By JEANETTE HENDERSON is author of the book “There’s no such thing as public speaking” and is a co-founder of Podium Master, a presentation consulting firm. She may be contacted at www.podiummaster.com.
DURING A PRESS CONFERENCE A FEW weeks ago, President Bush repeated a comment that was made to him by an unnamed Congressman, who told him that the President’s upcoming Iraq speech “had better be eloquent.” Our President’s reply made it clear that he didn’t think he had to be eloquent, or even adequate, that all that mattered was what happened on the ground. There’s no question that Mr. Bush has been wrong on many things before, but on this point, he is so far off the mark that it’s absurd.
We’re the country of great orators, from Ronald Reagan to JFK to FDR to Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson and just about every last one of our founding fathers.
How did we ever get to this point? Is it because all our latest generation of campaign politicos have grown up with the idea that we need to make our leaders seem like the guy next door? Frankly, the guy next door isn’t good enough. We need someone better.
Which is why it is beyond comprehension that two U.S. Senators, Charles (sorry, “Chuck") Shumer and Dick Durbin, both with their eye on the White House in 2008, would allow ABC World News to come into their “Animal House" — a two-bedroom townhouse near the Capitol that they share with two other Congressmen. While the rest of us decent people would have called a maid service or worked for days preparing our homes for a national TV appearance, these four clowns didn’t bother to pick up old beer bottles, pizza boxes or even their dirty underwear! And they want us to seriously consider them to be the next President of the United States? You have to be kidding!
Have we as a country entirely lost our way? Or is it simply that our “leaders” have completely forgotten what leadership looks like? Our president certainly doesn’t know what it looks like, or how to do it, or even realize how important it is. Now we’ve learned that Senators like Durbin and Shumer don’t understand it either, as they remain oblivious as to how many followers (i.e. votes) they lost because of their slovenliness. Just because a camera can come into their private lives doesn’t mean it should. We deserve better than this!
Yet we all do recognize a leader when we see one. He or she is always the one in charge, the one with the plan, the ideas, the inspirational presentation that gets people first to agree, then to get off their duffs and go out and help make it happen.
Yet here we are, a country with 300 million people, with a President who doesn’t have the first idea that leadership is all about appearing like a leader, who instead stutters and ums and uhs his way indecisively through every press conference, convinced he has no need to look like a President or act like a President, because he already has claim to the position.
We have senior Senators who aspire to be President who don’t even know that inviting cameras into their “grown-up” frat houses diminishes them, because it not only makes them seem less like the austere, wise Senators we expect them to be, it actually makes them seem like less than men, mere boys who can’t run a household as well as the worst housewife. How could we have been so foolish as to charge them with the responsibility of running our country as Senators, much less consider them as a possible Presidential contender?
It’s a simple fact: When a leader appears vulnerable or incompetent in the eyes of his followers, that leader ceases to be a leader. Were it not for the Constitutionally-designated term of office for a President which we Americans all respect, that time would have already arrived in fact, as it already has in perception as well as reality.We are now simply waiting impatiently to see who his successor will be.
Selecting a new President during this very long 2008 political cycle will be easy, and we’ll see it coming from a long way off. That’s because the first candidate that looks like a President, behaves like a President, and talks to us like he or she is already President will win this election, period. If NO candidate is able to achieve the appearance of true leadership, as recent history suggests is quite possible and perhaps even likely, then it will be a long political season indeed.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 19, 2007. Read the original PDF.