"What a field day for the heat. A thousand people in the street.
Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly saying 'hooray for our side'."
For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1967
The job of POTUS is hard. It's the only world leader job where the president is not just his own country's leader but is also the de facto leader of the free world. The White House occupant must not only consider America's interests but balance them with the interests and protection of her allies as well. The daily pressure must be enormous and it shouldn't surprise anyone that it can break men. In fact, many are broken long before they get the top job. To begin with, each would-be president must be ferociously ambitious, otherwise they couldn't stand the manic campaign pace. There are the personal sacrifices of family time and friends, the cut and thrust of partnerships and betrayals, the egotism, the slander and the compromises in principle (and sometimes legalities) they all must partake of at some point - and all of it under the endless, hounding scrutiny of the media.
There are few jobs that people don't get personally attached to, especially jobs in public office. It's a rare person who doesn't draw some self worth from their vocation. This makes a career in politics particularly dangerous to one's well-being because the business is, in the words of Bill Clinton, "the politics of personal destruction".
Lee Atwater was U.S. Vice-President George H.W. Bush's campaign manager in the latter's bid for the presidency in 1988. Atwater was notoriously vicious in attacking Bush's main opponent, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. Bush, of course, won and the new lows that Atwater brought into presidential campaigns made their way into political playbooks everywhere. Then something happened. Just over a year after Bush's inauguration, Atwater was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. His illness was terminal. As awful as that was, Atwater saw it as a blessing in disguise and became deeply repentant and reportedly made his peace with God. Faced with his mortality at age 39, he wrote personal letters of apology to those on the receiving end of his "naked cruelty", as he called it, and in early 1991, he wrote these words for Life magazine.
"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The 1980s were about acquiring - acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul." Atwater died a month later at the age of 40.
"It is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime". There is more than just one take-away from Lee Atwater's story and I see an opportunity here. It's not enough to just preach concepts like "kinder and gentler" (the elder Bush) and "compassionate conservatism" (the younger Bush). We need to act on things the way Lee Atwater did and commit to learning Atwater's lessons on his dime while there is still time, before we have to learn them on our own the hard way.
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