The Lack of Courage Today

While on our week vacation in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, I am trying to get in a little leisure reading. I brought two therapy books, but have left them in the backpack in favor of a book I purchased some months ago. “The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have(and Doesn't Want) Another Great President,” by Aaron David Miller.

These days on the mountain top looking over to another mountain range in the distance, reading this book, has caused some reflection on the shape of real leadership in our time. My conclusion has been we are poverty stricken for real leadership at most every level of life in America.

I sent an email to the president of Hardin-Simmons University, Eric Bruntmyer this morning following an email from him about all the wonderful things he and his team are doing. This is the president who refused to acknowledge the contacts and phone calls of over 1,000 stakeholders of Hardin-Simmons after he persuaded the trustees to close Logsdon Seminary. If that were not enough during his four years, he has closed whole schools, laid off numerous faculty, closed satellite campuses across the state, put out false and misleading financial reports all the while refusing to talk with Logsdon Alumni Association and others.

So, I sat down and wrote him a personal letter contrasting qualities of great leadership with his.

I was truthful but unsparing. Gathering up all the ways he has undermined the future of Hardin-Simmons I contrasted that with what great leaders would have done differently. I also mentioned he pushed off the problems he had created to former presidents. I noted I knew two of them and unlike him, they were great leaders.

Apparently, I struck a nerve because later today I looked and he had responded to my email. I have not decided when to read it and respond. I am on “holiday” after all. I waited on a response from him since February. Perhaps he can wait a few days on me---since I am “on holiday.”

I believe perhaps the missing character trait in leadership today is “courage.” Our military forces in war know courage because they must summon it each day. As I work with veterans, early on I tell them from my heart, what we are working on has absolutely nothing to do with weakness or lack of courage.

They have proven themselves courageous. I cannot say the same about leadership in our nation today. I have noted previously, elected leaders seem to be narrowly focused on getting elected and then staying elected. Little more than that happens of any consequence—except what happens in the absence of courage. Our racial strife is solely due to a lack of courage. Leaders refuse to address the historic problems related to African Americans desire to be fully equal to every other citizen. We struggle right now with a dysfunctional federal government which has been years in the making. Miller notes that Congress has degenerated into a profound partisanship unwilling to compromise and move the interests of us all further down the road. Compromise has become the new “obscenity.” Too many agendas, too many opinions and all of them of equal value. However that is not the case. It has never been the case.

Where are the national leaders of both parties who stand up and say, “We have allowed a broken immigration system to exist too long. We must come together and make compromises which enable us to do the right thing for those who are in our country or want to come to this country.” Where is presidential leadership during COVID-19? I suspect, as the death continues to rise across the nation, supporters of this president who lose a beloved relative because of the current administrations handling of this pandemic will so easily support the Republicans in November.

I believe it is courage that has shaped this nation, courage which has preserved this union, and courage which is profoundly absent in our time. Politicians only speak if they can run for cover. Politicians are afraid of the voters so that serve with a profound lack of integrity. Politicians today are easily frightened, easily cowered, and easily pressured. While I did not agree with everything John McCain advocated, without a doubt he was a politician of unusual courage.

There is probably no quarter of American life today that is not bereft of courage. That more than any other single issue may undermine everything we have come to value.

Wash your hands, wear your masks, and be kind