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State Representative Gene Pelowski Jr.
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-8637
For more information contact: Chris Shields 651-296-8873
NEWS COLUMN
GREAT LEADERSHIP REQUIRES CHARACTER
While Presidents' Day honors all Presidents, it's no coincidence that the day falls between the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln. This Presidents' Day it may be best to ponder the story that concludes Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the latest book covering Abraham Lincoln. The year is 1908 and Leo Tolstoy is visiting a tribe in the wild and remote area of the North Caucasus in Russia.
"The chief of the tribe has gathered his friends and neighbors and asked Tolstoy to tell stories about famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, ‘But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock…. His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.’ He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s ‘home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.’ When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with ‘a wonderful Arabian horse.’ The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. ‘I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,’ recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. ‘He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears."
"Tolstoy went on to observe, ‘This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become…He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character."
The beauty of American democracy is that anyone can be elected to a position of leadership, be that in the community, the State House, or the White House. However, it takes something more to be a leader, something found in Lincoln. His moral power and greatness of character should be the standard by which we judge our leaders today.
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