Trump's Strategic Foresight Is Being Put to the Test, via @VDHanson townhall.com/columnists/vic…
"Foresight" in crisis means sizing up a nation's assets and debits, then maximizing advantages and minimizing liabilities. The leader with foresight, especially in times of irrational despair, then charts a rational pathway to victory.
Such crisis leaders do not fall into panic and depression when the media shouts "Catastrophe!" Nor do they preen when the same chorus screams "Genius!" in times of success.
The English poet Rudyard Kipling would have defined such a gift as
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,"
or,
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same."
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,"
or,
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same."
Some American military leaders -- such as Gens. George Patton, William Tecumseh Sherman and Curtis LeMay -- sounded as scary in times of peace as they did in times of war.
The traits ensuring that peacetime life stays predictable are not always the same as those required to return it to predictability when times turn utterly terrifying.
Abraham Lincoln knew the overwhelming advantages of the Union could eventually defeat the South, but only if he could hold the nation together through disasters such as the battles of Bull Run and Chancellorsville, and only once he found brilliant generals like Sherman and Grant.
In World War II, Winston Churchill proved perhaps the most impressive wartime leader in history. During Britain's darkest hours of nonstop German bombing of London, he knew that declining British assets were still greater than an ascendant Germany's advantages.
Eventually, despite razor-thin margins of error, these assets would ensure victory.
Churchill was assured that Britain had a great navy and Germany did not. Britain would soon have as allies America and Russia, both far stronger than German partners Italy and Japan.
Churchill was assured that Britain had a great navy and Germany did not. Britain would soon have as allies America and Russia, both far stronger than German partners Italy and Japan.
Churchill foresaw that the economies of those future allies would be far superior to those of the Axis. And Churchill grasped all this even as defeat loomed and some in his own party were calling for him to negotiate with Adolf Hitler.
Like Churchill, Trump must have the right information but also the instincts to determine which expert advice is suspect and which is inspired, and which orthodox recommendation is wrong and which unorthodox alternative is right.
Do that, and Trump can defeat the virus, save the economy and turn a disaster into a collective American victory over both infection and depression.
Such foresight can also remind the nation never again to outsource key industries to China, and not to listen to those who always predict catastrophe in bleak times, only to later take credit for others' victories.
