Obesity and Ozempic

Leadership

One of my favorite authors is historian Jon Meacham. His essay in the New York Times Book Review of March 24th 2020 bears reading and contemplating. I was just beginning the 9th grade when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. It was very scary when the news presented the fact that Reading, Pennsylvania was within the range of Soviet missiles topped with nuclear warheads. I recognize now that, as Meacham writes, “President Kennedy was cool, rational, careful and willing to compromise.” And it was that approach that constituted real leadership in what many believe was a moment when the world could have easily suffered destruction from nuclear warfare. Meacham points out that Robert F. Kennedy’s memoir Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis “shows us, the key point is that a president should be driven by facts, not preconceptions; by the larger good, not by pride. For pride, as the Bible taught us long ago, goeth before a fall.” While I am not a religious person, the Biblical quote is apt. In many ways, this was the first example of true leadership I remember in my lifetime.




Meacham also uses the examples of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt on real leadership in the face of existential crisis. These examples I know of because I have read about them. And then we come to early 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic. Leaders in countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand, as well as others, exhibited leadership that helped mitigate the pandemic in their countries. They were not all alike except that the leaders applied themselves to being leaders for their nations. And the former superpower known as the United States of America? Nothing of the sort shown by the feckless and sociopathic Donald John Trump. With 100,00 deaths and more to come, we have been treated this week alone to Trump demanding that churches open to satisfy his evangelical supporters, despite abundant evidence of the dangers of such action. Of course, Trump went to church today -- Our Lady of the Links. Not for him to face danger squarely and honestly. In the era of coronavirus, America desperately needs leadership at the presidential level. Only by voting Trump out will we ever have a chance at such leadership. It will be up to others to piece together the mess that poor leadership has burdened us with. We will play catch-up for a long time.