Where Are Our Leaders?

One of the most remarkable aspects of the 2008 presidential election was the absence of great leaders among the candidates. In the face of great challenges to our nation, no superior personalities came to the fore. One could argue that mediocrity has always floated to the top in American politics; however, in this cycle, the dearth of leaders was particularly noteworthy.

On the Democratic side, we had figures like Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Christopher Dodd, and Dennis Kucinich. We’ve seen these guys before, and none of them has ever gotten out of the low single digits in popular support. There was a guy from Alaska who I had never heard of, and I follow politics. There was Hillary Clinton, whose principal accomplishment is being married to a former president. Like a former president named Carter, the winner was an obscure politician who had served briefly in one of the higher public offices.

On the Republican side, we had Mitt Romney, who in 1994 had run as a liberal for the Senate from Massachusetts, one of our most liberal states, and now presented himself as a great conservative. There was Mike Huckabee, who seemed more like a comic than a politician, and now indeed hosts a television show. Fred Thompson, an actor and former Senator, hesitated too long, and never showed the requisite fire in the belly. Besides some more or less one-issue congressmen, there was the great “Maverick,” John McCain, who tried to pull off the impossible feat of spitting in the face of his party base and pulling in enough “moderate independents” to make up the difference.

Needless to say, there were no Eisenhowers, Reagans or Trumans.

Why should this be in the greatest country on earth? Thirty-five years ago, five justices of the Supreme Court gave each woman the decision whether her baby would be allowed to continue living his or her life. Barring some seismic change on the Supreme Court, each pregnant woman thus has the prerogative to act as God with respect to the life of her baby. Since 1973, tens of millions of babies have been killed by abortion. And, of course, death by abortion did not start in 1973; many abortion-killings were carried out before 1973. Do you suppose forty million people would have yielded up any great political leaders, not to mention scientists, teachers, physicians, engineers, artists and athletes? The answer is obviously “yes.” There might have been a greater golfer than Tiger Woods or a more brilliant scientist than Nicola Tesla among those forty millions, who never had a chance to eat his first spoonful of baby food.

Can a people be great who kill their smallest, most helpless citizens, who willingly nullify the lives and contributions of hundreds of thousands of their own each year? I say that it obviously cannot. Each woman has the “choice” to look upon her baby as an American with an unlimited and promising future rather than as an infection.