(HOST) The conjunction of the recent election and the anniversary of a tragic event has led teacher, historian, and commentator Vic Henningsen to take another look at how leaders learn.
(HENNINGSEN) It’s been forty-five years since John Kennedy was killed. But to me – It still seems recent.
"The torch" he said at his inauguration, "has been passed to a new generation" as World War II commanders like Dwight Eisenhower handed leadership off to those, like Kennedy, who actually fought it.
As the first post-baby-boomer president, Barack Obama also represents a new generation. Thinking about the challenges he faces I took another look at the Kennedy record.
He presented himself as an aggressive Cold Warrior, throwing down a challenge to the Soviet Union:
(Kennedy) "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." (Inaugural speech January 20, 1961)
But he ignored the hard reality that liberty was in short supply at home, saying nothing about persistent racial segregation in the South
And he was reckless: embracing overly-optimistic predictions of success for a covert invasion of Cuba because it fit his own views of the world and of how tough leaders should act. The Bay of Pigs debacle intensified the Cold War and led directly to a nuclear near-miss over Cuba in 1962.
Yet Kennedy also learned quickly. When police turned dogs and fire hoses on peaceful protesters in Birmingham, a sickened president faced up to the fact of American racism and sent a civil rights bill to Congress. The Bay of Pigs experience helped him avoid nuclear catastrophe in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Knowing how close we came to a final conflict – and just how much plain old luck contributed to resolving that crisis – Kennedy revised his thinking about the Cold War. In June 1963 he proposed a different approach to dealing with America’s enemies abroad and, by implication, those embracing divisiveness at home:
(Kennedy) "[L]et us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal." (American University speech, June 10, 1963)
The presidency, it’s been said, is not a place for on-the-job training. Yet there’s really no fully effective way to prepare for it. And our most successful presidents have shared a capacity for improvisation and a willingness to revise firmly-held assumptions in the light of experience.
We’ll never know how far Kennedy might have pushed civil rights or thawed out the Cold War. But we do know he learned that humility and caution are as important to leadership as boldness and action.