Wherefore Art Thou, Leadership? Lessons From Eisenhower and Polio On The Covid-19 Crisis

FDR and Eisenhower. Photo by Series: Photographs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882 – 1945Collection: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Photographs, 1870 – 2004, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A few days ago our friend Eric Garcia posed a question on Twitter that was rattling around in my mind anyway, but I’ve really been pondering ever since:

Has anyone built a *better* reputation after the pandemic than before it? Between the CDC, the NIH, multiple governors, state legislatures, congress other institutions, so many people got it wrong. The only one who comes to mind is Jerome Powell.

— Eric Michael Garcia (@EricMGarcia) August 8, 2021

What has become painfully obvious, or at least painful to the average American trying to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic heading into a third affected school year, is the difference between governing and leading. America in the Year of Our Lord 2021 has an abundance of the former, and a shocking lack of the latter.

Just exercising power is not, in and of itself, leadership. Leadership is not the wielding of power; it’s the art of wielding power to effective ends. Or, as it was explained to me over and over again growing up, leadership is getting people to do things, good leadership is getting them to happily do those things, great leadership is making them think it was their idea to do them all along. When we review the events of Covid-19 as 2021 starts its downhill run towards 2022, answering the question of what leadership shined in the crisis goes begging for an answer in far too many cases.

Or as Dwight Eisenhower, a leader who only had to steer the Allies through the minor technicality of World War 2 and the United States through another shooting war in Korea and the start of the Cold War as president, put it this way:

Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it, not because your position of power can compel him to do it, or your position of authority. A commander of a regiment is not necessarily a leader. He has all of the appurtenances of power given by a set of Army regulations by which he can compel unified action. He can say to a body such as this, “Rise,” and “Sit down.” You do it exactly. But that is not leadership.

Note the distinction Ike made here. Eisenhower had no qualms giving hard orders to make sure it got done, but at the same time the supreme leader he was also knew that leadership was an exercise in managing people, and those people would get the job done more effectively when they are on board with the cause.

“Yeah, but he didn’t have to deal with Covid-19, man…” random Twitter feller with a handle that looks like a phone number will complain.

Sigh…pay attention, we will go through this slowly, and use small words for the most part.

The disease of Eisenhower’s time that was striking down folks both physically and in fear was polio. Two presidents before Eisenhower, FDR was the longest serving president America ever had, and did so from a wheelchair except for carefully choreographed photo ops. The use of his legs was lost to the ravages of the then un-curable polio disease. In modern times, current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell still limps and has physically obvious effects from his own childhood bout with polio. The disease was feared not just for the deaths, but for the paralysis it caused, mostly in children. At polio’s peak in America in 1952, the vaccine that would save the world was still three years away.

That salvation came in 1955, when Dr. Jonas Salk and his team in Pittsburgh developed the vaccine. The problem was, how to get people to take it.

Enter the now-President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

I would like to issue the following statement about the polio vaccine situation. The last week has been both eventful and encouraging.

A committee of scientists is now screening polio vaccine before it is released for public use. The Surgeon General of the Public Health Service tells me that it is hoped to release some vaccine within a few days. Batches of vaccine must pass the most careful tests that scientists can devise and be as safe and effective as man can make the vaccine.

According to Dr. Francis’ report on last year’s field tests, the child who was vaccinated had a three times better chance of avoiding polio than the child who was not vaccinated.

There has been delay in the vaccination program. But remember-we are dealing in this field with the lives of our children and our grandchildren. Because of scientific work that was done during that delay science has learned new things about the way viruses behave in large scale manufacture and about the way we should make vaccine. Scientists have been able to design testing techniques of greater sensitivity and production techniques which build in a greater factor of safety and additional checks on the final product. So from that delay science has gained new knowledge, new safeguards.

I want to caution the people of our nation about two things:

First: No vaccination program can prevent all cases of the disease against which it is directed. Let us not forget that Dr. Francis reported the polio vaccine as used in the 1954 field trial was found to be 60 to 90 percent–not 100 percent–effective in the field trials last year.

Second: Although the manufacturers are now moving toward full scale production and distribution of this vaccine, it will take them varying periods of time to “retool” to meet the revised production standards. During the months immediately ahead we must be patient while our limited supply of vaccine is used first to help protect those who need it most.

Every parent and every child should be grateful to those scientists who have been working without rest and without relief during recent weeks to find answers to the problems that caused the delay. They have found these answers and another battle in the continuing fight against polio has been won.

Compare this statement to what we’ve been hearing on Covid-19 since early 2020. It is striking how straightforward it is: eschewing medical terms for common language explanations, up front in limitations and risks involved, encouraging as to what can be done, giving hope to parents who were scared for their children without promising the impossible.

“Yeah, well, that vaccine didn’t have any issues like the Covid-19 vaccine does,” will come the snark from VaxTrutheaglescream8675309.

Wrong. One of the reasons Eisenhower had to vouch for the polio vaccine in the first place is the disastrous development of it. One of the labs working on the vaccine screwed up the manufacturing, and in a horrific mistake 200K doses got the active polio virus instead of the inert vaccine version they were supposed to. Forty-thousand got polio. Two hundred children were paralyzed. Ten died.

So when Eisenhower led off with reassurance about the manufacturing process, it was with the death, paralysis, and infection of thousands of mostly children as the issue at hand. It was with a highly skeptical public that was scared out of their minds, and that were tired of seeing crippled children that survived and horrified by the dead children that weren’t even that lucky. Mostly, Eisenhower’s leadership on the polio vaccine was in an environment where the words of the president — a universally respected one at that — would carry the most weight in a world where information was hard to get to the average citizen. When Eisenhower spoke on the polio vaccine, a lot was on the line, and it wasn’t just his words but his reputation and application of leadership that would be needed to carry the day.

He concluded that 1955 address on the polio vaccine thusly:

This plan for distribution of the vaccine can go into effect as soon as the free vaccination program of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis is completed. Under it, the Federal Government will assume responsibility for the equitable allocation of the vaccine among the States, and the States will assume responsibility for the direction of distribution within their borders.

The program will operate in a sure and orderly way, given the full cooperation of the State officials, the manufacturers, the distributors, the medical profession, and the people of the Nation. I am confident that the program will receive that support.

For these reasons I do not believe that regulatory legislation in this field is necessary.

And it wasn’t. It will be important to note in the current debate over mandating Covid-19 vaccines that the polio vaccine mandates were done in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, not at the federal level. Ike’s promise that the polio vaccine program would be done in “a sure and orderly way” wasn’t just a tag line; it was the essence of crisis leadership. Encapsulating what could be done, what needed to be done, and who needed to do it from the federal government, to states, to parents all pulling in the same direction to achieve the goal. In addition to Eisenhower’s words, there was also something we would recognize today as a high-powered PR campaign. Celebrities of the day like Elvis, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and others got vaccinated and lent their images to educational campaigns. Sensing that in those days of segregation reaching communities of color was going to be a challenge but necessary, Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald were also featured in an awareness campaign. States moved quickly to comply, parents accepted the information of the day and got their kids vaccinated, and it worked. Polio is all but eradicated in America, and severely reduced worldwide.

The truly telling issue here is that the crisis didn’t even require greatness — just competence. When the horrific vaccine accident happened, the who, what, when, and how was communicated to the American people out of necessity to get them over and past it. Eisenhower’s address on the polio vaccine comes off 70-odd years later as evenhanded, measured, and straight forward. He differentiated between what they thought and what they knew. He cautioned, but encouraged. He assured without promising. Celebrity campaigns no doubt rolled eyes in the 50s like they do today, but worked when coupled with a consistent messaging and the government and science working together to earn trust in the vaccine. Science fought the battles, and steady leadership getting the country to come together behind that science won the war. Eisenhower’s leadership, steady and effective, was the constant in the chaos that brought the vaccine crisis to a conclusion.

Eisenhower’s handling of the polio vaccine crisis didn’t happen in a vacuum, though. It came from a lifetime of experience dealing with not just crisis, but people in crisis. “As long as I am back in my military life for a second, I should like to observe one thing about leadership that one of the greats has said — Napoleon,” Eisenhower told the Republican National Convention in 1956: “He said, the great leader, the genius in leadership, is the man who can do the average thing when everybody else is going crazy.” And that is where American leadership, American citizenship, American science, and the American spirit has fallen short in the Covid-19 crisis. We have too much crazy passing for average. We have far more technology to communicate than Eisenhower, Salk, and the rest in the 50s had to get the message out, yet we can’t find leaders who can communicate clearly, steadily, and effectively. We have what many consider a scientific miracle in the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and yet the government and many of the scientific community can’t establish enough trust to convey that message to the general public.

The general public in 1955 had war hero and steady personality Eisenhower at the helm, while Americans in 2021 would be hard pressed to name any official at any level who has thoroughly distinguished themselves while gaining stature in the public’s eyes over the last 18 months. There are plenty who have gone viral, plenty who have advanced their own agenda, plenty who gave chest-thumping speeches and furrowed brows of concern. But how many of them really lead people? How many made a difference? How many can you even name that are of higher esteem in your estimation than they were in January of 2020? There have been some, but far too few for what the moment requires.

With the advantage of hindsight, we can see clearly how steady, competent leadership ploughed the field that brought forth a scientific wonder in the polio vaccine that was harvested by an American public anxious to do so. When the history of Covid-19 is written with the advantage of hindsight, we are well on track to wonder how much unnecessary suffering occurred not because of a horrific lab accident, or lack of vaccines, or inability to communicate to the masses, but because we as a people for too long tolerated professional elected officials in roles that require leadership, and the crisis exposed them.

“Well, it’s not fair to compare then to now, this ain’t the 50s,” our trolling online friends will complain.

Fair enough. But the lessons of leadership are not the technology of the day, or the issues of the times. It is in the handling, managing, and working with people. Leadership then, now, and forever is a people business. While we rightfully debate the policies of Covid-19, the implementation of measures, the balancing act of individual freedoms against the needs of the masses, and the effective use of government, it would do well for our leaders both culturally and politically to remember they aren’t dealing with stats, facts, and figures; they are supposed to be leading people.

There is plenty of blame to go around for what’s happened during Covid-19, from the deaths, to the vaccine rates, to the lessons learned and ignored in how we function as a society and country. But that blame needs to start with the leadership, specifically the lack thereof, at just about every level. “The freedom of the individual and his willingness to follow real leadership are at the core of America’s strength,” Eisenhower explained to college students in 1946. If America’s core strength appears hollowed out from not rising to the Covid-19 challenge as well as we should have, start with the lack of real leadership, not blaming the freedom of the individual. The latter has no chance without the former.

Alas, we don’t seem to have any real leaders at the moment. Which explains most things in this present crisis.

God help us.