Inflexibility As A Virtue

May 29th, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

In his commencement address at my law school graduation, Rudy Giuliani gave us some warmed-over, motivational program bullshit about the qualities necessary to be a successful leader. The content was trite and unoriginal. The delivery was uneven and disjointed. My wife observed that it sounded like it was written in the car on the way from the airport.

In the middle of the six qualities*, (between 10 minute-long stories about how well these lessons served him on 9/11) Mr. Giuliani revealed that his hero is late President Ronald Reagan, because Reagan so fully embodied quality number three, Consistency. To illustrate his point, Mr. Giuliani spoke with reverence about how strongly Reagan stuck to his principles. Reagan believed in the same things, Giuliani effused, when he ran for governor of California, when he ran for President, and “until he slipped away into Alzheimer’s.” I very nearly choked on my tassel.

Let’s assume for a moment that Giuliani’s assertion is true. Ronald Reagan ran for governor in 1966, just four years after switching from the Democratic to the Republican Party. He died in 2004, but his disease had advanced to the point where he stopped appearing in public by 2001. So we’re talking about a span of 35 years, give or take. For three and a half decades, Reagan never changed his mind or his position on any major issue. He was a rock, immutable and unchanging.

How is this a good thing? Why is it good that the putative leader of the free world was unwilling or unable to change his mind in the face of circumstance or evidence? Are we really so weak, so longing for a baba and a diaper change, that we need our leaders to be eternal and unchanging rather than intelligent, thoughtful and open-minded?

In fact, Reagan’s presidency provides a perfect example of why unflinching devotion to unexamined principles is a terrible way to run a quilting club, let alone a superpower. HIV/AIDS was first recognized in the U.S. in 1981. It wasn’t until 1987, in the last year of his second term as President, that Reagan finally acknowledged the growing health crisis. Six years had passed, and 20,000 Americans had died. Reagan failed, or simply refused, to move past the notion, so popular in his party and his staff, that AIDS was God smiting sodomites.

Reagan was the proud and mighty tree, refusing to bend in the face of a storm of medical and scientific evidence. But instead of the tree getting torn out by the roots, thousands of people lived with an appalling social stigma, and died a horrible death. His “consistency” emboldened ignorance and homophobia, and encouraged the spread of the disease as surely as if he’d been flinging infected semen at passersby.

So thank you, Mr. Giuliani. Thank you for confirming that you prize certainty and self-assurance over intelligence and introspection. If being a leader really does require one to pick a set of principles and stick to them no matter what, then I’ll be applying for jobs as Henchman, Third Class. I may not have a lot of power or influence, but at least I’ll be allowed to change my mind more than twice in my life.

* At least, I think it was six. He said it was six, but I think he skipped from three to five, and then he said he had “one last point” about three times. Oh well, he thought he had six lessons, so I guess we’ll roll with that.

spread the panic!
[Ask] [Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Fark] [Google] [Mixx] [MySpace] [Newsvine] [Reddit] [Slashdot] [Sphere] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »

Tags: , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 11:07 am and is filed under Panic!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


Discussion (3)¬

  1. catgirl says:
    June 1, 2009 at 11:20 am

    I remember the 2004 presidential election when Kerry was accused of being a “flip-flopper” and I thought it was weird that people say that like it’s a bad thing. I think it’s great when the leader of a democracy is willing to change his or her views based on what the people want. I also think it’s great when someone can encounter new evidence and truly consider it, rather than finding excuses dismiss it. We all know how bad it is when a leader is too childish to admit that he has made a mistake (or many mistakes). Doing what’s best needs to be more important than proving you were right.

    • Oskar Kennedy says:
      June 1, 2009 at 1:43 pm

      Conservatives in particular seem to have the same relationship with their leaders that four-year-olds have with their fathers. Daddy is an imposing authority figure, who knows everything about everything. He never shows doubt or fear, and he’s never, ever wrong. Even when he’s completely buggered everything up.

  2. wapy says:
    June 2, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    I think the entire basis of Democracy is about Flexibility – the world is not going to stay forever the same, things change and therefore, ideals and acts do change too – if we wanted Inflexibility, maybe we could have a King :3 But maybe if we had a good King we could even have some flexibility… But well, my point is, most people see the ‘I won’t ever EVER change’ as a good thing. I don’t think so, it mostly depends on the circumstances, but if you’re changing to something better, why not?