COVID-19 Requires Hope, Not Happy Talk, from World Leaders

This is the third part of my week-long series on hope and COVID-19 (find parts one and two here). Today I will offer some thoughts on hope and leadership. My comments reflect my scholarship on the nature of hope as well as recent research I have conducted on presidential leadership.

Napoleon famously declared that a leader is a dealer in hope. John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, punctuated his master work, On Leadership, with this simple phrase, “The first and last task of a leader is to keep hope alive." I would add that real leadership is anchored in real hope. The promotion of false hope is born of confusion, or worse, “soul manipulation." For three decades, I have dedicated myself to identifying real hope and debunking false hope, whether it came from the academy or the public square. The difference between real and false hope matters to me, and it should to you. Your life may someday depend on making the correct choice. Once more I quote John Gardner, “we need to believe in ourselves and the future but not to believe that life is easy. Life is painful and rain falls on the just.” In December, the rain came and some leaders made the wrong choice. The rain became a torrent.

Profiles of Hope

For several years, I have been studying hope as manifested by U.S. presidents, focusing primarily on the last eleven who were elected, beginning with Dwight Eisenhower and ending with Donald Trump. However, I have also examined other presidents such as FDR. My research on this topic involves a combination of deductive (theoretical) and inductive (empirical) methods, interpreting presidential rhetoric and policy priorities in light of my four-fold understanding of hope. My research includes a reliably scored, 12-category coding system for analyzing themes of attachment, survival, mastery, and spirituality in political speeches. The net result is a presidential “hope profile." The ratings are completed by research assistants who are self-described “progressives” as well as “conservatives,” whose scores are checked for any potential scoring bias.

Our data show that some presidents have been particularly effective at fostering attachment or mastery hope, while others have excelled at promoting survival or spiritual hope. From our research, a modern Mount Rushmore of hope providers emerges, spanning the past 100 years, from FDR to the present:

Attachment: Ronald Reagan

Survival: FDR and Dwight Eisenhower (Tie)

Mastery: Barack Obama

Spirituality: John F. Kennedy

Hope providers connect with their followers. Reagan was the “great communicator." Conservative writer Lee Edwards recounts that when a reporter asked Reagan what he thought other Americans saw in him, he replied: “Would you laugh if I told you … they see themselves, and that I’m one of them.” And he added: “I’ve never been able to detach myself or think that I, somehow, am apart from them.”

Hope providers are idealists without illusions. FDR liberated the country from the depths of the Great Depression with unforgettable phrases such as “men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoner of their own minds,” as well as a sweeping set of legislative reforms called the “New Deal." Jonathan Alter dubbed his first hundred days, a “triumph of hope." Eisenhower allayed the nation’s fears after WWII. Psychologist Susan Folkman noted that hope, unlike blind optimism or pessimism, is uniquely designed to confront the negative and positive, the actual and the possible. While acknowledging the Russian gains in space flight, Eisenhower announced to the nation, “I am going to lay the facts before you—the rough with the smooth … Some of these security facts are reassuring; others are not—they are sternly demanding."

Hope providers understand the transfer of power. In his 2004 DNC speech, Barack Obama, declared “I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dreams live on … I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me." On the 50th anniversary of Selma, Obama revealed his faith in the coming generation. “It is you, the young and fearless at heart … who the nation is waiting to follow."

Hope providers strive for spiritual transcendence. John F. Kennedy concluded his DNC acceptance speech with these words, “Now begins another long journey … Give me your help, your hand, your voice … Recall with me the words of Isaiah: 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary.'" In his commencement address at American University, less than six months before Dallas, Kennedy noted: “… if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

I compared my list of leading hope providers with the 2018 Sienna rankings of American presidents. The Sienna median ranking for my list of top hope providers is 11 (out of 44), with a mean rank of 9.7. For the seven excluded presidents (LBJ to Trump), the median rank is 26, with a mean of 27.57. Four of my five high hope providers are in the first quartile while four of the seven low hope providers are in the fourth (bottom) Sienna quartile.

In the midst of a global pandemic that has impacted 185 countries, we “hope for hope” from world leaders. Many have failed in this regard. The editorial board of The Washington Post wrote a scathing article, blaming the leaders of Belarus, Turkmenistan, Nicaragua, and Brazil for ignoring the virus, and preferring denial to reality-grounded hope. Belarus leader Lukashenko prescribed saunas and vodka. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro called COVID-19 the “little flu,” and told his nation to “face the virus like a man, dammit, not a boy."

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In America, the preference for denial and blind optimism has yielded a grim reality. While accounting for just 4.32 percent of the world’s population, as of April 15, the United States accounted for 32 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases (approximately 645,000). A mathematician might be tempted to divide 32 by 4.32 which would suggest America’s caseload is more than seven times higher than it should be given the size of the population. Why is the richest country in the world, equipped with the best technology on the face of the earth, with some of the best medical and scientific talent available, failing so miserably in its most basic role, to assure the physical wellbeing of its people? Do not look for errors in public health administration, limitations in medical science, or failures of economic modeling. The answer lies in the realm of emotions and personality. American leaders had a decision to make, to go with blind optimism or real hope. They made the wrong choice.

In my next blog, I will offer some alternative methods for increasing hope when traditional leaders resort to trickery instead of trust-building, plant snares and plot sabotage [e.g., of PPE] in lieu of building safety nets, and seek alibis instead of a higher calling.