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News Gram™ March 2006

March 2006 ~ Volume 12, No. 8

What makes a person great in the eyes of history? What is greatness? Is the greatness of a Picasso or a Beethoven the same as that of Joan of Arc or Marie Curie? Let’s consider world leaders, people who brought about dramatic changes in their times and let’s keep in mind that greatness is not goodness – not by a long shot. Here’s a theory about what it takes for a person to move nations and alter the course of human events.

The theory rests on two points: First, great men and women have a highly developed ability to understand the experience of the people they are trying to influence. They can put themselves into their shoes and, in an uncanny way, know what thoughts are going through their heads. Second, they are gifted in their ability to convey this understanding to these same people. From the audience’s standpoint, it is as if the person before it is reading their minds. It seems like magic to them.

It is the capacity to communicate these ideas that enable a leader to move a group to unite and embrace what he or she is saying. These two talents – empathy and oratory –have enabled one person every century or two to sculpt a new face on the bust of history. Let’s take a look at a few such people.

Jesus – What we have come to know of the person of Jesus is that it was his presence, his look and his voice, that attracted people to him. In the early days of his mission, he offered few new ideas. Most of what he said could be found in Exodus or Leviticus or one of the prophets. He was often angry, harsh and accusatory. At other times, he was gentle, understanding and kind. At still others he was puzzling, mysterious and elusive. But in each instance, Jesus related to each person as a person, not as an actor. That is how he could draw Mary Magdalene into his fold and neutralize Pontius Pilate’s initial antipathy toward him. In contemporary terms, we would say that he connected with the people he met and with those who heard him speak. He understood the plight of those he spoke to and they knew he understood them.

Without ever striking another person, he was, in Edward Gibbon’s view, the single most important factor in the fall of the Roman Empire. In the wake of his few short years on earth, the Roman world yielded to Christendom, which was to dominate much of humanity for nearly two thousand years.

Joan of Arc – The maid of Orléans, as she was called, heard voices from the age of 13 and with their assistance, led the French against the English in their attempt to annex Orléans and much of southern France. She saw herself in the image of the Virgin Mary and insisted on the purity of her body and soul. Through sheer insistence and a near-magical personal appeal, she convinced a hostile Captain Baudricourt of Vaucouleurs to support her efforts to meet with King Charles. He yielded to the charm of a 17 year-old girl whose effect on the King was similar. Shortly, she led men against the English and ruled not with an iron fist but with a sense of internal power and commitment that brought them all under her spell. When the English captured her, they though she was a witch or a heretic, the charge on which they tried, convicted and burned her at the stake in 1431. So powerful was she that her legacy was to lead to her being anointed to sainthood in 1920 by Pope Benedict Orléans. In  anticipation of her ascendancy, a secretary to the English king declared: “We are lost; we have burned a saint.” That a young girl should have conquered men and subjugated them to her virtue is near to a miracle. She understood who they were and they returned her empathy with love, commitment and solidarity.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt – On the surface, FDR was a man of privilege, untouched by the exigencies of daily life that can drive others into despair. Born in 1882 in Hyde Park, New York, he attended Harvard University, Columbia Law School and in 1910, was elected to the New York Senate. When he was elected President in 1932, he was faced with 13,000,000 unemployed Americans and almost every bank in the land closed. Having contracted polio in 1921, he dedicated himself to restoring the strength in his legs and somehow projected an image of power in spite of his disease.

He understood that Americans wanted concrete solutions to their problems. FDR sold his vision to them. He introduced Social Security legislation, established the Tennessee Valley Authority and began the New Deal. The hope he offered to the country was not just a wish but a concrete set of programs that reached out to everyone and sought to undo some of the damage of the Great Depression.

In December, 1941, “A day that will live in infamy,” as he put it, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the country was thrust into a world war. Roosevelt, by now a master of the “fireside chat,” made his case to the country and won the overwhelming support of the people. His oratory conveyed his understanding of the predicament affecting every American.

Three different people at three different times in history, each of whom shared the qualities of empathy and oratory. This is a good model and may help up figure out who will be the next president of the United States, or, as Mel Brooks might put it, who will be great and who will be near-great.

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