I postured, and I assumed the look for leadership with a countenance that flowed with confidence and pride. But many passed me by and never noticed my air of elegance.
I ran ahead of the others, pointed the way to new heights. I demonstrated that I knew the route to greatness. And then I looked back, and I was alone.
“What shall I do?” I queried. “I’ve tried hard and used all that I know.” And I sat down and pondered long.
And then, I listened to the voices around me. And I heard what the group was trying to accomplish. I rolled up my sleeves and joined in the work.
As we worked, I asked, “Are we all together in what we want to do and how to get the job done?”
And we thought together, and we fought together, and we struggled toward our goal.
I found myself encouraging the fainthearted. I sought the ideas of those too shy to speak out. I taught those who had little skill. I praised those who worked hard. When our task was completed, one of the group turned to me and said, “This would not have been but for your leadership.”
At first, I said, “I didn’t lead. I just worked with the rest.” And then I understood, leadership is not a goal. It’s way to reaching a goal.
I lead best when I help others to go where we’ve decided to go. I lead best when I help others to use themselves creatively. I lead best when I forget about myself as leader and focus on my group their needs and their goals.
To lead is to serve to give to achieve together.
5. Watergate
Under the relentless prodding of Judge John J. Sirica, one of the Watergate burglars began to tell the full story of the Nixon administration’s complicity in the episode. James W. McCord, a former CIA agent and security chief for the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), was the first of many informers and penitents in a melodrama that unfolded over the next two years, which mixed the special qualities of soap opera and Machiavellian intrigue. It ended in the first resignation of a president in American history, the conviction and imprisonment of twenty five officials of the Nixon administration, including four cabinet members, and the most serious constitutional crisis since the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.
UNCOVERING THE COVER-UP The trial of evidence pursued by judge Sirica, a grand jury and several special prosecutors, and a televised Senate investigation headed by Samuel J. Ervin, Jr., of North Carolina, led directly to the White House. No evidence surfaced that Nixon had ordered the break-in or that he had been aware of plans to burglarize the Democratic National Committee. But from the start Nixon was personally involved in the cover-up, using his presidential powers to discredit and block the investigation. Perhaps most alarming was the discovery that the Watergate burglary was merely one small part of a larger pattern of corruption and criminality sanctioned by the Nixon White House.
The White House had become committed to illegal tactics in May 1970 when the New York Times broke the story of the secret bombings in Cambodia. Nixon, by nature a man possessed by insecurity, had ordered illegal telephone taps on several newsmen and government employees suspected of leaking the story. In 1971, during the crisis generated by the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a team of burglars under the direction of White House advisor John Ehrlichman had broken into a psychiatrist’s office in an effort to obtain damaging information on Daniel Ellsberg, the former Pentagon employee who had supplied the press with the secret documents. By the spring of 1972 Ehrlichman commanded a team of “dirty tricksters” who performed various acts of sabotage against prospective Democratic candidates for the presidency, including falsely accusing Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Henry Jackson of sexual improprieties, forging press release, setting off stink-bombs at Democratic gatherings, and associating the opposition candidates with racist remarks. 感谢您阅读《Politics 》一文，出国留学网(liuxue86.com)编辑部希望本文能帮助到您。
