Six presidents we can learn from
Arthur, Buchanan, Carter, Lincoln, Monroe and Trump
Over the past 250 years, Americans have elected 45 men to the presidency. Their stories tell us much about ambition, achievement and failure.
Through their struggles, we can learn about how the United States has overcome existential challenges — and suffered defeats that still linger.
Presidents are a recurring theme for Now It’s History. Here’s a President’s Day sampling of some recent posts.
Thank you for the history lessons..
As you study American history, you can see that the best Presidents were those who surrounded themselves with people who were strong, who stood up for the truth, and who would tell a powerful President what they really believed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did this but probably the greatest example was Abraham Lincoln. A book about Lincoln’s Cabinet is titled Team of Rivals. Lincoln put people in high places in his administration not only who disagreed with him but who had run against him–William Seward probably being the best example.
The “yes-man” problem is not only a problem in government. It can happen in business or in other areas of life. Someone gets rich, thinks he is the smartest guy in town and surrounds himself with “yes-men.”
History is replete with business leaders who have “gone down the tubes” believing their own press releases and listening only to what they want to hear.
Winston Churchill once said: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Dispute and political haggling are always a problem with democracies, but the alternative is usually a one-man system (dictatorship) full of worshipping and adoring “yes-men.” When that happens, you get no honest or truthful information–only the one-way communication of the weak and conniving.
Usually, people in power who get themselves into this kind of mess will have things fixed so that others will “fall on their sword” to take the blame. There already are pundits who are making bets as to which one in this regime will “fall on the sword”. Because the sycophants and “yes-men” will now become the scapegoats.
The bottom line is that though we may find disagreement and differing viewpoints to be unsavory and “hard to swallow,” it is still better than having a “yes-man” operation running the show.
We are better served because our democracy is structured to bring dissident voices and variant opinions into the arena of public policy making.
Churchill was right. Despite all of its shortcomings, democracy is still the best choice that mankind has found as a means to govern itself.