David Gergen is a
senior political analyst for CNN and has been an adviser to four presidents. He
is a professor of public service and director of the Center for Public
Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He wrote this for CNN Opinion last week:
‘Before returning to the States this weekend, I and others
in my family spent enthralled hours at the Churchill War Rooms in London, along
with the new museum in his honour next door. Now, there was a leader! There was
a man whose example shouts out to us now in our hour of trouble.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the turmoil of this past week
has sparked cries for those in political power to step up and for God's sake,
lead. Fears are spreading across Europe as well as the U.S. that not only are
our economies teetering but our politicians are ineffectual.
In their summit a short while ago, leaders of European
democracies promised they had fixed the problems of their weakest player,
Greece. Instead, their solution was so timid that fears of default have spread
to Italy and Spain, the third and fourth largest economies in the euro zone. In
the U.S., President Obama and Congressional leaders assured us that their
budget deal would put us on a safe path. Instead, markets plunged and Standard
& Poors stripped our county of its AAA credit rating for the first time
ever.
It's not that you don't have the economic capacity to pay
your bills, said S&P; we're just not sure you have the political capacity
to pay them. One can well object to the decision, as the White House has, but
the damage is done in international eyes. Gloom is thick across the waters.
Winston Churchill would have rejected this pessimism in an
instant. He was offered the prime ministership in May 1940 when Hitler had
marched across much of Europe and chased British troops off the mainland. Many
of Britain's older political leaders were so despondent they wanted to
capitulate to Hitler and had signed a peace treaty.
Churchill rallied younger ministers, turned around the
cabinet, and inspired his people to fight to the end. He had few weapons but,
as it was said, he mobilised the English language and sent it into battle. What
we would give for leaders today who are as defiant in the face of trouble.
Churchill also understood the importance of banishing fear
and steadying a country. The war rooms are the fortification where he, his
ministers, military advisers and secretaries worked below ground, as German
bombs rained down on London streets. In taped interviews, those who had duties
there spoke of cramped quarters, short rations, long hours and claustrophobia
-- but to a person, they dismissed that as nothing. Churchill drove them hard
and could be overbearing, but they loved him for his courage and resolve.
(Stiff upper lips, chaps!)
On several walls hang posters from those days: "Keep
Calm & Carry On." That is very much the spirit that leaders of today
need to instil in peoples across the Atlantic. They must replace fear with
faith in the future.
In Europe and especially in the U.S., the public is
disgusted with politics because their leaders squabble like kids in a sandbox.
Churchill lived in a day when there were bitter fights too. But upon taking the
reins, he immediately formed a coalition government.
We must not let our arguments over the past dominate the
present, Churchill said, or we will lose the future. There in the war cabinet
room, one sees chairs reserved for Labour as well as Conservative ministers --
coming together, they could stop Hitler. Isn't that a lesson for us today, too?
Finally, Churchill understood the importance of a leader
raising a banner, setting clear goals and marching out in front -- especially
in a crisis. None of his advisers would have ever said he "leads from
behind;" that was inconceivable. Nor would he, as the European Central
Bank has just done, have ever said that his approach to a problem was one of
"constructive ambiguity." Who can take confidence in that?
Churchill had his flaws -- he was human. But his leadership
turned Britain's darkest hour into its finest hour. Can our American and
European leaders please schedule their next meeting in his war rooms?’
