wallerstein aired his personal revaluation in a provocatively titled book, Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms, which is now in its second edition and regarded as the classic treatment of these questions. The classicist W. R. Connor also ruminates wisely on the limits of social science in his article, "Why Were We Surprised?" (American Scholar, 2001).

What's wrong with social science? Nothing -- so long as the experts acknowledge, and the public knows, its limits.

Perhaps the humanities, without gloating, can reinforce the sense of humility. Not that the humanities have been any better than the social sciences at predicting the big surprises of the last 100 years. But the humanities do have a way of making us humble before the mystery of existence.

I'd offer that the humanities should have a place at democracy's table, alongside the social sciences, when leaders and the public are weighing big decisions. Narrative history, literature, philosophy, foreign languages, and myth -- they are as relevant as ever. For the humanities shove us out of our comfort zone into the mystery, variety, and unpredictability of the human condition -- the exact opposite of what social science tries to do in tracing the patterns, consistency, and predictability of human behavior.

Also consider the study of the classics, or the history of distant peoples, or any modern foreign language. These disciplines require students to master much different viewpoints from what is ordinary and familiar. Mastery of a "foreign" viewpoint with a different grammar and different cultural rules is invaluable training for citizen-leaders who must work in a global economy and empire.

Narrative history also offers valuable training. It does not presume to be predictive in the way the social sciences are. It recognizes, as Philip Tetlock has quipped, that "there are no control groups in history." But deep reading in the past helps us appreciate the wild card that can suddenly appear in the course of human events. History conditions us to anticipate storms gathering on the horizon if not predict the hour of their arrival. History's emotionally powerful stories describe the human personality in its mystery, the human will in its inscrutability, and human action in its unfathomable possibilities. Indeed, good history reveals how unpredictable life can be. It makes readers alive to the power of emotion, loyalty, and love (all four kinds) in human affairs. It shows how unforeseen crises develop when historical processes are unexpectedly interrupted or accelerated. History teaches us that crisis arises out of the raw material of human nature, and no bell curve can quite catch it. Herodotus and Thucydides, Plutarch and St. Augustine -- they give us a different way of looking at our world, one that is every bit as compelling as that of the social scientists. Can we recognize ourselves in the mirror and the lamp they raise before us?

If there is any "soft pattern" in the human condition, then the humanities help us recognize at least two of its sources. One "soft pattern" arises from the relative constancy of human nature: People who face similar conditions tend to act in similar ways. It's why historians search out analogies linking different events. The other "soft pattern," ironically, is that there are few soft patterns in history. Big Surprises come when people least expect them. The wild card appears with enough regularity to keep us humble. The social sciences alone are not the answer. Nor are the humanities alone the answer. The best education for leaders and the public is the "both-and," not the "either-or," approach to the study of human beings. Both the social sciences and the humanities help us get a better grasp on our world.

Leaders are probably more effective when they know the social sciences and statistics. For example, baseball team owners and managers who make room for perceptive and creative sabermetricians -- the guys who crunch baseball statistics -- tend to do better than owners and managers who do not. The Tampa Bay Rays swear by sabermetrics, and the results show.

No question: Leaders are hopefully more ethical when they understand the complexity of the human condition, are practiced at comprehending different viewpoints, and have experience finding solutions to problems for which there are no formulas.

By way of concluding, consider the findings of Philip Tetlock who engaged in

"a long-term research project now 18 years old to examine in detail the outcomes of expert political forecasts about international affairs. He studied the aggregate accuracy of 284 experts making 28,000 forecasts, looking for pattern in their comparative success rates. Most of the findings were negative— conservatives did no better or worse than liberals; optimists did no better or worse than pessimists. Only one pattern emerged consistently.

“How you think matters more than what you think.

"It’s a matter of judgment style, first expressed by the ancient Greek warrior poet Archilochus: 'The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one great thing.' The idea was later expanded by essayist Isaiah Berlin. In Tetlock’s interpretation, Hedgehogs have one grand theory (Marxist, Libertarian, whatever) which they are happy to extend into many domains, relishing its parsimony, and expressing their views with great confidence. Foxes, on the other hand are skeptical about grand theories, diffident in their forecasts, and ready to adjust their ideas based on actual events....

"Bottom line: The political expert who bores you with an cloud of “howevers” is probably right about what’s going to happen. The charismatic expert who exudes confidence and has a great story to tell is probably wrong."

Themistocles

Themistocles and the Strategic Imagination

America’s Founding Fathers admired a famous Greek named Themistocles. In fact, Thomas Jefferson compared John Adams to this Athenian statesman whose strategic vision (pronoia) helped Europeans turn back a massive invasion from Asia in the fifth century B.C. So to Themistocles’ gifts as a leader we now turn.

Some 2,500 years ago, a tyrant in the Middle East proclaimed that he would conquer Europe.[1] Had Xerxes succeeded, the history of Western civilization would have been much different. It is unlikely the Greeks would have ever gone through a golden age to inspire later generations. Further, the West’s birth and development as a distinctive civilization might have been delayed several centuries. It surely would have taken a much different course.

The series of conflicts that decided Europe’s fate at this time is known as the Persian Wars. Like the Trojan War, these conflagrations revealed the clash of civilizations. On the one side was Xerxes, the king of the Persians who had forged an army out of the greatest empire the world had ever seen; the Persians were “ruling over many peoples and all of Asia.”[2] On the other side were the Greeks, a hodgepodge of quarrelsome city-states scattered about the Aegean Sea and elsewhere, badly outnumbered by the Persians on land and at sea, but determined to preserve their freedom. By every measure, the Greeks faced daunting odds against Xerxes, whose expeditionary force was the largest in human history – perhaps larger than all previous invasion forces combined. The Greek historian Herodotus claims the Persian expeditionary force embarked with more than five million soldiers and camp followers, and upwards of one thousand ships.[3] So many invaders, they drank rivers dry on their march to Greece.[4] Moreover, Xerxes’ men had a fearsome reputation. The very mention of the name “Persian” caused fright in many a Greek.

To make matters worse, the Greeks were badly divided among themselves. Many of them believed that the Persian juggernaut was unbeatable. Certainly the oracles coming out of Delphi had been dispiriting. As the Persian juggernaut rolled into Greece, more than 200 Greek city-states either stayed neutral or went over to Xerxes’ side. (They “medized,” Herodotus says, referring to the fact that Xerxes was also king of the Medes.) Only 31 Greek city-states decided to stand up to the Persian king and fight to keep their independence. Let those odds sink in: just 31 Greek city-states would fight to preserve their freedom, despite staring into the maw of the greatest fighting machine the world had ever see, from an empire whose despotic king had intimidated some 200 Greek city-states into submission. In retrospect, no one could have blamed the Athenians, Spartans, and their allies had they sought terms or abandoned their homelands.

Yet the Greek freedom fighters did not abandon their homeland or the struggle for independence. One reason for their courage was their astonishing victory over the Persians ten years earlier on the field at Marathon; no one had expected the Athenians to win that battle – least of all the Athenians themselves. But now they had a spark of confidence.

Another source of encouragement was their leader – a Churchillian statesman named Themistocles. His vision (pronoia) enabled relatively modest Greek forces to slow down Xerxes and ultimately defeat the terrible Persian juggernaut.

Themistocles lived from about 524 to 459 B.C. He had fought against the Persians when Darius led the first invasion Greece in 490 B.C. Themistocles was in his mid thirties. He had risen in leadership when Xerxes launched the second invasion in 480 B.C. Themistocles, now in his mid forties, became the leading statesman in Athens and played such an important role in defeating Xerxes that he has been called “the guiding spirit of Greek resistance to Persia.”[5] The historian Thucydides believed he was one of Greece’s greatest statesmen ever. He cited Themistocles’ prodigious gifts of leadership, which included imagination, prudence, decisiveness, and persuasion.

To contemporaries, Themistocles was an unlikely hero. The historian Herodotus did not particularly like him,[6] and he was not especially well born.[7] But what he lacked in pedigree he made up in imagination. Indeed, it was Themistocles’s vision – his foresight and ability to see possibilities that others could not – that became the Greeks’ most powerful weapon against the Persians.

Like most leaders in the ancient world, Themistocles subscribed to the “great man” view of history. He believed one determined individual could make a difference in the fate of a nation – and he believed he was that individual, called upon to lead Athens through its greatest peril.

In the 480s Athens faced two threats. The lesser came from the nettlesome city-state of Aegina; the greater came from the mighty kingdom of Persia. When a rich vein of silver was discovered in Mount Laurium near Athens, many in the city thought that the silver should be distributed to its citizens as a windfall. But Themistocles saw the threats on the horizon and argued that it would be imprudent to disperse the public treasury in personal enrichment. To paraphrase Ralph Hauenstein, Themistocles could “see what was required.” What was required was a strong navy to defend their city-state. Indeed, Athens should become the greatest naval power the world has ever seen, for her security and destiny lay at sea.

Some aristocrats snickered at Themistocles and wondered if he was paranoid; others thought he was acting too big for his britches. “It is true,” Themistocles told them. “I cannot play a lyre or tune a harp, but I know how to make a small city great.”[8] Themistocles’ words hit home; his great ability as an orator carried the day. Athens used the newly discovered silver at Laurium to double the size of her navy from 100 to 200 warships to defend against invasion. Called triremes, these warships were the most advanced weapon of the day, manned by some 200 citizen-rowers, -marines, -musicians, and -officers.

Themistocles also had the foresight to build up naval bases at the nearby port at Piraeus, and to construct a military highway – Athens’ version of an ancient Interstate highway – to connect the great city to her naval bases some twelve miles away.

Not long after, when word reached Greece that Xerxes was planning an invasion of Europe, emissaries from the various city-states met to decide whether to resist the Persians. Themistocles insisted that they could and must. Greece would never be great under Xerxes’ foot.

His confidence must have seemed misplaced to many who wondered how the underdog Greeks could successfully resist the greatest expeditionary force in history. But Themistocles knew that two of the chief rules of war involved timing and geography: pick your time and place to fight, and join the battle on terrain favorable to you. The enemy’s advantage of having a larger army and navy could be neutralized if squeezed into a bottleneck. In a narrow corridor, the Persians’ greater numbers would be to no advantage. So the Greeks decided to confront Xerxes on land at a pass called Thermopylae – at its narrowest, wide enough only for a single cart[9] – and at sea in a narrow waterway called Artemisium Channel. Some 20-25 miles separated these land and sea bottlenecks. The proximity of the two defensive positions would allow the Greek army and navy to stay in close contact with each other. With a little luck, holding the Thermopylae-Artemisium line would allow the Greeks to delay and decimate a vastly superior Persian force. At the very least, the enemy’s supply lines would be disrupted. The hope was that Xerxes would grow discouraged and return to Asia.

At first the Greek strategy worked. When battle was joined, Greek hoplites gave far better than they got and killed multitudes of Persians. Xerxes was angered and vexed. His best troops were of no use in such a narrow pass. It was only because of treachery (by the Greek traitor Ephialtes) and cowardice (by unreliable Theban and Phocian allies) that the Greek plan broke down. When Xerxes learned of a mountain pass around Thermopylae that could be used to outflank the defenders, he was able to deploy enough soldiers to attack the rear of the Greek defense. Xerxes’s crack troops met fierce resistance. Herodotus describes in a chilling passage how the battle unfolded. The Spartans fought first with their spears, then with their swords, then with their knives, then with their hands, and finally with their teeth.[10] Alas, slowly, inexorably, the Persians overcame the brave citizen soldiers whom history memorializes as the Spartan 300.[11]

Less well remembered is what was happening some 20-25 miles away at sea. At the same time the Spartans were holding Thermopylae, the Greek navy was attacking Persian ships in nearby Artemisium Channel. Few people nowadays realize that the Greeks bested the enemy in the naval skirmishes.

Be that as it may, Thermopylae was a dispiriting defeat for the Greeks. Athenians knew that once Xerxes made it through the pass, there was nothing to stop the Persian juggernaut from reaching their city and destroying it. What to do? Once again, Themistocles had seen what was required and had thoroughly prepared Athenians for a fallback position.

Some months before Thermopylae-Artemisium, when news of Xerxes’ invasion spread, the Athenians had sent envoys to consult the oracle of Delphi. The prophetess at Delphi – intoxicated by ethylene vapors rising out of the geologic fault beneath the temple – delivered ominous news. At first she darkly warned that all was lost; Athenians should flee their doomed city if they valued their lives; even Zeus could not save Athens. But then she cryptically prophesied that a “wooden wall” would be Athens’ salvation.

When the envoys returned to Athens with the mysterious allusion to a “wooden wall,” a debate broke out in the Assembly over how to interpret its meaning. Most citizens assumed that the “wooden wall” was a palisade around the ancient Acropolis. But Themistocles had the imagination to see the oracle differently. To him, the “wooden wall” was not the palisade, but the hulls, oars, and masts of the Athenian navy.

It was a risky strategy. But in an impassioned speech that historians have likened to Churchill’s addresses to the British during the darkest days of the Second World War, Themistocles proposed to the Athenians what they should do if the line at Thermopylae-Artemisium failed: abandon their city, remove to an island called Salamis, and assemble their navy in the nearby waters. There Athens – and Greece – would make their final stand.

In a bravura rhetorical performance, Themistocles carried the day. The people of Athens voted to support his high-risk strategy. He then had to convince the allies to support his plan history knows as the Themistocles Decree. Sparta and the others balked. Wouldn’t it make more sense to defend the Isthmus of Corinth, the gateway to southern Greece? Themistocles thought that idea was foolhardy. The Persians, he argued, would simply sail around the defenses at Corinth and attack wherever they pleased. Themistocles, summoning all his persuasive powers to get Sparta and the other city-states to adopt his plan, got the Greeks to unify for once.

It was fortuitous that they did. In the days following the collapse of the Thermopylae-Artemisium line, the well-prepared Greeks put their plan into action. On a late summer day in 480 B.C., the unified Greek navy met the Persian navy in the waters off Salamis and routed the invader. After the Battle of Salamis, Xerxes’ navy was no longer an offensive weapon. His supply lines were severely disrupted. And the Greeks suddenly held the strategic advantage – just as Themistocles had foreseen.

Do you see what Themistocles had managed to do? Using all his skills as an orator, and all his wiles as a strategist, he maneuvered both the Spartans (his ally) and the Persians (his enemy) into fighting the Battle of Salamis.[12] One year later, he did the same thing in a land battle, convincing the Spartans and others to fight the Persians at Plataea, a battle that ended the offensive capability of the Persians on European soil. It was Themistocles who chose the time and place of battle.

And what about that remark in which Themistocles said he knew how to make a small city great? The statesman knew that naval power was the key to Athens’ security. After repulsing the Persians, Greek warships turned the Aegean Sea into an Athenian lake. By dominating the Aegean, Athens not only became more secure militarily; she also protected important trade routes and grew vastly more wealthy. Recall how Themistocles had insisted on improving the port at Piraeus. His strategy paid handsome dividends. After their astounding victory in the Persian Wars, Athens became one of the most formidable economic powers on earth.

That she did not long keep her hegemony was not Themistocles’ fault. Democracy does not always appreciate her great leaders. Churchill, after leading the British to victory in World War II, was turned out of office by voters just two months after the war ended. Themistocles, after leading the Athenians to victory in the Persian Wars, was ostracized and then exiled by fellow citizens.

Nevertheless, Themistocles was one of the most consequential leaders a democracy has ever had. Again and again, he saw what was required to oppose the Persian juggernaut, keep his people free, and transform Athens into a great city-state. He led the Athenians by superior imagination, discernment, decisiveness, and persuasion.

Let’s unpack these four qualities. Themistocles could see what was coming (possessing pronoia, imagination, vision, foresight); knew what to do about it (using discernment, prudence, good judgment); could act quickly and boldly (with confidence, decisiveness); and convince others that he was right (by means of rhetoric, persuasion). These four cornerstones of Themistocles’ leadership so impressed the historian Thucydides that he called the Athenian leader the greatest statesman of his age. In fact, Thucydides penned a passage that has become a classic for leaders. The passage provides an excellent review of the timeless qualities of leadership. Words in CAPS are added by me.

- Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own native capacity, which was neither shaped by education nor developed by later training [GREAT MAN THEORY],

- he was at once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no deliberation [DISCERNMENT, PRUDENCE, GOOD JUDGMENT],

- and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities [PRONOIA, IMAGINATION, VISION, FORESIGHT].

- An able theoretical expositor of all that came within the sphere of his practice [RHETORICAL SKILL, PERSUASION],

- he was not without the power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no experience [DISCERNMENT, PRUDENCE, GOOD JUDGMENT].

- He could also excellently divine the good and evil which lay hidden in the unseen future [PRONOIA, IMAGINATION, VISION, FORESIGHT].

- To sum up, whether we consider the extent of his natural powers, or the slightness of his application, this extraordinary man must be allowed to have surpassed all others [GREAT MAN THEORY]

- in the faculty of intuitively meeting [DISCERNMENT, PRUDENCE, GOOD JUDGMENT]

- an emergency [REQUIRING CONFIDENCE, BOLD ACTION, DECISIVENESS].[13]

Themistocles provides a model of a great democratic statesman. Americans admired him for saving the West. He kept Europe from being conquered by Asians, and he saved Athens so it could develop into a distinct crucible of civilization. No wonder Thomas Jefferson compared John Adams to Themistocles when our second president advocated building up a strong navy to defend the U.S. against the great European powers that threatened the young republic.

---

[1] The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), 7:8, pp. 496-97.

[2] The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), 9:122, p. 722.

[3] According to Herodotus, the Persian expeditionary force grew to 5.3 million fighting men and camp followers, as well as to more than 4,200 boats and ships, by the time it reached Thermopylae-Artemisium. The numbers are outlandish. For a realistic appraisal of the Persian army, see Michael A. Flower, “The Size of Xerxes’ Expeditionary Force,” Appendix R, in The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), pp. 819-23.

[4] Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7:43, p. 423.

[5] The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece, ed. Paul Cartledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 365.

[6] Elizabeth Vandiver, Herodotus: The Father of History (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2002), course guidebook, pp. 117-18.

[7] “Themistocles,” in Plutarch’s Lives, ed. Arthur Hugh Clough, trans. John Dryden (New York: Modern Library, 2001), vol. 1, p. 146.

[8] John R. Hale, “The Greek and Persian Wars” (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2008), lecture 7, track ?

[9] Elizabeth Vandiver, Herodotus: The Father of History (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2002), course guidebook, p. 103.

[10] Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7:225, p. 483.

[11] There were actually about 1,900 Greek defenders who made the last stand at Thermopylae.

[12] Hale, lecture 9, on Cimon/Themistocles

[13] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book 1, chap.. 138, trans. Richard Crawley, in The Landmark Thucydides, ed. Robert B. Strassler, Introduction by Victor Davis Hanson (New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 79.

Democracy's Greatest Leaders -- Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill

This address was delivered at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum on January 27, 2011.

I study leaders. I search out the traits, virtues, upbringing, and challenges that make a few of the human beings among us great leaders. This evening, I’d like to do something that’s long been on my mind, and that is to compare two modern democratic statesmen whose deaths were separated by exactly 100 years – Abraham Lincoln, who died in 1865, and Winston Churchill, who died in 1965.

They do not make a natural pairing, these two. In some ways, they could hardly be more different. But that’s instructive because it shows the range of leadership that arises when a democracy is under stress and its survival is at stake.

Some Differences

Let’s begin in the spirit of that great ancient biographer, Plutarch, by doing a broad comparison of these two fascinating individuals. The goal, like Plutarch's, is to get a better picture of their moral strengths and weaknesses.

Their ancestry was different. Lincoln’s British ancestry was populated by commoners, rabble to the government in London. Today they might be called white trash. These simple folk were encouraged to remove themselves from England’s pretty green hills and take up a strenuous life in the colonies. Over the generations, this white trash morphed into the rough-hewn frontiersmen who built a transcontinental empire from sea to sea.

Churchill, by contrast, came into the world with a gilded pedigree, the child of America’s upper class and England’s upper crust. His most famous ancestor was Sir John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, whose victory at Blenheim helped establish the transoceanic British Empire on which “the sun never set.”

The circumstances of their birth were different. Lincoln was born in a dirt-floor log cabin measuring 16 by 20 feet in the hardscrabble Valley of Democracy (the Ohio River Valley).

Churchill, by contrast, was born in a marble-floored Baroque palace spanning 175,000 square feet. Blenheim Palace is just outside of Oxford in the heart of Old England, amid the fine houses, horses, and hounds of ancient aristocrats. Churchill always said that one of the most important decisions he ever made was to be born at Blenheim Palace. The other most important decision, by the way, also occurred at Blenheim, when he asked Clementine Hozier to marry him (and she accepted).

Their appearance was different to a comical degree. Lincoln grew to a lanky 6 foot 4, and weighed 180 pounds. Mathew Brady’s black & white photographs capture the shock of coarse, black hair, as well as the beard he sported beginning with the presidential campaign of 1860. He knew that he was not one of the beautiful people of his day, so he developed self-deprecating humor as a defense. When Stephen Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced, Lincoln shot back, “My dear sir, if I had two faces, why would I ever go out in public with this one?”

Churchill stood only 5 foot 6, and weighed 215 pounds. The grainy newsreels show a balding pate with wispy hair. Once when he went to a barber and asked for a haircut, the barber asked, “How would you like me to style your hair?” Churchill scoffed, “Style? When a man has as little hair as I do, there’s no such thing as style. Just cut.”

Their education was different. Lincoln called his formal schooling “deficient.” In the lonely forests of the Kentucky-Indiana frontier, it amounted to all of one year at a passel of ABC schools where he learned to read, write, and reckon to the rule of three. So he educated himself by reading anything he could get his hands on – the Bible, Shakespeare, Aesop, Euclid, Burns, and the law – always deep reading in the law – with roots in Magna Carta, the Declaration, the Articles, and Constitution.

Churchill was raised in the typical blueblood manner. He was initially brought up by a nanny, then sent to boarding school at age 7, then on to Harrow, then on to Sandhurst – a fine pedigree, indeed. Ironically, until he got to Sandhurst, Churchill did poorly in most of his studies. One of his teachers called him “the naughtiest small boy in the world.” Nevertheless, he dedicated himself to a program of reading history and literature that was second to none. This passion for reading the great cadences of our language showed in the 20 million words he would compose as an adult (10 million of them in the wilderness years). Late in life, when Churchill had amassed honorary doctorates from around the world, he confessed, “As life has unfolded, I’ve been astonished to find how many more degrees I’ve received than examinations I passed.”

Mention of his school years brings me to an off-color story. (You can’t talk about Churchill for long without mentioning one of the off-color stories.) Once a man in the men’s room disapproved of Churchill not washing his hands after visiting the urinal. “At Eton,” the man said, “we were taught to wash our hands.” “At Harrow,” said Churchill, “we were taught not to piss on our hands.”

This reminds me of another off-color latrine story. Clement Attlee, who defeated Churchill in the 1945 election, was a strong proponent of government intervention in private industry, a policy that Churchill opposed. When Churchill met Attlee in the House of Commons' men’s room one day, Churchill took the urinal farthest away from Attlee.

Attlee said, "Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?"

Churchill replied, “When you Socialists see something big, you rush to nationalize it."

Perhaps this encounter in the latrine is what’s behind Churchill’s famous characterization of Attlee as “a modest man, with much to be modest about.”

These two statesmen came out of different professions. Lincoln was an attorney who made a good living as a trial lawyer back in Springfield. Churchill was a professional politician for more than six decades and made his living from his writing, which made him a millionaire and ultimately earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Certainly their social status was different. Lincoln’s intense childhood poverty and rustic frontier upbringing made him socially awkward most of his life. At one extreme, he was embarrassed by his cracker relatives, and he tried to live down his dirt-farmer origins. At the other extreme, he detested silk-stocking pretension in all its forms, especially the self-appointed “plantation aristocrats” in the Democratic Party of his day. At the height of his career in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln lived in a comfortable but unpretentious house and never hired more than 1 or 2 servants to help his wife Mary.

Churchill, by contrast, trumpeted his aristocratic lineage. He wrote a two-volume biography of his father, and a four-volume biography of his famous ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough. Throughout his adult years, Churchill maintained a lavish lifestyle, including going to the south of France two to three times a year. It’s one of the reasons he was always hustling for money by writing books and going on the lecture circuit. His capacious old house, Chartwell, required 12 servants.

Their personal habits differed. Lincoln rose at sunrise. He was a teetotaler and didn’t smoke – a bit unusual on the frontier.

Churchill woke up at 8 and began reading the morning papers and going through mail, but didn’t get out of bed until almost noon. He drank prodigiously: 9 strong scotches a day, along with wine and champagne at lunch and dinner. Have you ever seen a candid shot of him without a smoke? He consumed 9 cigars a day.

Churchill usually held his liquor well. But he could have an acerbic tongue by the end of the day if he were crossed. In one famous encounter, Bessie Braddock said to Churchill, “Sir, you are drunk.” He replied, “And you, madam, are ugly. At least in the morning I shall be sober.”

Another famous exchange occurred when Lady Nancy Astor said, “Winston, if I were your wife, I’d poison your tea.” He said, “Nancy, if I were your husband, I would drink it.”

Their war experience was dramatically different. At 23 years of age, Lincoln became a captain in the Black Hawk War but never saw combat. The only blood he saw in that war, by his own admission, was from swatting mosquitoes. This is ironic given that he would later become commander in chief during the war that caused more American deaths than all other wars combined.

Churchill was a war hero by his 25th birthday. In the Boer War, he was in an armored train that got ambushed. He managed to remove many of the wounded to safety, then returned to action. A newspaper article said about him, “Lieut. Churchill behaved through the engagement like a hero. He rallied the party trying to clear the line again and again by saying, ‘Be men,’ and moved about fearlessly exposing himself.” Then he was taken prisoner. But he soon escaped, hid in a mine, and got out of enemy territory disguised as a woman. All this made the 25-year-old swashbuckler “a Modern Prince Charlie,” as one headline put it.

Churchill also served as First Lord of the Admiralty and as a lieutenant colonel on the Western Front in the First World War, and became First Lord of the Admiralty again at the outset of the Second World War – the most catastrophic war in human history – before becoming prime minister.

Some Similarities

Continuing in the spirit of Plutarch, we see that Lincoln and Churchill also shared a number of traits. Indeed, some of their similarities are striking.

In their youth they did not inspire the confidence of their peers. Neither Lincoln nor Churchill would have been picked by high-school classmates as “most likely to succeed.”

The religious outlook of both was unorthodox in its day, as neither was a practicing Christian or much of a praying man -- not for most of their lives, so far as we can tell.

Both mastered English to such a degree that it has been said they mobilized the English language to wage war. Their words were at once so powerful and graceful that they also added to our literary treasure.

Both these wartime leaders were tender-hearted. As a young boy, Lincoln so regretted shooting a turkey that he vowed never to hunt again. Churchill was devoted to feeding all his fish, ducks, and geese, whom he named, and he had a little poodle named Rufus that he was devoted to. Most days, that is. One afternoon Churchill was on the phone with an important minister. Rufus was getting tangled up in the phone cord, and Churchill snapped, "Get off the line, you damned fool!" At which words, the minister hung up, taken aback. Churchill immediately had to call him back and explain: "I didn't mean you! It was Rufus I was yelling at."

Both these men had a tough time finding a woman who would marry them; both had challenging marriages; both lost young children.

Both spent long years out of the limelight until a national crisis propelled them back into the arena. For Lincoln the national crisis was the threat of slavery spreading into the Western territories. For Churchill the national crisis was the outbreak of the Second World War. Both men believed they had been prepared by experience and appointed by history to confront the task before them – a task that was nothing less than civilizational in scope.

Both had unusual foresight – pronoia in Thucydides – perceiving before others that there was a civilizational challenge that had to be confronted and resolved. For Lincoln, the issue was whether slavery would defeat the American cause (whether by constitutional crises over sovereignty or by artificially sustaining the peculiar institution in Western territories). For Churchill, the issue was whether Nazism would take down Western civilization.

Both were physically attacked in front of their wives: Churchill, by a suffragette who tried to push him in front of an oncoming train; and Lincoln, of course, by a troubled actor whose bullet found its mark.

Both, as leaders, had the capacity to make tough decisions. So it is no surprise that these two strong personalities were reviled because of the decisions they made. Abraham Lincoln has been viewed by a vocal minority of Americans to this day as a tyrant because of the way he interpreted the Constitution and prosecuted the Civil War: 626,000 Americans died as a result of his decision to go on the offensive against the South. There’s an African connection to the criticism as well: He personally profited from the sale of slaves; he represented a slave owner in a case against a slave; the Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves that could actually have been freed in 1863; and by today’s standards, he was a confirmed racist because he did not think blacks were the social equals of whites. He wanted free blacks to leave America and resettle in Liberia. All these factors, critics say, cast doubt on his reputation as the “Great Emancipator.”

Winston Churchill was also reviled by many over the course of his long career. He was alternately hated by organized labor, suffragettes, the Irish, the French, Brits who lost loved ones in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign, and people everywhere who were colonized by the Brits. Also, because Churchill was one of the architects of the Palestine Mandate (1923), he's regarded as the source of many of the problems in the Middle East to this day. There’s an African connection for him, too: Recently the Churchill bust in the Oval Office was packed up and shipped away because the British had imprisoned and tortured President Obama's grandfather during Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion. It is well to remember that Churchill took criticism in stride. As he calmly put it, “History will be kind to me, for I shall write it.”

The Most Significant Parallel –
The Courage to Persevere

None of the foregoing parallels, while illuminating of their inner life, really explains why Lincoln and Churchill became great. If you are looking at what puts these two leaders in the company of the 100 most influential people of all time, I would argue that it was their inner strength. They had exceptional psychological resilience and the courage to persevere. For the remainder of our time, I’d like to focus on this most significant trait that they share.

Lincoln

What perennially intrigues people is how Abraham Lincoln became a great leader. It’s a riveting question because of how humbly he started, and how high he rose, in a relatively brief time.

Russell Kirk put it this way: Lincoln was “a man who, until late in his life, seemed thoroughly unlikely ever to be a leader of opinion or of party, let alone a statesman…. We see him, only three years before he won the presidential election, still an obscure and gawky Western attorney, attending court in Cincinnati, in his rumpled clothes … snubbed by Stanton and the other distinguished lawyers. The man still seemed pathetic at best, if not downright ludicrous; all the majesty and loneliness of his tragedy was yet to come.”

I like to put Lincoln’s surprising rise in the context of something Booker T. Washington observed. Washington gave his rousing Great Emancipator speech in 1899, when he said that the true measure of a person is not how many accolades they receive, but how many obstacles they overcome, to achieve what they do in life. By that measure, Abraham Lincoln overcame more obstacles than any other president to reach the White House.

He overcame geographic isolation on the frontier. He overcame the hardscrabble poverty of his youth. He overcame the lack of formal schooling, the lack of scholarly credentials. He overcame his family’s lack of inheritable wealth, the lack of political connections. He overcame the fact that he was neither handsome nor athletic nor charismatic. He overcame losing jobs and losing elections – numerous times. Isolated, poor, unschooled; without connections or nice looks or a winning record – this is hardly a recommendation to run for president of the United States.

The biggest liability Lincoln overcame was what Michael Burlingame has called emotional poverty. Early in life, he had to cope with a cascading succession of tragedies that would have broken many of us but that built up in him an unconquerable spirit. His only natural brother died early. His mother died an agonizing death – of the milk sickness – when he was nine and cooped up in the cabin with her during her painful demise; he helped his dad make her coffin. The sister he was close to died after she gave birth. Then when he was in his mid twenties, his first love, the love of his life, Ann Rutledge, died.

With all those deaths, you’d hope Lincoln would be close to his father. Not so. They were alienated from each other at an early age. Young Abe was not like the other boys on the frontier. He didn’t like to hunt. Didn’t like to fight. Didn’t like to farm. What he liked to do was read and think. His father thought his son was lazy. The boy would sometimes get beat when he didn’t do his chores. Because he didn’t fit into the frontier life, or his father’s expectations, he was estranged from his dad. In fact, he did not even go to his father’s deathbed or funeral.

Given all this emotional poverty, Lincoln was prone to severe depression, or melancholy as they called it in the 19th century. The melancholy was once so bad he could not get out of bed in the morning. After Ann Rutledge died, he literally threw himself on her grave during a storm because he couldn’t stand the thought of rainwater reaching her body. At one point, his good friend Joshua Speed was so concerned that he took Lincoln’s knife and razor away so he wouldn’t hurt himself.

Given all this loss, Lincoln had to develop inner strength, psychological resilience, to deal with his grief. Perhaps that accounts for why he was always wise beyond his years. Sophocles observed long ago that we only learn when we suffer.

More than 2,500 years ago, the Greeks created their archetypal hero out of Odysseus, a man who made an impossibly difficult journey. Maybe the possibilities of the American odyssey are best illustrated in our prairie hero, Abraham Lincoln. As my colleague Brian Flanagan likes to point out, Lincoln grew into a kind of mythic figure by passing test after test after test. His triumphs in 1860, 1864, and 1865 owed much to the emotional strength long forged in the crucible of hardship and defeat.

Lincoln earns a place in the history books because he was commander in chief during the greatest trial our nation ever faced. He earns a spot in the pantheon of great presidents because of the courage he showed in office. He earns a cradle in our hearts because his character – even in its vulnerability – inspires us and gives us strength. We look to our American Odysseus – at Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable odyssey from log cabin to White House – and think, what an example for us all. If he could overcome the obstacles he faced and complete the task appointed him by history, then there is hope that each of us can reach our potential. The American Dream can never die so long as we know Abraham Lincoln’s odyssey.

Churchill

Let’s complete this little study in the spirit of Plutarch by looking at the most important element of Churchill’s leadership – his lionhearted courage to deal with demons inside and out.

What makes biography a good read is when it shows how people handle adversity. As a historian, I always imagine taking a snapshot of a leader at various stages and showing how unlikely it would be for that person to amount to much. Those of you who have heard my talks on Washington, Grant, Gandhi, and Eisenhower know my method. Regarding Churchill, we can point to several times when we might take a snapshot and call him finished.

Consider his childhood, when he mostly had to deal with his inner demons. If we were to take a snapshot of Churchill when he was, say, 16, we would have seen a deeply troubled boy who spoke with a lisp, a point referenced in the blockbuster movie, The King’s Speech. He had been written off by his father and, worse, emotionally starved due to the neglect of both parents. In poignant letters we see a boy hungry for his mom and dad. The lack of emotional support from his parents caused deep psychological wounds that would haunt Churchill for the rest of his life.

One way Churchill salved these deep wounds was by pursuing worldly ambition. If he couldn’t be loved, then he would be admired. It’s actually not a bad strategy for surviving an unhappy childhood. By his 27th birthday, Churchill had distinguished himself in a staggering number of arenas – at Sandhurst, on the battlefield, as a derring-do war correspondent, as a best-selling author, as a self-made millionaire from his writing, and as a Member of Parliament. Accomplishments that are never attained by most, he achieved just a few years into adulthood.

It must be said: the salve of success was only partly successful in suppressing his demons. His granddaughter, Celia Sandys, observed that all the accolades, adoration, and reverence Winston enjoyed in later years never made up for what the little boy in him really craved, which was “for his father to look down … and to know that the son, whom he always said would be a failure, had been such a success.”

It was not just when he was young that it seemed Churchill wouldn’t amount to much. If we were to take a snapshot of him when he was about forty-two, after the disastrous Dardanelles campaign, we would hear Churchill say in his own words that he was ruined by his own poor judgment – finished off by the inner demon of despair, and the outer demon of a ruined reputation. Tens of thousands of British soldiers and sailors were killed in the invasion. To Clemmie, it was doubtful whether he could ever recover from such a grievous mistake.

But he showed uncommon resilience against these demons as well. He did two things. After the Dardanelles, he left the First Lord of the Admiralty and volunteered to fight on the Western front. It does not get any grimmer than the inferno of no man’s land. But risking his own life in the mud of a Flanders trench seemed the right thing to do after the sacrifice he had asked of so many others.

Another way he showed resilience after the Dardanelles debacle was by taking up painting. As if he had not already achieved so much, he became a highly accomplished painter of more than 500 canvases. (Because he took up painting after his 40th birthday, I can’t think of a better poster child for the AARP.)

There were other times when Churchill’s career was poised to fall off a cliff. If we took a snapshot of him in his mid-fifties, in the so-called wilderness years, we would see one midlife report card offered by Victor Wallace Germains, who wrote a book titled The Tragedy of Winston Churchill. On amazon.com it is currently selling for about $250 – but don’t buy it; it’s not worth it. Published in 1931, this ad hominem holds Churchill up as an object lesson in everything a public servant shouldn’t be. His career, which had begun with such promise, had been stalked by repeated failure inside the Cabinet and out, due to overarching ambition and bad judgment. He hardly seemed a worthy descendent of John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough.

Eight years later, a determined Churchill was leading his plucky people to victory over the fiercest war machine ever created.

Where did such resilience and lionhearted courage come from? I think Churchill was able to fight outer demons like Hitler and his Nazi thugs because he’d had so much practice wrestling with inner demons like his “black dog” – the famous allusion to his depression. Throughout life, he seemed able to parlay his depression into vigorous action. This is not uncommon in great leaders. Psychologists have long known that depression can act as “a spur to those of a certain temperament and native ability. Aware of how low they will sink at times, they propel themselves into activity and achievements the rest of us regard with awe.”

Churchill does indeed awe those of us who come under his spell. He earns a place in the history books because he helped save Western civilization. He earns a spot in the pantheon of great prime ministers because of his refusal to negotiate a separate peace with Hitler. And he earns assent in our hearts because his lionhearted courage inspired his people and gave them strength during their most desperate hour.

There are many speeches from which I could quote at this point. But the one that strikes me as most fitting is among his shortest. The setting is the fall of 1941, before he knew whether the United States would totally commit its vast resources to the war. In the west, Britain felt alone in what seemed like a death struggle against the Nazis. Returning to Harrow to listen to some traditional songs he had learned there as a youth, he was asked to say a few words to the boys. Churchill told them:

“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never…. Never give in.”

Those words reveal a man determined to wrestle his inner demon of despair to the ground, and kick the outer demon of war into surrender. I wouldn’t be surprised if those words were Churchill’s mantra, said to himself again and again in the dark underground War Rooms, to get through that fall of 1941, when most all of Western Europe was under Nazi control, and Britain stood alone against the dreadful Wehrmacht. Churchill believed he was the man appointed by history to face down Hitler and save his people, and he did it. Against all odds, he did it.

Leaders and Followers

I began this talk telling you that I study leaders. I search out the traits, virtues, upbringing, and challenges that make a few of the human beings among us exceptional. There are scores of explanations of what makes leaders great. But I think what made Lincoln and Churchill great was their inner strength. Their uncommon emotional resilience and courage sustained them during their darkest trials. And because they were so gifted with language, they were able to translate that strength into the language of Everyman, and thus give their nations hope.

Isn’t this what is required in a democracy, in rule by the many? Democracy requires leaders to be strong. And it requires citizens to be as strong as their leaders. Maybe that's democracy's genius, that it cultivates followers who can be as strong as their leaders.

Since the Second World War, we have enjoyed a long run of relative peace and prosperity. No worldwide conflagration has required us to sacrifice the way Ralph Hauenstein’s generation had to between 1939 and 1945. But it is not the end of history. Hard times come to democracies. Citizens need leaders who are strong. Whether you identify with the party of innovation or the party of conservation, “we the people” also need to be strong.

I think we will be okay if we always tell the rising generation the stories of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and leaders like them.

For more on leadership, visit http://www.allpresidents.org/

Leadership essentials

Definitions:

"Leadership is the capacity and the will to rally men and women in a common purpose." ~Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery

Leaders must have the ability to make tough decisions. They must have the character to inspire confidence.

Following are some thoughts and values that inform our leadership work at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies:

The Republic Needs Leaders

When we speak of national security problems, economic problems, political problems, energy problems, environmental problems, and social problems, we are ultimately confronting leadership problems. To grapple effectively and ethically with the plethora of problems we face, we must take the utmost care to educate emerging leaders in social skills, the process within which they work, risk assessment, and a humane understanding of the human condition.


Leaders and Geese

Leaders can learn a little something from observing geese:
- A flock of geese know their community; they know who's in the flock.
- When the flock takes off and align in their V formation, all the geese are flying in the same direction.
- In a well-coordinated V they are helping each other by creating an updraft, each for the goose behind him. They can fly 70 percent farther if they help each other than if they fly isolated.
- The leader knows he doesn't have to do it alone. He is happy to share the lead. When he gets tired, he falls behind and lets the goose behind him take the lead.
- The honking comes from the back of the flock to encourage the ones with the most resistance out front.
- When a goose in flight falters and must land, the others land and surround him for protection, and stay with him until he can fly again or dies.


Leadership Traits (from Paul Hillegonds)

It's important to study the best leaders and discover what traits many of them have in common. That's what we do at the Hauenstein Center. So we invited Paul Hilligonds to speak to our leadership fellows. Paul has held major leadership positions in all three major sectors -- for-profit, non-profit, and public. He shared his rich experience and reflections with leadership fellows on September 26, 2011, in Lansing.

1. Leaders know that leadership depends on relationships. Relationships depend on trust, and trust arises out of integrity. Integrity is adherence to core values. So leaders protect their integrity, first and foremost. (For once integrity is lost, it is difficult if not impossible to recover.) It's the most important thing to know about the individuals we regard as good leaders: They have integrity, which gives rise to trust, which is the foundation of good relationships, which is the basis for collective action.
2. Leaders are not insecure but have a healthy self-esteem and are comfortable in their own skin -- so healthy that they know when to listen and when to follow. They know when to mentor and when to be mentored.
3. Leaders know themselves -- especially their weaknesses -- so surround themselves with diverse, talented people who can complement their skills and tell them not necessarily what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.
4. Leaders have a strong sense of purpose. They know why they are leading. They are not just managing the status quo, but have a vision of where to go.
5. Servant leaders are motivated to make an impact. They are results oriented. They also respect that process which gets results. Servant leaders want to achieve results that better a situation, solve a problem, make a community stronger, and bring about the greater good.
6. Leaders have the courage and decisiveness to be decision-makers. They often know the outcome they want out of a meeting or process. But they know that everyone else does, too. Diverse people have their own ideas about the way things should be. Leaders understand that they are not just "bosses." Leadership is about piloting and steering, not dictating or ordering (unless of course there is a safety emergency). In a democracy, the process to reach a decision usually involves flexibility, adaptation, compromise, cooperation. During the process, good leaders work hard to steer diverse people toward a consensus. Instinctive problem solvers, they are determined to find common ground with those with whom they disagree. This means that they are good negotiators who value two-way communication, listen well, and winnow options well. Again, they prefer steering people toward consensus than commanding them like pawns. They steer a great team toward implementing the consensus.
7. Leaders are risk-takers. They are not content just to manage the status quo. They will even risk sharing credit and power when it's the right thing to do.
8. To make the tough decisions -- the 51-49 decisions -- leaders grapple with the age-old quandary of whether to follow their conscience or be guided by the will of the people they represent. In either case, it comes back to relationships: if leaders try to know their constituents, they will better understand and be better understood when the time comes to make a difficult decision.
9. Leaders know they did not create their community and its institutions out of whole cloth, but stand on the shoulders of others. They see themselves as stewards of their institution and stewards of their community.
10. What if your place or position in an organization is the minority one? In today's polarized climate, what is the role of a community steward? You are obligated to do more than "just say no." You are obligated to give a constructive alternative because you recognize a higher calling to the community. To be effective, you have to go back to fundamentals like the first one mentioned -- relationships. Get to know the people who oppose you; have dinner together; understand their family heritage and experience and concerns. That human foundation will go far both when it comes time to make a difficult decision, and when you are trying to get an audience for your "voice in the wilderness."

Death, Happiness, and Leadership

The death of Steve Jobs has brought to light his Socratic side, the conviction that a good life is about preparing for a good death. (See The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.)

From Socrates to Steve Jobs, the art of living comes down to this: living as though you will soon die. With the urgency to get things right, you will simplify. You will have increasingly peaceful, positive relations with fellow human beings. You will be a better listener and friend. (You will finally succeed in living the Golden Rule.) You will quit trying to control people and situations you cannot. (You will finally succeed in living the Serenity Prayer.) You will not take another's foul mood so personally. (You will finally be more adept at letting go of perceived injuries.) Since you want to leave a positive legacy, you will challenge yourself to make people feel that their life is better because of their encounters with you. No backbiting, no negativity, no whining, no complaining: just good words about people, about our stories, about the work we do, about the opportunities to grow amid struggle, and about our vision for -- and actions consistent with -- a better life for all whose lives we are privileged to touch. Ironically, the approach of death can focus us and make us happier.

Considering how death focuses the mind, I want you to undertake a little thought experiment. Try to imagine how this notion of the art of living impinges on the art of leadership. If you were to ask leaders what they'd do if told they had only five months to live, they no doubt would focus on their relationships -- with children, spouse, family, and close friends -- exactly what Steve Jobs did. Now, if you were to ask leaders what they would do if told they had only five years to live, they would still tend to the primary relationships in their life, but they would also try to contribute something that they would be proud to leave behind -- some expression of the best of their gifts. This larger horizon would concentrate their efforts on legacy, on how they'd want to be remembered, and they no doubt would do something great.

Since none of us knows when we'll die, what's stopping you from giving the best of your gifts to humankind now? You just may become a happier human being and leader if you live with more urgency to get your relationships and work right.

The Education of Leaders: Social Sciences and Humanities

Education engenders understanding and compassion. We see what happens where education is lacking. In the absence of understanding and compassion, frustrated people resort to extremism, force, violence, terror, and war. ~Dr. Jonathan White

The education of leaders often draws on the social sciences -- economics, the law, political science, sociology, etc. The education of leaders should also include deep engagement with the humanities -- history, literature, philosophy, etc. The social sciences are useful because they explain and/or predict patterns of behavior in large populations of human beings. The humanities help us remain alive to the unique and unpredictable turn in human events; help us not be surprised by the unexpected ways an individual will choose to think and act; pull us into the minds and experiences of other individuals and cultures. Leaders need to appreciate both the social sciences and the humanities, and welcome thinkers from each perspective to the table. Here's why:

1. Since World War II, the U.S. has been the world's greatest superpower. Yet in late 1989, not one leader foresaw the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Empire -- not one -- despite the fact that our nation employed thousands of experts in the social sciences and spent $30 billion annually in universities, government intelligence agencies, think tanks, and exchange programs to observe and understand Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R.
2. Since World War II, the U.S. has been the world's dominant economy. Yet in late 2007, hardly any leaders fully grasped that the global real estate bubble was about to drive the U.S. and other Western nations over a cliff. The Great Recession would wreck havoc on the middle class, but where were the experts who took a leadership role and warned investment bankers and policy makers to forswear toxic mortgages and asset bundling?
3. After World War II, our economy and military needed Middle Eastern allies and oil. Yet in late 1979, hardly any American experts trained in the social sciences saw the coming eruption of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Hardly any experts foresaw and told us how radical the reassertion of Islam would change our world for decades to come.

The same with other world-historic events -- 9/11, Tiananmen Square, the first OPEC embargo -- all of which left the majority of experts and leaders slack-jawed. Let me put it another way. The biggest events of recent decades were anticipated neither by the experts nor by our leaders. Should a greater variety of perspectives be at the table when major decisions are being weighed?

Education in the U.S. has occasionally failed to prepare experts, leaders, and citizens to anticipate tectonic changes that affect our security, economy, and way of life. What to do? Following Emmanuel Wallerstein (Unthinking Social Science) and W. Robert Connor ("Why Were We Surprised?"), I would offer that leadership education has to step back from its overweening reliance on the social sciences. This is not an argument to throw out the social sciences, just to recognize their limitations. Balancing training in the social sciences with deep exposure to the humanities -- history, literature, philosophy, myth, and the arts -- would give emerging leaders a truly comprehensive outlook onto the world. The humanities and social sciences both are needed to prepare ethical, effective leaders.

Here is another way of saying it. Leaders are expected to make decisions that will bring about a better future. Since nobody knows the future, it's all guesswork. Why are some guesses better than others? Good guesses about the future are based on experience, training, sound intuition, and good counsel. Let's look briefly at this last element, good counsel. When big decisions are being weighed, the secure leader should welcome two kinds of minds to the table. Each compensates for the limits of the other. (1) The statistical mind is the assertion of the "left brain" that's been educated in the social sciences. It knows how to crunch numbers, interpret bell curves, and predict human behavior in situations where mathematical formulas have a proven track record. This approach grows out of Adolphe Quetelet's pioneering work in probability and statistics, and Auguste Comte's conviction that scientific knowledge of society is possible -- it's tantamount to "social physics" -- and that decision making is a methodical exercise using the correct formulas. (2) The humanistic mind is the assertion of the "right brain" that's been educated in the humanities. It is alert to possibilities that might be overlooked by training in the social sciences. This approach grows out of Jacob Burckhardt's conviction that observers who are deeply read in history, literature, myth, and philosophy can sniff out the unpredictable element in human affairs. Learning from the past, they can sense the deep, persistent crises that might arise when historical processes are interrupted or accelerated. They are alive to the power of emotions, loyalty, and love (all four kinds) in human action. At its most powerful, the humanistic mind may forecast what will happen and foresee the moral consequences. It is what Thucydides calls pronoia in his great account of the Peloponnesian War.

Here is the point: When it comes to advisers, the secure leader embraces "both-and," not "either-or." Both advisory styles are at the table. For the humanities shove us out of our comfort zone into the mystery, variety, and unpredictability of the human condition -- the exact opposite of what social science tries to do in tracing the patterns, consistency, and predictability of human behavior. To understand the human condition in all its richness, the social sciences and humanities both are needed because they point us in opposite directions -- the one, toward the patterns and predictable behavior in human populations; the other, toward the mystery and unpredictability of individual wills.

As part of their education, emerging leaders/apprentice leaders should be well exposed to both the statistical mind and the humanistic mind. They should know how to form a team of advisers who come from the social sciences and humanities. They should grapple with case studies in which the statistical mind and humanistic mind complemented and/or clashed with one another. For example, how did these two advisory styles help or hurt JFK as he arrived at a decision during the Cuban missile crisis? [For an appreciation of the humanities in leadership education, see W. R. Connor, "Why Were We Surprised?" American Scholar (2001): 175-84.]

My colleague in the economics department at Grand Valley State University, Prof. Greg Dimkof, is refreshingly humble about the predictive powers of his discipline. He claims that economists do not predict very well because meteorologists cannot predict long-range weather very well. The economy is dependent on a wild card, weather, and weather impacts energy costs, crops, investors, catastrophes, lost productivity, and much else that goes into the GDP calculus.

On the other hand, I appreciate another colleague, Prof. Jon White, who profiles terrorists and knows how to use modeling to predict if they will attack. He said a half-dozen things usually come together to create an extremist terrorist who will attack American citizens and property. These individuals (1) are alienated from our society, (2) find others who are alienated from society, (3) get religion even if it's a twisted interpretation of Islam, (4) fall under the spell of a religious leader who has a beef with the status quo, (5) are able to get weapons, and (6) have the means to travel to their target. That's social science put to work -- thankfully -- for our security.

A liberal education – a liberating education – is foundational to leadership. If you learn to see the world through the eyes of others – if you really listen to others and try to understand their experiences and viewpoint – people will be more inclined to give you a hearing. If you have earned such a platform with others, you can bring diverse people together to pursue a common cause. You can also communicate better – an essential skill in a pluralistic culture. So, if you have studied economics, you can see the world as an economist sees it. If sociology, as a sociologist sees it. If politics, as a political scientist sees it. If religion, as a theologian sees it, etc. A liberal education imparts a broad, humane outlook.

The American Sea Change

Human nature is everywhere and always constant. One of the constants is that there will always be followers and leaders. Another is that followers will always respond better to leaders who consistently show strength of character. But leadership traits and styles are sensitive to threshold events in history. Consider the creation of the United States, the first large republic in the modern era. Our nation was established in a world of hostile monarchs. The new republic fundamentally changed the idea and practice of leadership. In most cultures prior to 1776, men and women became leaders through conquest or dynastic succession. The U.S. gave rise to leadership that wasn’t grounded in conquest or dynasties, but in “the consent of the governed” (Locke and Jefferson). One important trait leaders need to connect with the governed is trust. Because it is so necessary to compromise in a constitutional republic, leaders must have integrity. When they enter negotiations and make agreements, there must be no betrayal. Another important trait is empathy. Developing a leader’s capacity to feel empathy for others – to really listen to others and try to understand their experiences and viewpoint – is central to leadership in a democratic polity. This empathy is developed in part through our reflection on our own and others' suffering, and in part through a liberal education – i.e., through thoughtful engagement with literature, biography, history, psychology, and other “liberating” disciplines.

Leaders who can be trusted, leaders who have integrity, leaders who feel empathy -- these traits have been cultivated by the American way of governance. They have been written into our nation's unwritten constitution. Cultivating these leadership traits has become as much a part of our unwritten constitution as political parties (to channel our differences), the fourth estate (to act as a watchdog for citizens), and President George Washington's precedents (to guide future presidents). There are many examples of trust, integrity, and empathy in the public lives of our dominant Founders -- Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison.

What Leaders Need

Leaders in a democracy must be effective and ethical.

Trust, according to Gerald R. Ford, is the most important trait an American leader needs to possess. In line with this thought, Ford always showed respect to others. He regarded people who disagreed with him as opponents, not enemies.

The four most important things leaders need (adapted from Rufus Fears): Leaders need (1) a moral compass to maintain integrity in their personal relations, (2) firm political principles to guide their public policies, (3) the possession of emotional intelligence, good interpersonal relations, and communication skills to bring people together in a consensus, and (4) vision or foresight -- pronoia in Thucydides – to anticipate danger, guide the priorities when a leader sets the agenda, and answer the question: What should stay the same, and what should change, as we respond to a challenge / better our condition / take ourselves to the Promised Land?

To these four characteristics, an Aristotelian like Alasdair MacIntyre would add (5) the virtue of prudence, which is good judgment wedded to right action. Presidential historian Robert Dallek would add (6) luck since statesmen enjoy enough good luck to win the battles they must. Agreeing with all that has come before, I would add (7) the inner strength, psychological resilience, and courage to fight another day. For elaboration on this last point, see my essay, "Democracy's Greatest Leaders -- Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill."

Sea Change in Leadership

The rise of the United States brought about a sea change in leadership. Prior to the American founding, there were relatively few leaders in proportion to the population of any given nation. Most of the Old World's leaders ruled through conquest or dynastic succession. The rise of the U.S. increased the absolute and relative number of leaders in the West as well as changed the rules of the game. "We the People" were no longer subjects of a king, but citizens of a constitutional republic who enjoyed inherent rights, as well as the opportunity to pursue happiness as we wished. Most American leaders were not "to the manor born" but worked their way "from the bottom up." So prepare to be surprised by the people around you: Today's followers may well be tomorrow's leaders.

The frontier played a special role in developing American leadership. It called forth women and men who had to meet innumerable challenges before local, state, or national government could extend its effective reach, even for day-to-day defense. In this challenging new environment, self reliance, the cultivation of freedom under the rule of law, and a culture of democratization took root. These values have had a profound impact on who leads whom, when, and how, in America.

The three great sectors of American public life have reinforced this sea change in leadership. In the political arena, candidates standing for election must learn consensus-building skills, the art of compromise, accommodation, flexibility, and respect for rules of the game. If you lose the debate or the vote, you accept the outcome and live to fight another day. In the marketplace, the providers of goods and services have to be sensitive to people's needs and wants, offering what is socially needed and desirable -- or risk financial failure. In civil society, there are all kinds of opportunities for people to volunteer and take a lead improving the lives of others. All three of these sectors -- political, economic, and voluntary -- reinforce one another. Each sector requires ethical, effective leaders. The effect has been to dramatically increase the number of leadership opportunities in the U.S., as well as to democratize and decentralize leadership.

In America, the tyrannical type does not do well in the public square -- either in the political arena, marketplace, or civil society. Throughout our history, people have had to conceal and channel their libido dominandi. In effect they have to come across as ruling less and leading more. It means that a lot of what a leader has to do is genuinely connect with others. True leaders -- the Real Deal -- must make a better impression than the host of pretenders out there. They have to win others over in an authentic way. A leader wins others over through good people skills, integrity, hard work, smart presentation, and mastery of the practical arts of leading.

A Democratic Culture of Leadership

The most unlikely people with the most debilitating flaws and in the most unlikely circumstances have risen to leadership positions, so…. So look around with renewed respect for the people you know. The person who is small and unassuming (like Gandhi) might lead a multitude; the person who has a speech impediment (like Moses) may start the greatest liberation movement in human history; the teenage girl (like Joan of Arc), although inhabiting a "man’s world," might lead an army against a foreign enemy; the person who grows up in isolated log cabins and receives hardly any schooling (like Abraham Lincoln), may with courage and eloquence lead the United States to rediscover its destiny. Look around you and be prepared to follow….

Look also into yourself – and be prepared to lead. You never know when you will be called upon to lead. That’s why we offer leadership education to young people at the Cook Leadership Academy.

Because the U.S. is a large, free nation with great opportunities in the three major sectors – business, government, and non-profit – our nation offers people more opportunities to lead than any other, ever. So: there is no excuse. If you see a problem that needs to be addressed, help a leader or be the leader who wrestles the challenge to the ground.

The Center Must Hold

A good double entendre to describe what we believe: At the Hauenstein Center, we believe that the center must hold. We balance conservation and innovation. (Thanks for this double entendre, Adam Bradway.)

For the better part of their history, Americans have lived successfully with the tension between the party of innovation (based on Voltaire and Hamilton) and the party of conservation (based on Burke and John Adams). We believe that the tension between innovation and conservation is productive of a justly ordered, free society. We believe that the extremes – whether on the left flank of innovation or the right flank of conservation – lead to divisive ideologies that should not prevail in the public square. When it comes to American politics, we believe that the center must hold. Indeed, the genius of American politics has been to eschew ideologies of every stripe. Our Cook Leadership Academy prepares students to work with both sides of the aisle in an effort to seek solutions.

The political center is not like vanilla, any more than the middle of a chess board is like vanilla. The center should not be defined either by mere pragmatism or by preoccupation with democratic procedure. In reality, the political center is the arena where contrasting ideas are thrown into the spotlight and clash most brilliantly. It's where the fight is most strenuous. It requires great discipline to fight in the center of the arena. Politically it is where the party of innovation and the party of conservation must channel their differences in constructive ways (mostly through the parties themselves, an essential element in America’s unwritten constitution; and through the filter of our fourth estate, the journalists). The lively contests in the center are where we discover our common ground as Americans. Thus good leaders know that the center must hold.

The opposite of the center is tyranny. No tyrant can tolerate the middle ground where debate is most vigorous. So conserving a lively center preserves liberty.

- We do not just focus on political leadership at the Cook Leadership Academy. We are committed to raising up a community of ethical, effective leaders who are familiar with the ecology of all three sectors – business, government, and non-profit. The same leadership skills are needed in each of these sectors.

- Managers are problem solvers; leaders are problem seekers. In the former case, the problem has already appeared, so it’s too late to do anything but manage the suffering it is causing and try to root it out. In the latter case, the problem is pre-empted by a leader in possession of that critically important trait – foresight. (See Herodotus and Thucydides.)

- Think BIG. Be BOLD. Be CONFIDENT. “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?” St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 14v12.

- At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a woman in Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin what the framers had wrought. He replied that they had created a republic – if she and citizens like her could keep it. The everlasting moral of this little exchange is that nations and civilizations are fragile; they easily decline. We are only one generation away from barbarity. What if teachers stopped teaching, parents stopped instructing, pastors stopped preaching, libraries stopped circulating, bookmakers stopped publishing, booksellers stopped selling, etc.? Then our human heritage would be seriously diminished in just 25 years, for the rising generation would not know it, and life as we know it would end. Leadership must ensure the continuity of the important things.

Servant Leadership

My take on "servant leadership":
We only serve what we love.
We only love what we know.
We only know what we have learned (through reading, hearing, studying, and reflecting on experience).
Now you can connect the dots between a liberal education at a university and leadership in the community. The Cook Leadership Academy endeavors to help leadership fellows fulfill their potential by advancing from study … to knowledge … to love … to service.

The French philosoph Voltaire had keen insight into one motivation to serve others, and his insight sheds light on servant leadership. The prevalence of evil and the limits of human knowledge lead many people – even the best theists among us – to believe that they do not know God as well as they desire to. (“Why did God let this tragedy happen to this child?”) Since it is difficult to love and serve what we do not really know, our fallback position is to love what we can know – our fellow human beings. When we know and love others, we empathize with them in their suffering. Instead of being a helpless bystander, we confront the banality of evil that God apparently allows. When we try to alleviate others’ suffering – when we try to take them to a better place – we become servant leaders. (This foundational human impulse also helps explain the rise of the secular progressive movement in the U.S. after the Civil War.)

Social psychologists from Gustav LeBon to Daniel Goleman have taught us that people’s brains (specifically their limbic system) align with each other psychologically. Effective leaders understand this phenomenon and take responsibility for setting the tone to get people to work toward a common goal. Think of Winston Churchill’s radio broadcasts to the British people during the Battle of Britain. His unexpected defiance steeled the nation’s resolve.

Leadership begins by learning to lead yourself. Once you learn to lead yourself, you can be more trusted to lead others. There is a memorable quotation attributed to Alexander the Great, inspired perhaps by his teacher Aristotle: "What good is it that I have conquered the whole world -- but cannot conquer myself?"

The Greatest Democratic Leaders

Democracy requires a different kind of leader – I think a better one. Rather than rising to the top by conquest or dynastic succession, the democratic leader comes into authority through a constitutional process, with the consent of the governed, and by demonstrating good judgment and right actions frequently enough to win the confidence of fellow citizens. In our present difficulties, isn't it natural to wonder who’ve been the best democratic leaders of all time? In the U.S., informal surveys show that five individuals usually make the cut. They are the models, the gold standard, for what democratic statesmen should be. Chronologically, the five are:
1. Pericles
2. George Washington
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. Winston Churchill
5. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(Cicero, Konrad Adenauer, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher also get mentions.)
For more on democratic statesmanship, see my blog post, "Democracy's Greatest Leaders," January 28, 2011.

Leading is heady, especially if you are fortunate enough to meet with a series of successes. It is crucial that you not let the successes go to your head. It will make you become arrogant and treat others with hubris. Remember: It is not our weaknesses that make us trip. It is too much of our strength that makes us trip.


Heroes, Saints, Leaders

In ages past, there were heroes and saints. People looked to heroes and saints, not celebrities, for inspiration. For models of fully realized, good human beings, our civilization educated the young to look to heroes (after Homer depicted them so brilliantly in the Iliad and Odyssey) and to saints (after the New Testament was written and the church was founded).
But in the modern age, we seem less inclined to seek inspiration from heroes and saints. Unfortunately, many youth nowadays look to celebrities to get their bearings on the path to the good life. Or their training in college equips them to become mere managers who have given little thought to the ethical requirements of leadership.

Experience eventually teaches us all that celebrity and managing are not enough. People who have outgrown their youthful indiscretions look higher, to leaders. Leaders are what we call the heroes and saints of secular modernity. All the leadership gurus and the books and articles they churn out are trying to define leadership in much the same way the church establishes and applies the rules for canonizing saints.

- Ultimately leadership is a civilizational mission. Don’t prattle on and on about leadership until you tell me where you want to go. It’s not just about traits and techniques. Leaders need to know where they are leading others. Tell us where you want to take us. In one minute or less, you should be able to tell us what needs to change, and what needs to stay the same.
To see where leaders want to take us, measure them by the past leaders they admire. Leaders should study the leaders of the past to see contrasting models and antimodels.

- Leaders should also study the empires and civilizations of the past. Every one of them carried within it the seeds of decline and dissolution and the seeds of growth and betterment. It’s the story of the wheat and the tares. Our empire and civilization are no different. The U.S. has within it the seeds of both decline and betterment. (Just like the human body. Each of us is carrying viruses and bacteria that could kill us if we continually make poor decisions by not eating right, or getting enough rest, etc.) Leaders thus make the difference between progress and decline.
Leaders must be discerning. They must be able to identify the seeds of destruction and the seeds of betterment. At the very least, they must do no harm. Ideally, they should be able to make prudent decisions that lead to the true betterment of human beings in community.
If leaders are well educated, then they know the big picture about empires and civilizations. Knowing the big picture, they will figure out the best policies that can win broad assent. For example, everybody ought to agree that fiscal responsibility is a virtue. We should spend within our means, and only spend beyond our means in an emergency.
It’s not happening in Washington. There is an air of unreality inside the Beltway because the pols there don’t have to balance the budget each year the way state governments and families do. Today's professional pols are neither heroes nor saints.
We the People need to take back our government and take back our nation. We should start by hiring true leaders at the polls.

- My philosophy of meetings and reports: To use a football metaphor, why huddle if you're not calling a play? If a meeting or report does not lead to a specific play in which all know their role, the expected high-level performance, and the desired outcome -- if the play is not designed to advance our field position -- then don't bother.

- Our leadership training of young people is built on four cornerstones:

(1) a liberal education in the humanities and social sciences;

(2) close mentoring in which an accomplished leader becomes a strong advisor to one or more leadership fellows;

(3) philosophical and political understanding of the center -- the center must hold;

(4) relationship skills.

Gratitude

Our work at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies is meaningful. We are grateful to Ralph Hauenstein, Grand Valley State University, and our many donors and supporters for the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others.

To learn more about leadership formation at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, visit http://www.allpresidents.org/