You might think this piece belongs over in my politics&rants blog – however that’s
more for venting spleen than reasoned thought.
No, reflections on leaders (political or otherwise) is always good fodder for
chriscurnow.com.
This piece
about Reagan is the most reasoned and balanced review of his presidency
that I’ve read to date.
| How about this? "One can argue the most significant difference between RR and W is that Reagan campaigned to the Right, but governed pragmatically from the center. Contending with a Democratic Congress forced that, to some degree. Bush, on the other hand, ran on a Centrist platform — but governed from the hard right. With a Republican Congress, he should be able to enact his own agenda — yet seems to be having more trouble with Congress than Reagan did. " |
The article has a lot of stuff you won’t understand if you’re not American
but it’s a good read nevertheless.
I had never thought all that greatly of Reagan. I guess I glibbly summed him
up as a B-grade actor and a B-grade president (maybe not even that).
However all the stuff that has been written about him this week has made me
think a lot about leadership again. We are passionate here about leadership
as a quality that comes from an inner strength – not a collection of management
theories. Maybe Reagan had that inner strength. Maybe seeing the world in simple
terms enabled him to lead for a wider range of people. I had never even imagined
before that there might be such a thing as "Reagan Democrats".
Regardless, I could never see Reagan as a person of great intellect. I haven’t
read enough this last couple of weeks to have any more or less evidence to support
this theory. However it does seem that people from all sides of politics are
willing to give him credit in retrospect as one of the better Presidents.
Interesting thought that. What about the great leader who is not a great thinker.
I have never thought about this. I have always thought the two go together.
But maybe not.
I would love to hear other thoughts on this.