This Is What Lack Of American Leadership Looks Like

These days leadership seems to be a rare commodity. This is probably because our educational institutions no longer teach it, parents no longer instill it in children, and so people today no longer recognize it when they see it.

It’s a nebulous sort of thing that many people really can’t define, but they know it when they are around someone that offers it. Everyone loves a leader; they are the person that can light up a room when they enter it. It’s the guy that makes letterman quarterback in college, the guy that makes ace pilot in the Air Force. It’s not about saying the right thing at the right time, or pandering to special interest groups, or avoiding a personal faux pas in an interview. It’s not about mistakes in a person’s background or lapses in judgment, either.

Naturally, every nation changes over time. Borders shift, morals and standards increase or decrease, languages alter their dialects. However we should remember that the weaker this nation becomes both economically and socially, the stronger our enemies will become.

Most nations’ leaders always try to make an effort to not only improve the working conditions of the average citizen, but to make them superior to another nation’s standard of living. This is the prime function of a leader; to devote oneself to public service and make your nation superior to other nations, not only in standard of living, but militarily and economically as a source of pride.

America has been fortunate enough to have one world statesman after another as its President. In fact, since its founding in 1776, America has had remarkably good leadership in the Oval Office.  Leaders like Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt etc., would be rare in most other nation’s history, but here in America, they are almost commonplace. Even the failed presidency of Richard Nixon had astounding foreign policy successes, such as the Middle East negotiations under Kissinger and the opening of trade to China, which ultimately tipped the balance of power toward the West against Soviet hegemony in Asia.

Even Carter’s brokered peace agreement with Egypt and Israel, which provided a stable western border for Israel, is a stunning achievement.

That is, until the American electorate began to change, and with it, its leadership. It saw a “savior” to America in Barack Obama, who is unique in this role of the nation’s leader in that he believes that America needs to reduce its worldwide footprint so that the world is on a more even keel. His view of redistribution of wealth has made America weaker, both in reality and perception with our enemies. This has been exacerbated by Obama’s lack of leadership in foreign policy.

The concept of equanimity under social justice has always been an element in our society, but it has never been established in the role of a sitting U.S. president. More importantly, America has never seen a President of the United States who announces he “doesn’t have a strategy” when it comes to dealing with a hostile enemy such as ISIS.

When Winston Churchill was faced with an enemy of freedom, he said of the Nazis:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender… –W. Churchill, 1940

Barack Obama? “We don’t have a strategy yet”

Churchill knew what to say. People don’t need the specifics of a plan, they need leadership in these dark times. Even Reagan knew what to say. When asked what he was going to do about the ever menacing communist threat, he responded simply with “we win, they lose”. America needs a strong economy and a leader with backbone and a defined sense of leadership.

Obama is the emblem of an America in decline, the cataclysmic failure of a nation emptying its granaries as America falls into the abyss.

Thomas Purcell is the host of Liberty Never Sleeps radio.