Willingness
The most important trait for greatness.
Let me tell you the real reason I started this blog.
In April 2024, America was poised for a Biden vs. Trump rematch. This is before the Kamala Harris bait-and-switch. Let’s ignore her for now.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden were the presumptive party nominees. Biden’s mental acuity was being questioned. Trump was fighting legal battles. They were the two oldest presidential candidates in history.
If you’re a reasonable person, you can identify negative traits about both of these men. Even if you prefer one over the other - to pretend like either candidate is flawless is a fool’s errand.
My thought was likely similar to yours: of the 330,000,000 individual Americans in our country, we boiled it down to these two? These two?
The idea of “the best man for the job” kept bouncing around in my mind. Were these really the Top 2 men for the job?
William Buckley famously stated he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phonebook than the 2,000-member staff of Harvard University. Was he onto something? Could we pull a random name and find someone who might do just as good a job as our two current options?
Similarly to you, I hypothesized there were perhaps one million people better-qualified to lead The Free World. And if one million is a stretch, then surely it is at least thousands. Thousands who can do a better job than these two guys? There’s gotta be. Hell, I even know a few of ‘em.
I thought up a list of traits our country would like in a president: integrity, strength, patriotism, competence, diplomacy, empathy, vision, charisma. There’s more to the list - but really - it didn’t seem like too much to ask. I’m confident we still have millions of charismatic, resilient men and women of high integrity in our country. So how’d we end up with Trump vs. Biden?
Years ago, I wrote about this problem in a poem called No Great Men Among The Living. It seemed to me at 19-years-old that all the great men were dead. The living men aren’t all that bad - I know a lot of good ones. But they’re all missing something. Is the difference really this one thing?
I listed in my head all my friends who could be president when they reached the age requirement. I thought of all the businesspeople I trust, the innovators, the smart and the capable, the bold and the brave, the kind and the caring, the Mother Teresas and Nelson Mandelas who we’d make citizenship exceptions for, the soldiers and sailors, the teachers and taxi drivers, the carpenters and coaches who all had the qualifications to become President of The United States.
I thought of everyone I know who can negotiate, who can handle the heat, who can smile in the face of danger, who can save lives and preserve our country for future generations.
And I realized why we ended up with Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden.
Everyone else is lacking one major qualification.
Who would want to be president? Your life is not your own, your schedule is determined for you, you get blamed for everything, half the country hates you, they’ll try to shoot you, everything you do is recorded, everything you say is scrutinized, the media will falsely slander you and face no consequences, they’ll come after your family, Congress hates you and your Cabinet betrays you, a scandal happens and becomes your responsibility, no alone time but you’re the loneliest man in the world, every decision has grave and consequential stakes, war could break out at any time, gas prices are always your fault and never low enough, they will shoot at you again, they might hit you this time, nothing is ever satisfactory, nothing is ever finished.
A lot of people have almost everything it takes. They just lack willingness. There’s just so much shit to go through.
Say what you want about Trump and Biden, but I respect the following:
Both men had already been president. Trump is a billionaire whose businesses and elegant buildings will stand for 100+ years after his death. Biden was Obama’s Vice President and a three-decade Congressman destined for a Delaware highway to bear his name, whose political legacy will be mentioned in history books to generations of students down the line. They didn’t need this.
But they had the willingness to do it, because someone had to be willing. And if they weren’t willing, maybe it would have been someone even worse.
I started this blog because my greatest fear is committing a grave sin of omission.
What if I can be useful, but I am unwilling to lend myself to the world’s use? Months before starting, I knew that what I wrote might positively impact people, but I just didn’t want to do it. Which is so fuckin’ soft.
You don’t have to be the President of The United States. But you do have to make some impact. You have a moral obligation to put some good into the world, since the world gave you some good.
There is price you have to pay for the impact you want to have. It is costly. If you can make the world better - not wanting to is never a good enough reason not to.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
- Isaiah 6:8
You are able. Be willing.
- Chad