LETTERS: VISION REFLECTING IN SHAVING MIRROR

To the editor:

Well, it's been an interesting year or so for the country, at least in terms of her politics. We learned that the Constitution is alive and well and prevails in the land. The republic continues to rumble down the dusty path of history with hardly a detectable curve in the tracks it left behind during the impeachment and Senate processes. Everyone who can speak has been either interviewed or polled on the politics of the day. There really isn't much left to say, but I won't let that slow me down.

I think I may have developed my sharpest reaction to the use of polls as both shields for cowards and night lights for diminutive visionaries. As near as I can tell, the president decided to lie to us because an overnight poll by Dick Morris showed that hed lose his job if we found out what he'd been up to. The president then kept his job because the polls showed we didn't, after all, care that much about what hed been up to. Electronic mob rule is at least as capricious as the flesh-and-blood version.

The use of polls as shields is tied to another revelation -- a stark one in fact -- that leadership is a far more precious quality among those we have elected than I would have hoped. It is so rare that we are actually startled and a little uneasy when we encounter it. Witness the reaction to Henry Hyde and his troop of House managers.

The experience of being led and trying to lead has helped me develop my own definition of leadership. Simply stated, leadership is the art of getting people to willingly go where they don't want to go, and do what they don't want to do. Substitute "enthusiastically" for "willingly," and you have great leadership. Leadership is often characterized by the setting of tough goals to be accomplished somewhere beyond the present at some real risk to those involved. In the arena of politics and civil rights, three people in my lifetime stand out as examples of strong leadership: Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan. History will ultimately validate or invalidate their visions, but there is no doubt that the nation needed them at the time. While I'm no fan of government intrusion into the affairs of its citizens, I do not believe a nation of this size and complexity can do without real leadership for long.

Our current presidents vision is reflected every morning in his shaving mirror. He has an exquisitely tuned empathy, a near eidetic memory that conveys the illusion of great intellect, and he has not one single principle for which he would sacrifice himself. He leads us nowhere in particular and will not before his term is out. We brought this guy to the dance and, because the party is going so splendidly, we'll continue to dance with him. Maybe next time we can invite somebody who can do something besides the macarena.

BOB RATHBURN

Piedmont