An Endorsement — of Sorts
I don’t know a lot about leadership but I know something about fly-fishing. The connection will be explained in a moment, and it relates to Indiana’s Secretary of State campaign.
An iconic photograph of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower purports to show him encouraging the first stick of paratroopers to be dropped behind enemy lines on D-Day. I see it in this morning’s Wall Street Journal used as illustration below the headline, “Leaders Used to Accept Responsibility.”
The story behind the photo, however, is that Ike, an avid fly-fisherman, had run into a paratrooper from Michigan and was telling him how much he loved to fish the Au Sable River there. Rather than motioning his men over the ramparts, he is demonstrating the classic fly-tying motion using the thumb to guide the cast, something that can be difficult to learn, that and keeping your elbow close to the body.
This, I contend, is an element of true leadership, demonstrating a sincere love of the provincial and an eagerness to share common experience with the governed. The great ones had it — Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt.
Beau Bayh does not have it, but that’s not his fault. His father and grandfather didn’t have it either. They couldn’t wait to get Indiana in their rearview mirror. So why would we be considering such a man for statewide office or — I am told — eventually for the governorship?
There are reasons, but not the ones the Bayh campaign is putting forward. Hereditary succession has its advantages. A monarch, compared with the typical elected opportunist, has an interest in keeping the nation — or in this case, the state — in good enough condition to pass along to a heir. Beau scores on both counts.
If this essay seems disjointed, unadulterated politics without any clear-cut policy issue is hard to write about. — tcl
