‘Uncle Walt.” Pastor Mitty’s nephew up in Manitowoc had another question. “What are the characteristics of a good leader?” As usual, Brian was asking questions that the pastor of Poplar Park Community Church wished he had two hours to ponder and research before giving an answer.
Mitty laughed, “You know, Brian, you keep asking me questions that I want to refer to someone above my pay grade.”
“Seriously, Uncle Walt. You and I both suspect that my mom voted for Trump in the last election, and around the dinner table the three of us sometimes talk about the upcoming election.”
“So what do you think, Brian?” That was Mitty’s go-to tactic when he had no clue what to say.
“C’mon, Uncle Walt. I may be a teenager, but I know I don’t know everything.”
“Smart kid,” said Mitty to himself and then out loud asked, “OK if I get back to you?”
The next day he called his neighbor as soon as he got home from church. “Michael, Brian called yesterday and asked me to list the qualities of a good leader.”
“I bet he and Matt and Susan have been arguing about politics, right?” Michael said.
Mitty smiled. He couldn’t conceal much from a friend like Michael.
“OK, I’ll get serious. This may surprise you, but I think I would tell Brian to read the biography of George H.W. Bush.”
“41?”
“Yeah. Not too young, not too old. Been around the block a few times. Had a resume a mile long. Was a veteran. Both a businessman and educated. Graduated from Yale. Most of all, I like the fact that he was a moderate.”
At the next Saturday morning men’s fellowship, Mitty told the guys about Brian’s question and Michael’s response.
Asch mentioned FDR because he steered the ship of state through the storms of the Depression and the start of World War II. Dominique liked Eisenhower because he presided over an economic boom and invested in the country’s infrastructure. The younger men nominated JFK because of his charisma.
“Ah, ask not what your country can do for you,” Eric Anderson recited from memory. “Ask what you can do for your country.”
Asch sighed and said, “Thank you for that, Eric. That’s what is wrong with our country today. It’s all about me and my rights. I never hear about duty or responsibility.”
Alice heard bits of the discussion as she refilled coffee cups and got to the point where she couldn’t restrain herself. “You’re all a bunch of woke groupies,” she began. “No one mentioned President Trump. He turned the ship around from crashing on the socialist rocks. He didn’t let laws passed by liberals keep him from doing the right thing.”
She would have kept right on with her campaign speech had the cook not rung the bell telling her an order was up.
Ryan Becker had remained quiet a long time, being the youngest in the group. He even raised his hand as a sign that he wanted to say something.
When everyone had given him a nod, he began, “Pastor, I think you have the qualities of a good leader.”
Uncle Walt/Pastor Mitty was genuinely stunned and therefore speechless. Everyone at the table looked at Ryan with surprise on their faces and with the expectation that he would say more.
Ryan explained, “OK, so Pastor is not charismatic like Kennedy, and he doesn’t have a long resume like the first Bush had. He will never have his face carved on Mt. Rushmore. What matters to me is that he listens to what I have to say.”
The nine men around the table were thrown off balance by what Ryan had said. Their minds were on excellence and performance, but their young brother was talking about respect and empathy. Their minds had been searching for examples of men who were winners. Ryan was talking about a man who at best had a 50/50 won/lost record.
“You know,” said Dominique after a lengthy silence, “all my life what I have really wanted is respect. When I’m honest, that has been what has been driving me.”
On the way home, Mitty tried to remember everything he had heard, so he could give a good report to his nephew, but his thoughts kept returning to what Ryan had said.
As he passed the History/HerStory Book Store, the thought came to him, “I am a good leader, relatively speaking, but what makes our church work is that the followers are as good or better than their leader.”
That night he called his nephew, summarized what he had heard from different people and then added, “You know, Brian, it’s as important to think about the competence of the voters as the qualifications of the people they elect. You know, GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.”
After thinking about what he had just said about GIGO, Mitty revised his statement by relaying to Brian what Dominique had said about feeling respected