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It also helps for a leader to be able to do something most of us can’t: FDR overcame polio; Mao swam the Yangtze River at the age of 72. We don’t want our leaders to be “just like us”. We want them to be like us but better, special, more so. Yet if they are too different, we reject them. Adlai Stevenson was too cerebral. Nelson Rockefeller, too rich.
Even television, which comes in for a lot of knocks as an image-builder that magnifies form over substance, doesn’t altogether obscure the qualities of leadership we recognize, or their absence. Television exposed Nixon’s insecurity, Humphrey’s fatal infatuation with his own voice.
A leader must know how to use power (that’s what leadership is about), but he also has to have a way of showing that he does. He has to be able to project firmness – no physical clumsiness (like Ford), no rapid eye movements (like Carter). A Chinese philosopher once remarked that a leader must have the grace of a good dancer, and there is a great deal of wisdom to this. A leader should know how to appear relaxed and confident. His walk should be firm and purposeful. He should be able, like Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Ike and JFK, to give a good, hearty, belly laugh, instead of the sickly grin that passes for good humor in Nixon or Carter. Ronald Reagan’s training as an actor showed to good effect in the debate with Carter, when by his easy manner and apparent affability, he managed to convey the impression that in fact he was the President and Carter the challenger.
If we know what we’re looking for, why is it so difficult to find? The answer lies in a very simple truth about leadership. People can only be led where they want to go. The leader follows, though a step ahead. Americans wanted to climb out of the Depression and needed someone to tell them they could do it, and FDR did. The British believed that they could still win the war after the defeats of 1940, and Churchill told them they were right.
A leader rides the waves, moves with the tides, understands the deepest yearnings of his people. He cannot make a nation that wants peace at any price go to war, or stop a nation determined to fight from doing so. His purpose must match the national mood. His task is to focus the people’s energies and desires, to define them in simple terms, to inspire, to make what people already want seem attainable, important, within their grasp.
Above all, he must dignify our desires, convince us that we are taking part in the making of great history, give us a sense of glory about ourselves. Winston Churchill managed, by sheer rhetoric, to turn the British defeat and the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 into a major victory. FDR’s words turned the sinking of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor into a national rallying cry instead of a humiliating national scandal. A leader must stir our blood, not appeal to our reason.
FALLACY
For this reason, businessmen generally make poor leaders. They tend to be pragmatists who think that once you’ve explained why something makes sense, people will do it. But history shows the fallacy of this belief. When times get tough, people don’t want to be told what went wrong, or lectured, or given a lot of complicated statistics and plans (like Carter’s energy policy) they don’t understand. They want to be moved, excited, inspired, consoled, uplifted – in short, led!
A great leader must have a certain irrational quality, a stubborn refusal to face facts, infectious optimism, the ability to convince us that all is not lost even when we’re afraid it is. Confucius suggested that, while the advisers of a great leader should be as cold as ice, the leader himself should have fire, a spark of divine madness.
He won’t come until we’re ready for him, for the leader is like a mirror, reflecting back to us our own sense of purpose, putting into words our own dreams and hopes, transforming our needs and fears into coherent policies and programs.
Our strength makes him strong; our determination makes him determined; our courage makes him a hero; he is, in the final analysis, the symbol of the best in us, shaped by our own spirit and will. And when these qualities are lacking in us, we can’t produce him; and even with all our skill at image building, we can’t fake him. He is, after all, merely the sum of us.
Post-reading activities:
Paraphrase underlined words and expressions.
Find the thesis in the essay and provide evidence for it.
Below is a set of criteria according to which some people choose their leaders. Fill out this table and ask a few peers for their views as well. Comment on the received data.
UNOFFICIAL REQUIREMENTS PERSONS INTERVIEWED
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
A. Experience in government ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
B. Male ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
C. White Protestant ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
D. From a large (population) city ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
E. Married ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
F. Wealthy ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
G. Lawyer or businessman ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
H. Physically attractive ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
I. Over 50 years old ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
J. Military service ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Text 2
Pre-reading activity:
In small groups, discuss the Russian tradition (or any other tradition that you are familiar with) of presenting presidential candidates to the public. Point to specific characteristics associated with these individuals and their political platforms.
Framing the Candidates: A Closer Look at Biography Videos
by
Henry
Jenkins
George
Lakoff's book, Don't
Think About an Elephant,
has been one of the most influential arguments about the nature of
American politics to emerge in recent years. Lakoff, a linguist,
turned his attention to the "framing" of political
discourse. If you want to look more closely at his argument, "A
Man of His Words"
is an online excerpt which pulls out most of the ideas that are going
to interest us here. Lakoff argues that the Democrats lose elections
even though they often have the facts on their side because the
Republicans typically frame the debate. Consider for example the ways
McCain, a Republican, has transformed the current energy crisis from
one which might deal with the environment or economics or alternative
energy to one which rises and falls on the question of off-shore
drilling. Or consider the ways that the Republicans have deployed
terms like "maverick"
and "reformer" to distance themselves from the Bush
administration.
To turn this around,
the Democrats need to reinvent themselves -- not by shifting their
positions but by altering the frame. As Lakoff explains, "Reframing
is
social change.... Reframing is changing the way the public sees the
world. It is changing what counts as common sense." Much of the
early excitement around Obama was that he seemed to offer the most
compelling
new way to "reframe" progressive politics and thus offered
a way out of failed rhetoric of the past. For some, this is about
style over substance or a matter of "just words," but
Lakoff argues that framing is about a structure of ideas that gets
evoked through particular words and phrases but has its own deep
logic that shapes how and what we think. In a simple yet suggestive
analysis, Lakoff characterizes progressive and reactionary politics
in terms of what he calls the Nurturing Parent and the Strict Father
frames. According to the Strict Father model, Lakoff writes, "the
world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is
evil out there in the world. ...Children are born bad, in the sense
that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right."
The strict father "dares to discipline" his family and
supports a president who will discipline the nation and ultimately,
the world. According to the progressive "nurturing parent"
scenario, "Both parents are equally responsible for raising the
children. ...The parents' job is to nurture their children and to
raise their children to be nurturers of others." Swing voters
share aspects of both world views. The goal of politics, Lakoff
suggests, is to "activate your model in the people in the
middle" without pushing them into the other camp. We can see
this as almost a reverse of old-style Christian doctrine in which the
relation of a husband to his wife or a father to his child is
supposed to mirror the relations of God to man. In this case, the
family becomes a microcosm through which we can understand the
relationship of the president to the nation and the world. This is
consistent with an argument that I put forth in the introduction to
The
Children's Culture Reader
that the Republicans and the Democrats both use the figure of the
child as a rhetorical device in talking about their visions for the
future of the country, but they understand the family in very
different terms. In an analysis of the 1996 GOP and Democratic
national conventions, I contrasted Hillary Clinton's deployment of
the phrase "It takes a village to raise a child" with
oft-cited Republican images of the family as a "fort"
defending its members against a hostile world.
As a teacher, I've found that one of the best ways to introduce this important argument to my classes has been to engage in a critical comparison between the official campaign biography videos, shown at the national conventions, and intended to link the candidate's personal narrative with the larger themes of the campaign. First, a few general points. Students often react to these videos when they first see them as if they were documentaries, straight forward presentations of the facts of the candidates' lives. If Obama and McCain tell very different stories, it is because they led very different lives. And this is of course partially true. The videos mobilize elements from the candidate's biographies to construct narratives about them which are designed to introduce them to the American people. For many votes, these videos and the acceptance speeches are the first time they are paying attention to these candidates. Yet, keep in mind the role selectivity plays here -- we can't tell everything about their lives in a short video. There's also the question of framing -- what gets said by the candidate, by the people in his or her family, by others, and by the narrator -- which helps us to understand this person in specific ways. And then there's the matter of technique -- what kinds of images do we see, what role does the music play in setting the tone for these stories.
Obama and the Nurturing Parent Frame
From start to finish, the Obama video is focused on constructing the ideal image of the nurturing parent who will insure the well being of all Americans. The very opening lines of the video already evoke the image of childhood: "It is a promise we make to our children that each of us can make what we want from our lives" and the climax of the video comes when we return to that opening statement and build upon it: "It was a promise his mother made to him and that he intended to keep." Think about the difference between talking about the "American promise" and the "American dream," and you know a great deal about the ideological differences between the two parties. The idea of "empathy" is a central cornerstone of the family as depicted in this video. It emerges most powerfully in the story about Obama's mother urging him to "imagine standing in that person's shoes. How would that make you feel." and again, by the end of the video, this concept of empathy becomes a cornerstone of Obama's relationship to the nation, as he describes how he remembers his mother as he travels "from town to town." Empathy runs through the list of values Obama tells us that he and Michelle want to pass down to their children: "hard work, honesty, self-reliance, respect for other people, a sense of empathy, kindness, faith." And we can see this respect for nurturing and empathy when he talks about the death of his mother, who was "the beating heart" of their family. Indeed, moments when candidates talk about personal losses of family members and loved ones are often potent appeals to the viewer's own empathy, since many of us feel our common humanity most powerfully through our shared experience of mortality. And this logic of empathy emerges through the suggestion that Obama knows first hand the suffering and anxieties felt by average Americans: "I know what it's like not to have a father in the house, to have a mother who's trying to raise kids, work, and get her college education at the same time. I know what it's like to watch grandparent's age, worrying about whether their fixed income is going to be able to cover the bills." We can see this last comment as part of a larger strategy in the video to depict Obama's personal narrative as the "story" of America and his "search for self" as a quest to better understand the nation that gave him birth. As the narrator explains, "By discovering his own story, he would come to know what is remarkable about his country." And this is an outgrowth of the first thing we are told about his mother, that she knew her son was an American "and he needs to understand what that means." This video works hard to combat images of Obama's background as exotic, as outside the mainstream. There is no reference here to Hawaii and only an implicit nod to the fact that he spent part of his life overseas, even though this last detail has been central to the candidate's appeal internationally. The focus is on the most "heartland" aspects of his family background -- a strong focus on his grandparents who come from Kansas, and their experience of the Depression and World War II. Obama got into trouble for suggesting that some people in rural Pennsylvania were "bitter," so the video is careful to say that his grandparents were not "complainers." When it comes time to capture his sense of pride in his country, he tells a story about sitting on his grandfather's shoulders and waiving a flag at the return of the astronauts. The representation here of his marriage might be summed up with the old feminist slogan, "the personal is the political." Michelle describes the moment she fell in love with Barrack: watching him deliver a speech in the basement of a community center in which he spells out "the world as it is" and "the world as it should be." This story collapses Obama's hopes for his family and his hopes for his country in a sublime moment of utopian possibilities. Michelle emerges as the ideal arbiter of his political integrity because she can testify that he lives these values through his personal lives. And the final statement of the "nurturing parent" model comes when Obama tells us, "One person's struggle is all of our struggles." The government becomes a mutual support system that looks after its weakest members in a world which is often unjust. The president's job is to insure that all of his children gets what they need and deserve and that the "American promise" gets fulfilled and transferred to the next generation.
McCain and the Strict Father Model
If the Obama video sets up issues of nurturing and empathy from its first images, suggested by the long panning shots across American faces and a voiceover about the "American Promise," the McCain video opens with us staring directly into the face of the candidate as a young naval officer, trying to read his character and understand the relationship of this national service to the "mission" ahead. The opening narration starts with descriptions of him as "a warrior, a soldier, a naval aviator, a POW," before pulling us down to the family -- "a father, a son, a husband", then into his political career. And then we get that surprising moment when he is called "a mother's boy," one suggestion of softness amid a series of hypermasculine sounds, images, and terms. My students suggested that the reference to the mother helps him deal with issues of age and mortality, yet it also seems part of a strategy to manage the negative associations which many independents and Democrats may feel towards the repeated references to his toughness throughout the video. Strength of character and conviction, coupled with physical toughness as proven through war, are the central virtues ascribed to McCain by the video and they are introduced here once again through the narrative of his family. As suggested by the gender specificity of the "Strict father" construction, the family here, except for the references to the mother, is represented almost entirely through patriarchal bloodlines -- again a contrast to the absent father and strong mother image in the Obama video. We learn about his grandfather who died the day he returned from World War II; we learn about his father who ordered the carpet bombing of a country where his son was held captive, even as he waited at the border hoping for his return. When we see him with his son in the opening series of shots, he is standing alone with his offspring on the side of a mountain. Fatherhood is an extension of manhood and it gets expressed through discipline and competition more than through images of cuddling and cradling. The critical moments here, of course, deal with his Vietnam war experience which require a recognition of vulnerability and weakness even as the larger narrative centers around his toughness and will power. Consider this key description: "Critically injured, his wounds never properly addressed, for the next five and a half years, John was tortured and dragged from one filthy prison to another, violently ill, often in solitary confinement, he survived through the faith he learned from his father and grandfather, the faith that there was more to life than self." So, again, we see the passing down of civic virtue through male bloodlines as a central motif in this video. There's no question that the video constructs these experiences as a form of martyrdom out of which a national leader emerged: "The constant torture and isolation could have produced a bitter, broken man. Instead he came back to America with a smile -- with joy and optimism. He chose to spend his life serving the country he loved." or consider the phrase, "he chose to spend four more years in Hell." Or the ways the video depicts his role in the normalization of relations with Vietnam -- "Five and a half years in their hell and he chose to go back because it was healing for America. That's country first." Note this is one of the few places where metaphors of "caring" or "healing" surface in the video and it is specifically in relation to the pain of wartime. A more complex metaphor emerges as Fred Thompson reads aloud a passage from McCain's autobiography about "living in a box" and ends with "when you've lived in a box, your life is about keeping others from having to endure that box." This toughness and individualism carries over into the discussions of national policy. McCain doesn't believe that the country should care for each of its members but rather he has "a faith in the American people's ability to chart their own course." He is "committed to protect the American people but a ferocious opponent of pork barrel spending and would do most anything to keep taxes low and keep our money in our pockets." What is implied by that contrast between "protecting" the public and "pork barrel spending" and "higher taxes"? There is a clear sense that as a stern father he will give us what we really need but protect us from our own baser urges and desires.
While the Obama video distributed its points across a range of different voices, including a large number of women, the McCain video tends to rely on a voice of God narrator who speaks the unquestioned truth about this man and on comments from McCain himself. All of this creates a more authoritarian/authoritative structure where truth comes from above, rather than emerging from listening to diverse voices, and reflects this notion of stern responsibility rather than nurturing. This centralized discourse is consistent with the videos focus on experience and its tendency to read McCain as "superior" to others -- "no one cherishes the American dream more," for example, but also no candidate has had his experiences in public service. There is an underlying suggestion here of predestination -- "McCain's life was somehow sparred -- perhaps he had more to do." In this case, the hint is that he is fulfilling God's plan for him and for the country. This issue of predestination resurfaces near the end when the video repurposes some of the core themes of the Obama campaign, including some that McCain has criticized and turns them around, "What a life, what a faith, what a family! What good fortune that America will chose this leader at precisely this time. The stars are aligned. Change will come. But change must be safety, prosperity, optimism, and peace. The change will come from strength -- from a man who found his strength in a tiny dank cell thousands of miles from home."
Post-reading activities
Paraphrase underlined words and word combinations.
Discuss the idea of “framing” political discourse from the author’s perspective.
Answer the following questions: How are the images of the two American politicians constructed in political discourse? Do these images correspond to your understanding of a true leader? How are main aspects of American culture embedded in the images of the political leaders?
View a short episode from the film based on the biography of President Obama and point to the factors that played a crucial role in his becoming president. Discuss how the essay above advances your understanding of the narrative that accompanies the film.
Prepare a mini-presentation describing the life and political philosophy of two leaders from different countries.
Topic 5: Civil society
Text 1
Pre-reading activities:
Read the following quote and explain how you understand it : “…there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea (James Madison).
Discuss how you understand the term “civil society”