I noted in my last post that Lincoln, undeniably our greatest President under crisis, advocated that citizens could be “depended upon to meet any national crisis” if they were given the truth.
That thought elicited an interesting comment on this blog about a recent lecture by David McCullough, the celebrated historian that has written bestselling biographies on Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Adams and recently published 1776. After the lecture McCullough entertained questions. When asked about President Bush and his current challenges, the Pulitzer Prize winner suggested that President Bush should ask more of the people and involve them in solving crises such as Hurricane Katrina.
How interesting that McCullough who has made a career out of chronicling the lives of some of our greatest national leaders, lends us his perspective about the importance of empowering the masses to accomplish great things. As noted in another blog, An Interested Mind, in his lecture McCullough noted how Washington, “while not a brilliant intellectual….” and prone to mistakes still “always learned from them very quickly.” Perhaps as well as anyone alive today this amateur historian shines some light in the shadows of Katrina that great leaders learn from mistakes. It feels like we should have learned a lot.
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