Leader Versus Statesman

Yesterday, I wrote of the last great American statesman, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Winston Churchill, Reagan's contemporary Margaret Thatcher, progressive Republican turned Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt were exemplary in state craft rising above the status of mere politician. Some are statesmen without title or even office as Mahatma Gandhi adopted Henry David Thoreau's concept of civil disobedience, employing passive resistance to oust British colonial rule from India without holding governmental position. Leadership is distinct from statesmanship. A leader may be an autocrat or demagogue. Mussolini was a leader. Hitler drummed "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" into the receptive German populace, allowing a defeated, downtrodden people to feel like supermen under evil suasion. Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, and even Chavez are no doubt leaders but all are or were relentlessly evil and none are statesmen. Events do not shape leaders; leaders shape events. For good or ill, the last President, "Bush the Decider" was a leader. If Bush had defeated Islamism rather than compromising with it, he might have achieved the status of statesman. To this point, Obama is neither statesman nor leader, rabble rouser at times-saying only he was between the bankers and the pitchforks and applauding a real mob dispatched to the Connecticut homes of AIG executives to spread the fear-an overt act of leftist intimidation, not any more appropriate for American democracy than Obama's saying "punch back twice as hard" and "if they bring a knife, bring a gun" in the current health care town hall meetings. Obama does not seek compromise or constructive debate, but to silence criticism. He has not displayed any characteristics of a statesman but plenty of those of the worst type of leader-one fortunately rarely seen in the American body politic.