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

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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26 Responses

  1. Douglas Hayden says:

    Leadership was also a lot easier to pull off as long as the Charles Coughlins and Dalton Trumbos were merrily locked away in a filing cabinet in the basement under a sign saying ‘Beware Of Leopard’. Everyone doing their part looks more compelling when the ones who aren’t weren’t getting a microphone.

    Here in Ohio, Governor Mike Dewine was getting high marks for his leadership at the start of the crisis. Then the wingnuts threw a fit, his chief health advisor Dr. Acton got sent packing, and the governor’s been desperately trying to balance the state’s safety while appeasing the wingnuts and hooboy. Real leadership won’t work if the party will throw you overboard for a Trumpist used car dealer at the first sign of doing the right thing.

    Which goes back to the good old days and how leadership was back then. How much of that real leadership was aided by pulling the plug on Coughlin and blacklisting the Hollywood Ten? How much of it these days would require pulling the plug on Tucker Carlson, burying every Trump memo, and blacklisting every Hollywood anti-vaxxer? How far would one want the state to go to achieve those ends?

    If muting the signal is unacceptable, then I’ll need a better alternative. Pointing to Ike and saying ‘more of this’ won’t work when Ike would have never made it past a social and mainstream news boosted Strom Thurmond to begin with.Report

  2. Chip Daniels says:

    Well written.
    I look back at the culture of the 50’s and notice how in the monster movies of the day (Like Them! about giant ants), the ending would typically involve some mass mobilization of the Army and scientists working together to solve the problem.
    I also recall how cultural critics of the time, in books like The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit were sharply critical of what they saw as a culture of boring conformity, and how this turned into the cultural revolution of the 1960s where the emphasis was on individuality and rebellion against the system.

    My hunch is that the decade of the New Deal and WWII helped build a culture that was accustomed to top down mass mobilization and this helped the reception to Ike’s polio plan.

    When I think back on the critics of the time, those who parodied the dull conformity of the times, I see them differently than when I was a boy reading them in the 1970s.
    Back then, “rebellion” and “doing your own thing” seemed thrilling and romantic.

    Nowadays, it reads very differently to me.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I wonder how much of that is cultural and how much is driven by the need of famous actors to be the singular hero in a film?Report

    • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      In other words there’s a fine line between free individualism and (poorly) rationalized self-absorption.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to InMD says:

        It’s that whole social contract thing. You get to enjoy all the individual freedom you can stand, but the price is that when called to set it aside for the greater good, you do that.

        IMHO, we’ve had too many “leaders” calling in the contract for the good of the politician or party, and not really for the good of the people/county. Folks be getting jaded.Report

        • Philip H in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          We’ve also had a ton of politicians – they aren’t leaders – who call in the contract for their in-group, primarily to go mash up the out group. This is what Trump is still doing.Report

    • North in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I can understand focusing on the downsides of individualism, particularly in our current predicaments, but speaking for myself and people like me who benefited incredibly from the rise of individualism: I would fight, probably to the death, to not be forced into living in a monoculture.Report

      • Philip H in reply to North says:

        There’s a huge difference between a monoculture, and a society working together on common problems that require common solutions. We don’t even have the latter any more, and the appearance of it in prior times was a mask for huge racial and gender inequalities.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Speaking of WWII, John Cochrane makes a great point here:

    To learn from the mistakes, and institutionalize better responses would mean to admit there were mistakes.

    Report

  4. PD Shaw says:

    Still it took five years to get over 90% of Americans vaccinated for polio after the vaccine was fully licensed. I’m sure the Cutter Incident was a big issue, but I assume that hesitancy isn’t particular to this time or this country.Report

  5. North says:

    Minnesota’s Governor Walz has done a lowkey good job. I’ve heard very good things about Washington State’s Governor Inslee as well.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

    Some thoughts:

    1. Polio was mainly thought to be a disease that infected children and killed them or potentially left them permanently disabled. Some adults became infected with the disease like FDR but the images of children in iron lung wards jolted the nation.

    2. Originally, COVID was thought of to be an old person disease and we all know how much American society values the old.

    3. We live in a nation where stories like this are common: https://www.thedailybeast.com/h-scott-apley-chair-of-galveston-county-texas-gop-mocked-covid-days-before-he-died-of-virus

    His family has a Go Fund Me for funeral expenses by the way.

    Basically, maybe even Eisenhower, could not deal with Polio in today’s society. We are too fractured and too polarized and people are still “owning the libs” even as they die. If today’s fractured society existed in the time of Polio, there would be people accusing kids in iron lungs of faking it.

    Yes, I’m suffering compassion fatigue. Why do you ask?Report

  7. LeeEsq says:

    Besides what everybody else said, these were different times. Polio and smallpox were confronted during a time where global faith in vaccines and science was at an all time high and there were lots of media gatekeepers. Spreading deliberate misinformation was really hard back then.Report

    • InMD in reply to LeeEsq says:

      I don’t think it was harder, just different. This post itself notes that FDR’s paralysis was mostly kept under wraps, which was very much intentional.Report

      • PD Shaw in reply to InMD says:

        According to Michael Lewis’ latest book, everything changed with the 1976 swine flu outbreak. The CDC hadn’t seen such a transmissible strain of flu that didn’t become a pandemic. The Director goes to Ford and tells him he has to authorize mass vaccination and Ford feels he has no choice but to agree. Soon vaccinated individuals report becoming ill; the media breathlessly reports its investigation asking why people are dying of heart attacks after they are vaccinated. Cronkite later apologizes for the coverage, and the incoming Carter Administration fires the Director (originally appointed by LBJ), and issues a report scapegoating him. CDC directors become political appointees that the POTUS can trust; chastened their mission becomes that of a non-confrontational reviewer of research.

        As I score it:

        Post-Watergate media becomes addicted to finding the next scandal.
        The 1976 election helped promote the narrative of moral reform against incompetent insiders.
        CDC was wrong in predicting a pandemic and wrong to rely upon scare tactics.
        Ford dutifully got vaccinated on TV to promote the cause but nobody remembers . . .

        and he died many years later. Coincidence?Report

  8. Heisenberg says:

    To paraphrase a meme: “Tell me you wrote a historical essay about popular opinion without reading contemporary opinion polls and editorials without SAYING you did so.”

    The result is essays like this. It took over five years to vaccinate against polio, it was deeply divisive and Eisenhower’s methods were criticized from left and right.

    People are LOUSY at at recognizing good leadership mid-crisis. Recognition only happens in hindsight. And if you don’t believe me, read contemporary editorials about Lincoln (so polarizing his election sparked a war) or MLK, Jr. whose approval rating was less than 30% when he was killed).

    I’m willing to bet 70 years from now, folks will write essays lauding Biden and Fauci’s steady Covid leadership, while lamenting how today’s politicians can’t get it together enough to beat the Martian Flu.Report