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Optimistic outlook helped President Reagan Survive & Flourish: Gergen
“Mark me down as a short term pessimist and a long term optimist.”
That sentiment attracted me to an article about CNN's David Gergen and his book "Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made"
Reagan's Optimism
In the book, Gergen refers to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan: "I saw how much an optimistic, positive outlook helped President Reagan not only survive but also flourish after he was nearly killed by a would-be assassin. The Gipper believed in the majesty of his office and never let his guard down. I was in the West Wing that fateful afternoon in 1981 when he was shot. His car pulled up to the hospital and he got out of the car on the far side. Standing up, he carefully buttoned his suit coat, walked around the car on his own, and only when he had reached the waiting doctors and was beyond camera range did he collapse in their arms. He just knew he could make it, and he didn’t want the nation to see our president sprawled and vulnerable.
"In the months when I found myself in meetings with him, Reagan was always upbeat. He was full of funny stories and especially loved one about two young brothers on Christmas morning. One of the boys was a grump. When his parents showed him a brand-new bike, the kid burst into tears, telling them that he was sure he would soon have an accident, the bike would be trashed, and he would be heartbroken. Frustrated, the parents took the other, optimistic kid to a separate room for a gift. Opening the door, all he could see were stacks and stacks of old newspapers. The kid burst into giddy laughter and tore into the piles, exclaiming, “There must be a pony in here somewhere!” I don’t know how to measure it, but Reagan was another president whose first-class temperament helped him thrive as he recovered from his crucible."
Franklin Roosevelt and Polio
"Thus it was not at all clear how Franklin would respond to the cruelties of polio. Would he retreat from public life, as his mother urged. Sara Roosevelt was a domineering woman who wanted him to come home and be under her charge. Or would he try to walk again and regain a position in public life, as urged by his wife, Eleanor, and longtime political advisor Louis Howe. Days passed without progress, and Franklin fell into a depression. God had forgotten him, he lamented. Somehow, though, he reached deep inside himself, rediscovering not only his sunny optimism of the past but also finding an inner strength and determination that no one knew he had—not even Franklin himself."
What no one foresaw was how Roosevelt would be transformed by this crushing blow—or perhaps more accurately, how he transformed himself. Optimism was in his genes, it seemed, and he turned it into an art form, inspiring others with a jaunty presence, listening to them with a new intensity, insisting that, as he famously said later in his first inaugural, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
John Lewis
"A person who wants to spend a lifetime giving back to others needs a serious dose of idealism to stay the course. In the case of these three leaders, all had these virtues in abundance. All expanded their horizons and brought devoted followers with them. Their commitment was not to self but to a higher truth. And no matter how harsh reality became, they stayed the course, unwilling to sacrifice their fundamental values and vision. John Lewis said of the battle for equal rights, “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime.” In their own ways, McCain and Ginsburg also lived by that ideal. They never gave up the fight."
Gergen's Wisdom
"Each of us has our own agency—for good as well as bad. And so it goes with leadership: Each of us can choose to make a positive difference."
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