Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Leadership

Many of us feel that President Obama has substituted compromise for leadership. One area that he has rarely concerned himself with is the environment. This morning I read some quotable commentary on the President’s ineffectual leadership in facing the current nuclear and environmental crisis:

“Happy talk” was not the approach taken by Lincoln confronting slavery, or by Franklin Roosevelt facing the grim realities after Pearl Harbor. Nor was it Winston Churchill’s message to the British people at the height of the London blitz. Instead, in these and similar cases transformative leaders told the truth honestly, with conviction and eloquence.

--David Orr, Down to the Wire [Orr is the Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sciene and Politics at Oberlin.]

If only we had the necessary leadership to address "honestly, with conviction and eloquence," the truth about our economic, infrastructure, health, foreign affairs, and environmental crises.

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