Heroism and Leadership

Heroism and Leadership - John Kerry and his supporters repeatedly insist that his stature as a Silver Star-winning war hero are positive proof that he's qualified to manage this nation's national security.

Let's leave everything aside for a moment - and by "everything" I mean the whole list, as Hugh recited it yesterday:

Kerry was wrong about the Viet Cong.

Kerry was wrong about the North Vietnamese.

Kerry was wrong about the Cubans in Grenada.

Kerry was wrong about the Sandanistas in Nicaragua.

Kerry was wrong about the Soviets and their reaction to Reagan's defense build-up.

Kerry was wrong about Saddam in 1991.

Kerry was wrong about Saddam in 2003.

Disregard it all, and ask yourself one simple question - is heroism itself a qualification for office, much less an assurance of competence at leadership?

About 15 years ago, I edited a draft manuscript of a WWII memoir by a local man who'd been an infantry platoon leader. He fought in the Hürtgen Forest - of six officers and 160 men in his company of 83rd Infantry Division that walked into the forest, he was one of two officers and 30-odd men that walked out. He was severely wounded at the Battle of the Bulge.

In the closing stages of the Hürtgen battle, the remains of his company was ordered to run across a couple hundred yards of open ground, under German fire, to seize a key objective. The author had dysentery - "Montezuma's Revenge" - so bad, and felt so sick, that he couldn't run. He walked across the open field, German fire snapping around him, too sick to really care if he got hit or not.

The colonel in command of the 330th Infantry Regiment saw this display from a nearby hill, and assumed that the author was exercising the most amazing coolness under fire and combat leadership he'd ever seen. The colonel wrote the author up for the Distinguished Service Cross, which came through channels as a Silver Star.

Because of a case of diarrhea.

If you're John Kerry, you'll call what I just said "an attack on veterans". Far from it. Heroism is, in many cases, a simple matter of guys plodding along and doing the right thing under unspeakable conditions, whether it's holding off an attack by oneself with a machine gun (like Audie Murphy), or walking into a blazing skyscraper, or cleaning out a Viet Cong position singlehanded (like Kerry) diving on a grenade to save the rest of one's squad, or walking forward under fire when your insides are turning to goo. Heroism is average people doing the unimaginable.

Does heroism itself make someone a leader?

Acts of heroism frequently involve people stepping far outside their own limitations to do things under the pressure of incredible, defining moments. It frequently involves the instant, irrevocable suspension of judgement to do things that no rational person would do, if rationality were called for.

Leadership requires qualities that may intersect with those of the hero on occasion - but are not the same thing. It requires both the ability to make tough, rational choices, and the ability to communicate those choices to people - even the choices that are counterintuitive. The great leaders are the ones that can convince the people to do the hard things; Churchill leading Britons to stand alone against a Germany that sought an armistice; Reagan leading the nation simultaneously from the disabling grind of stagflation and the lulling lie of detente; George HW Bush leading half a million men from dozens of non-involved nations to fight for a tiny principality halfway around the world; and his son, leading Western Civilization in a struggle that a good chunk of our own people stopped recognizing once the rubble was cleared from the Ground Zeros.

We need heros. Thank God for them.

A leader is a different thing altogether.

Kerry's heroism thirty-odd years ago didn't make him a leader. Far from it - he's the quintessential follower.

Bush may have never charged into enemy fire, silenced it, and lived to tell about it. But for three years he's stepped above and beyond himself and made the tough choices, and led this nation in a way that few people could - and convinced most of the people, rightly, that it is the right thing to do.

Or so we'll find out in about eight months...

Posted by Mitch at February 24, 2004 06:35 AM