Tag Archives: Woodrow Wilson

The Man Who Most Believed in Himself

19 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by in Biography, Politics

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“[Franklin] Roosevelt faced formidable challenges as president, but he never doubted that he would cope with them, for he believed that he belonged in the White House. He had sat on Grover Cleveland’s knee, cast his first vote for Uncle Teddy, and seen Woodrow Wilson at close range; but the office seemed peculiarly his almost as a birthright. As Richard Neustadt has observed: ‘Roosevelt, almost alone among our Presidents, had no conception of the office to live up to; he was it. His image of the office was himself-in-office.’ He loved the majesty of the position, relished its powers, and rejoiced in the opportunity it offered for achievement. ‘The essence of Roosevelt’s Presidency,’ Clinton Rossiter has written, ‘was his airy eagerness to meet the age head on. Thanks to his flair for drama, he acted as if never in all history had there been times like our own.’

A Washington reporter noted in 1933: ‘No signs of care are visible to his main visitors or at the press conferences. He is amiable, urbane and apparently untroubled. He appears to have a singularly fortunate faculty for not becoming flustered. Those who talk with him informally in the evenings report that he busies himself with his stamp collection, discussing in an illuminating fashion the affairs of state while he waves his shears in the air.’ Even after Roosevelt had gone through the trials of two terms of office, Time reported: ‘He has one priceless attribute: a knack of locking up his and the world’s worries in some secret mental compartment, and then enjoying himself to the top of his bent. This quality of survival, of physical toughness, of champagne ebullience is one key to the big man. Another key is this: no one has ever heard him admit that he cannot walk.”

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Pulled from William E. Leuchtenburg’s essay “The First Modern President,” which you’ll find in The American President or Fred I. Greenstein’s great collection Leadership in the Modern Presidency.

In context, that last sentence really does it. (Neustadt’s quote above is pulled from Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, for my money one of the most entertaining reads on the art of Presidential leadership.)

Image: ScienceSource

The Real Wolf of Wall Street Was One of the Most Honorable Men of the Last Century

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in History, Original

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Bernard Baruch

Jordan Belfort is not the real Wolf of Wall Street. The original holder of that title was Bernard Baruch, a wholly admirable investor and public servant whose life – an exercise in panache and prudence – serves as an almost perfect juxtaposition to the nouveau riche Rabelasian, flash-in-the-pan fraudster caricatured in Martin Scorsese’s most recent film.

Bernard Mannes Baruch was born in Camden, South Carolina in 1870. At 11, his family moved to New York City, and in little over a decade he had landed a job as a broker with Wall Street’s esteemed A.A. Housman & Company. By the time he was celebrating his thirtieth birthday, Baruch had made enough money to buy himself his own seat on the New York Stock Exchange (roughly $450,000 in current USD), becoming known as the “Lone Wolf of Wall Street” since he opted not to associate with any of New York City’s established financial houses.

But Baruch was more than just an avaricious businessman who accumulated wealth by himself, for himself. In 1916, he placed his lucrative career on hold, leaving Wall Street to work as an advisor on President Wilson’s national defense and peace team. Through this position he became chairman of the War Industries Board, which helped to ratchet up the American economy during the First World War. As the conflict drew to a close, Wilson asked Baruch to serve as an envoy to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919; Baruch, taking on the role with enthusiasm, became one of the most vociferous critics of the restrictions and reparations levied by Britain and France on the ravaged German state.

As easy as it would’ve been to resort to I-told-you-so cynicism in the decades that followed, Baruch spent those tumultuous years doing his part to prepare the United States for its impending collision with Eurasian fascism. A supporter of President Roosevelt’s domestic economic initiatives, Baruch was part of the “Brain Trust” behind the National Recovery Administration that helped offset the structural unemployment and liabilities which were gumming up the gears of the U.S. economy. When the war finally began, Baruch helped craft the “work or fight” bill. After it ended, his prescience led him to push for the creation of an international body to oversee all of the world’s then-novel atomic energy. Baruch also coined that soon ubiquitous term “Cold War.”

Despite his myriad financial, political, and philanthropic offices, I think Baruch’s greatest title was that of the “Park Bench Statesman.” Regardless of the city, he preferred to do his best thinking while taking walks, preferably in parks and usually on Sunday afternoons. Whether in Washington’s Lafayette Square or New York’s Central Park, Baruch would regularly amble for a while then rest on a park bench, where he would converse about matters governmental and economic with whomever was nearby. For his 90th birthday, the Boy Scouts of America dedicated a bench to the Wolf in Lafayette Square across from the White House. It sits there today.

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The majority of this information is sourced from James Grant’s biography Bernard Baruch.

“It will fluctuate.” – Baruch, when asked by an eager journalist to predict the market

“Vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing.” – Baruch, when asked which candidate to support

I’ve added that aphorism to the quotes page.

Bernard Baruch

Bernard Baruch

Let Us Plant Our Trees This Afternoon

14 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Politics, Speeches

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John F. Kennedy

“‘Every man,’ said Professor Woodrow Wilson, ‘sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time.’

…Every great age is marked by innovation and daring–by the ability to meet unprecedented problems with intelligent solutions. In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power; for only by true understanding and steadfast judgment are we able to master the challenge of history.

If this is so, we must strive to acquire knowledge–and to apply it with wisdom. We must reject over-simplified theories of international life–the theory that American power is unlimited, or that the American mission is to remake the world in the American image. We must seize the vision of a free and diverse world–and shape our policies to speed progress toward a more flexible world order.

As we press forward on every front to realize a flexible world order, the role of the university becomes ever more important, both as a reservoir of ideas and as a repository of the long view of the shore dimly seen.

‘Knowledge is the great sun of the firmament,’ said Senator Daniel Webster. ‘Life and power are scattered with all its beams.’

In its light, we must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, ‘In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.’

Today a world of knowledge–a world of cooperation, a just and lasting peace–may be years away. But we have no time to lose. Let us plant our trees this afternoon.”

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From John F. Kennedy’s address at the University of California Berkley on March 23, 1962, which can be found in Ted Sorenson’s excellent collection Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy 1947 to 1963.