Leadership and Crisis (20 page)

And of course, there’s the saga of morally bankrupt former North Carolina Senator John Edwards. Here’s a guy who had a real shot at becoming president. And while he pursued that goal he was breaking his marriage vows as his wife courageously battled cancer. He stared into the camera every day, lied through his near perfect teeth, and convinced a staffer to claim paternity of his “love child.” Again, you just can’t make this stuff up.

I’ve heard many people blame the sordid transgressions that marred Bill Clinton’s presidency for causing a moral decline in America. But I don’t think one person can cause a moral decline, nor can one person improve our society’s moral condition. The way I see it, we often get the politicians we deserve. True, this unethical behavior sometimes comes out of the blue. But in the case of Bill Clinton, for example, Americans already knew a lot about his ... er ... unusual personal history during his first presidential campaign—and we elected him anyway.

It should be noted that unethical behavior is by no means confined to politics. It’s all around us, in big business, on Wall Street, in athletics, in entertainment, in the legal profession, in education, and even in the clergy. If you’re looking for prominent Americans who act badly, you can find them everywhere. Golf comes to mind...

During his playing days, former basketball star Charles Barkley famously declared, “I am not a role model.” That’s not true, because it wasn’t his decision to make. You don’t choose to be a role model. That choice is made by the young people who admire you and try to emulate you. Our kids get it. Our kids instinctively know to respect those who protect us, those who wear our nation’s uniform, those who run towards danger, not away from it, so that we can be safe. One day, I returned to the Mansion shortly after being sworn in as governor. I
arrived before the kids had gone to bed, and my three-year-old son Shaan came running to the door yelling, “Daddy is home!” He hugged my legs, and I picked him up to see him face to face. He excitedly asked me to show him my badge. Confused, I told him I didn’t have a badge. He asked, “Aren’t you a state trooper dad?” I told him, “No, I am the governor of the great state of Louisiana.” He gave me a disappointed look that only a son can give a father and asked, “Well, do you think you might become a state trooper some day?” I told him I would work on it.

All people—regardless of their job or role in society—have the responsibility to notice when they are viewed as a role model and live up to that responsibility. No excuses. That admiring kid of today could be a political leader, athlete, parent, or teacher of tomorrow.

I believe leaders gain people’s confidence by earning it, not by demanding it. And the only way to earn the opportunity to lead is by example. The real test for leaders, and indeed the real test for all of us, is to answer this question: are my actions designed to help others or to help myself? Taking advantage of others, or exploiting powerful positions to enrich ourselves or to feed our own appetites, is the opposite of real leadership. Real leaders focus on one thing: service. Effective leadership is “servant leadership.”

Becoming involved in unethical behavior can be a slippery slope. It often begins by denying the temptation exists—that is, to believe you are so great a person that you could never possibly stoop to corruption. Humility is the key to keeping a proper perspective on power, and is thus one of the most important character traits we should look for in our elected leaders.

So, yes, it’s true, I am indeed hoping to be the most boring governor in the history of Louisiana. I don’t believe we should elect politicians
to entertain us. We have movies, music, sports, books, plays, and Mardi Gras for that.

That said, I also want to aim high and try to be Louisiana’s most effective governor ever. The public is desperately seeking competence from elected leaders. I won’t be perfect, but I will strive for excellence, and I will pursue it with everything I have.

CHAPTER 10

DO WE REALLY WANT TO BE LIKE EUROPE?

When you look in the mirror in the morning, what do you see? Do you see a victim?

Is the person staring back at you a helpless victim of fate, incapable of making the important decisions that steer his or her life? Are Americans like you and I so incompetent and powerless that we are unable to assume the responsibilities other generations of Americans have met?

Over the course of my life, I’ve been told numerous times that I should think of myself as some sort of victim. I was told by teachers and elites that if I didn’t see myself as a victim, I needed to be awakened to my true state of existence. Because of how I was raised, these conversations would usually prompt me to break out in laughter.

Now President Obama and many of the advocates of bigger government in Washington are having the same conversation with America. We all need help. Or, as my staffers, might put it, “They think Americans have become wusses.”

This is the tug-of-war going on in America today. Two different sides are pulling on the rope. The side that wins will determine what
sort of country our children grow up in, and whether we continue to be the greatest country the world has ever seen.

Tugging on one side are those of us who believe that what
made
America great is what
makes
us great today: freedom and all the things that come with it—individualism, self-reliance, limited government, and personal responsibility. These are the sort of values I’m raising my children with. Pulling on the other end are those who see Americans as sheep, lost and helpless souls unable to find their way around our complex world without the enlightened guidance of what David Brooks of the
New York Times
calls “the educated class.” How can Americans get along without a much wiser elite to guide us? Our future, they say, lies in becoming more like Western Europe, with the government playing a larger role in our lives. We sheep, they tell us, can’t get along without sheepherders.

Now the debate is not exactly presented in that way. President Obama and those on the other side of the discussion don’t call us “sheep” or admit they want to take America the way of Europe. Instead, they beguile us with promises of safety. They promise government-run healthcare, automatic wage increases, environmental regulations, and expanded social welfare programs. They overflow with guilt about our unmet collective responsibilities and economic inequality, and promise to “spread the wealth around.” They cloak their arguments in compassion: If you care about the elderly, poor, disabled, disadvantaged, single moms, unemployed, middle-class, homeless, children, fill-in-the-blank—then you will of course support their agenda.

That’s what we hear every day from the White House. And that’s exactly the argument I heard on the House floor every day that I served in Congress. If you care, you better vote for more government spending. If you oppose more spending, it means you don’t give a damn.

As a result, Republicans in Congress often fall into the “Democrats Lite” trap: we taste just as bad as the Democrats, but we are less filling. The Dems want to spend several bajillion dollars to help some unfortunate group of people, and the Republicans, fearing being painted as uncaring, decide to go along. To maintain some shred of principle, however, we propose to spend a little less—maybe half a bajillion. And away we go. Now we are in a bidding war with the Obama White House and the Democrats in Congress. The minute we are in a contest with a Democrat in Congress to see who can spend more tax dollars—we are goners. That, my friends, as Senator John McCain would say, is a war Republicans will never win. Remember, Democrats really
like
spending. To paraphrase Muhammad Ali, they will beat us so bad we will need a shoe horn to put our hat on.

Trying to outbid Democrats not only won’t work, it is wrong. As tempting as it may be to try, we can’t produce a no-fault, no-pain society. It’s not possible, and the costs to our liberties would be incredibly high. What Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1775 should be spoken out loud by every congressman before they cast a single vote: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

What our government can guarantee is our freedom, the liberty that is the miracle of America. That freedom, if we preserve it, is what guarantees both our prosperity and our safety. As many have noted, that liberty has allowed roughly 4 percent of the world’s people to create approximately 20 percent of the world’s wealth and prosperity. That liberty has allowed millions of Americans to create strong families, prosperous communities, and a powerful and generous country. It has allowed generations of Americans to roll up their sleeves and achieve their dreams. It has allowed us to build the miracle of
America, the strongest, safest, and most successful country man has ever known.

My parents reminded me about this almost every day when I was growing up. They knew what living in a less free society was like. They knew what it was like to grow up in a society where the circumstances of one’s birth could easily outweigh the substance of one’s efforts and accomplishments in determining one’s fate. Today we need to hold on tight to that rope and pull. We might get tired, we might get rope burns, but we need to fight for freedom and protect it. The U.S. Constitution is a brilliant document—but it works only so long as we, the American people,
want
to be free. Freedom is rare in human history. We can’t assume it will come up with every sunrise. It won’t last, unless it lives within each of us and we each stand up to keep America strong.

I’m not embarrassed to confess that as a governor responsible for the safety of nearly 4.5 million people, the threat of terrorism keeps me up at night. I worry about the random act of violence in a shopping mall or a madman deploying the nearly unlimited power of the atom. The single greatest threat to our freedoms isn’t external, however. Islamic terrorists can’t rob us of our liberty. America is too big and powerful for them. No, the biggest threat to our freedom comes from within our borders, not beyond them. It comes when we are tempted to bargain away, little by little, the liberties other Americans have fought and died to place in our hands.

When times are tough, that temptation grows. Left-wing Democrats who offer to wrap a blanket around our shoulders can sound comforting. I remember as a student reading both George Orwell’s
1984
and Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World
about totalitarian governments in the future. Huxley’s vision frightened me more. Orwell
saw Big Brother as controlling people through fear and force. Huxley imagined that people gave up their freedoms because they
liked
to be taken care of.

Don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe each and every one of God’s children has an obligation to care for those who can’t care for themselves, and government has an essential role in that. There are times government can and should lend a hand. In Congress, I cast a few votes along those lines that irritated my fellow conservatives.

However, it is always our obligation to see if we can meet America’s challenges from the bottom up, at the local level, as individuals in our communities, through the private sector, churches, and charitable institutions, without first turning to the heavy, expensive, and inefficient hand of big, old, slow, top-down, industrial-age government in Washington. We don’t need so many czars in the White House!

A surprising number of Americans do not see any connection between the growth of government and the loss of freedom. It just doesn’t compute for them. They figure that government is supposed to protect them, therefore bigger government means more protection.

So let me bypass political correctness and say exactly what I mean: the more you pay in taxes the less free you are—the less free you are to do what you want with your money, to start a business, to chase your dreams, to chart your own course, to live the way you want and make your own way in this world.

When government grows too large, we begin to lose pieces of our freedom.

Big government programs that try to take care of everyone are like cement. When Washington pours them, they set and last forever. Their heavy weight crushes innovation, kills competition, chokes our work ethic, erodes responsibility, and suppresses the rugged individualism
fundamental to the unique experiment that has made America a great nation.

The American experiment with freedom has survived wars and economic setbacks in the past. We’ve faced threats to our freedoms, both internal and external, before. Why is the threat so great right now? In my mind it’s simple: the American character qualities of self-reliance and independence have been eroded. Many have bought the collectivist idea that Americans are victims of fate who can only be saved by all-knowing, all-spending, all-powerful politicians and bureaucrats. As a result, we have some people in this country who’ve been told they don’t have to grow up because government will always be there to take care of them. So they haven’t grown up. They expect someone else to pay their bills or give them “free” healthcare. They’ve become adult children who avoid personal responsibility and assign others the blame for their own failures.

Of course we all know people who face real tragedies or setbacks in their lives. There
are
real victims in our society, and we have a moral responsibility to help them. But frankly, people we should be helping today often get overshadowed by those who undeservedly portray themselves as victims. We have people suing corporations over ridiculous claims of “abuse.” Spill some hot coffee in your lap? Sue the restaurant. Do you have “offensive body odor?” Maybe you can qualify as handicapped under one state’s Fair Employment Act. (This was tried in Wisconsin.) The political scientist Aaron Wildavsky took all of this to its logical absurdity and calculated that given all the new claims of victimhood out there in America today, victims now account for 374 percent of the U.S. population. No wonder the lines are so long for government benefits: on average, we have nearly four times as many “victims” as we do living, breathing Americans!