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Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders

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This is a great examination of two superb leaders. Hayward has the ability to combine scholarly depth with a light wit that makes for great reading. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in understand what makes a great leader.

I've been saying for many years now that the only two men of the Twentieth Century who qualify as "eternal heroes" are Ronald Reagan and Sir Winston Churchill. Imagine my glee upon discovering that Steven Hayward has taken the time to compare these two epic figures in his new book, Greatness. What is offered here is a lengthy essay considering just how similar these seemingly dissimilar leaders were. Via the examination of their overlapping attributes, the author is able to illustrate a recipe for what prodigiousness in man is.

On the surface, the juxtaposition of Reagan and Churchill does not seem apt, yet the narrator undertakes substantial effort to illustrate just how much they had in common. When we think of Churchill, we immediately think of his monstrous wit and intellect, but, in reality, we should also think the same about the 40th President of the United States. Certainly, he was not a scholar, but Reagan wrote thousands and thousands of pages for radio addresses and columns which kept his name alive during the wilderness years of the late and middle seventies. Reagan's wit and humor was every bit the equal to Churchill's. Both men were mavericks who never allowed their political parties to predetermine their views or actions. These were conservatives occasionally distrusted by their fellow conservatives, but, regardless, they managed to outshine all of their peers.

Greatness, albeit it short, manages to convey the spirit of two titans who will be referenced well into the next millennium. It reads very quickly, but what will be best remembered are the quotations detailed within. The words of Reagan and the words of Churchill flower over every page, and, by letting his subjects speak, Hayward has fulfilled his mission. By vanquishing Nazism and communism, the two vanquished the paramount evils of history. Their backgrounds could not have differed more, yet the results could not have been more grand for the people they led and saved. I'd say God Bless Churchill and Reagan, but we know that He already has.

I am a Democrat who voted against Reagan in 1980, but for him in 1984. I'm still a Democrat but I've never seen a leader like him in my lifetime. The comparisons to Churchill are apt. I place FDR in the same light as a leader, even though he and Reagan had very different philosophies as to the role of the government as nanny. As I see it now, Churchill and FDR won WWII. Reagan, with help from the Pope and others, won WWIII - the Cold War. I know that many in my party cannot accept that the GOP holds claim to a man of greatness, but it cannot be denied.

This is a short, fascinating, and thought-provoking read -- something that's always hard to find!

Fascinating, even eerie parallels between Churchill and Reagan: well, everyone will have his own favorites. Here are mine.

First, public speaking. They both wrote their own speeches and slaved over them. Churchill wrote on 4" x 8" paper, Reagan on 4" x 6" cards. They both practiced their speeches almost to the point of memorization, with the same result: they sounded spontaneous and convincing to their audiences. They both made speeches which changed men's minds. Carter, Johnson, and Nixon were incapable of such a thing.

Second, their marriages. Churchill's first marriage, Reagan's second -- both were Total Love Relationships, with absolute loyalty on both sides, the kind of love Walt Disney teaches us to dream about.

There are many other fascinating parallels (and non-parallels) between these two great leaders, but I'll leave them for you to discover as you read this VERY stimulating book!

In between writing what will be a multi-book series Steven Hayward took a break and dashed of this delightful little book. At first it may seem that Reagan and Churchill had nothing in common but Hayward shows that this idea is wrong. Amazingly, Reagan and Churchill had remarkably parralel lives. Churchill was born in a palace but his childhood wasn't a fairy tale. His relationship with his adored father was a painful one that ended abruptly in what many whispered was a shameful death.

Reagan was born in modest circumstances and his relationship with his adored father was also painful due to his father's drunkeness. This relationship also ended abruptly by a death that was probably brought on by alcoholism.

Both men were devoted to their mothers and both men didn't bloom until they got away from home. Both men botched their early romances but ended up with devoted wives who they were intensely attached too. Both men seemed to be mystified and somewhat distant by their offspring. Both men were seriously underestimated by enemies and their own party colleagues. Both men despite living such hugely public lives were ciphers in private.

This book isn't trying to be an exhaustive treatise. It's a quick compare/contrast and is both amusing and eye opening.

I found this book to be quite interesting but not at all what I had anticipated. Based on the title, I expected to see an erudite tome analyzing the lives of Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill culminating in a discussion of how great leaders, such as these, are "made." I was, of course, being rather naïve, for if anyone knew how great leaders are produced they wouldn't be so rare in human history. What I found, instead, was a side-by-side comparison of two great men with emphasis on the parallels in their careers; the manner in which they were viewed by their contemporaries and the media in their own times; their visionary natures; the constancy of their actions; and the many connections between them which can be drawn when their characters, actions, writings, speeches, and strangely enough their educations are closely examined.

This latter point, their educations, may have come the closest to telling us how great leaders are created. Both men, it would seem, were rather poor students in their early years, but both men spent most of the remainder of their lifetimes reading and writing and, in effect, educating themselves without any presumed experts to tell them that this or that theory or manner of thinking was incorrect. In their solitude, much like Abraham Lincoln, they were left to decide for themselves what was right and what was wrong. As a consequence, neither Reagan nor Churchill ended up conforming to the conventional wisdom of his time, with the result that neither one was fully understood nor appreciated during his political lifetime.

This is an excellent book filled with little known, or at least little remembered, facts, anecdotes, quotes, and excerpts concerning two great statesmen. The comparisons are many, with surprising similarities that do both men great honor. Bottom line - This is a book well worth reading. I highly recommend it, but don't expect what the title offers but the book fails to deliver.

Steven F. Hayward believes, against the grain of contemporary intellectualism, that there are great men. In "Greatness" he begins with the premise that both Churchill and Reagan ar4 great men. Some political partisans will disagree with that premise from the outset. This book is not for them.

For those who do believe that great men can exist and can change the course of history, Hayward's book is a fascinating study.

The first five chapters draw paralells between Reagan and Churchill's early years. The final four chapters make the case that there is no alternative but to conider Reagan an extraordinary, truly great leader.

Hayward never raises his voice. Rather he cites the respective accomplishments of Churchill and Reagan in the context of their times. He demolishes the myths that Reagan was "simple-minded" or the pawn of powers behind the throne. He really does an excellent job of establishing that Reagan, enigmatic as a man, was powerfully effective as a leader.

You don't have to be a hero worshipper or a partisan to appreciate Hayward's analysis: just someone who accepts the fact that a few individuals throughout history have risen to greatness. Churchill was definitely one - and so was Reagan.

Jerry

In talking to members of the political left about Reagan you had best not mention anything good at all, and the word 'Greatness' is likely to get them frothing at the mouth. I think that the history books will tell a somewhat different story, and this is one of the first that I've read.

Presidents who enter the White House with a clearly defined and thought goal can often get that goal done. Clinton and Kennedy, to name two, came in with plans to do a lot of things. I well remember Clinton's speech where he held up a plastic card saying that this would be all that an American needed for health care. But his next speech was on a different subject, and the one after that yet another.

Reagan came into office with the goal of solving the cold war. He asked for and received substantial increases in military spending, the price of getting this through congress was an incredible amount of pork barrel spending and increased social spending. Reagan said, 'OK, give me the military spending and you can have that.' By the end, Reagan had the military he needed to handle the Soviet Union and Congress had spent themselves silly.

Reagan's 'Star Wars' initiative was brilliant. He proposed a defensive shield that would end the world's reliance on ICBM's. He even invited the Soviets to join in a world wide program. The Soviets couldn't afford to either ignore or compete with 'Star Wars,' and the Cold War was over.

I review this book this way because most Americans hold Churchill in high esteem, perhaps even higher than do the British themselves. And this book compares the two leaders. Perhaps you'll agree, perhaps not, but this is the way historians seem to be regarding Reagan. I think Mr. Hayward made a very good comparison and in a book that's a delight to read.

Hayward does a wonderful job in only 170 short pages of describing the similarites between Churchill and Reagan. It is a very quick read and will leave you feeling good about these two men and the accomplishments they achieved while in office.

Hayward makes this statement, "Greatness is ultimately a question of character: Good character does not change with the times: it has eternal qualities." Are there any great leaders with character today? As in the lives of Churchill and Reagan, history will tell.

Can greatness among human beings really be spoken of in modern times? Perhaps it is a politically incorrect, anachronistic idea in our egalitarian age. Indeed, regarding both these men, Churchill and Reagan, the media appears to have downplayed their legacies for just this reason. For example, Time magazine in 1950 named Winston Churchill "Man of the Half-Century" but passed him over at century's end for "Person of the Century", explaining that "...Churchill turned out to be a romantic refugee from a previous era who ended up on the wrong side of history." And Reagan? The news media, which had consistently downplayed him during his presidency, was astonished by the outpouring of public sentiment at his death in 2004 as this showed in spades the esteem in which he was held.

Certainly the verdict of history is not passed immediately on the legacy of statesman; it takes time. Who would have thought in the 1980's, that the name of Ronald Reagan would be uttered in the same sentence as that of Winston Churchill, less than twenty years after the former had left public office? The idea that Churchill was a great man, though not agreed upon by everybody, still seems to be more easily embraced than the idea that Reagan was. But our response to Reagan's death, one of looking back and re-assessing his legacy, surprises us at the warmth we found ourselves feeling for the man. I don't need to read an essay to feel it in my bones that there was something special about Ronald Reagan. Steven Hayward (the author) gives some insights into explaining what many of us already believe to be true. He spends most of the 170 page book comparing both men, demonstrating the surprising number of similarities that they had, from their childhoods, to their early liberal inclinations, to their switch to conservative political views, and to how they were perceived at the time. Certainly a common perception of Reagan during his presidency was that he was "uninformed, even ignorant, and relied on simplistic platitudes to get by." But some of Churchill's top aides said the same thing, that Churchill "has only half the picture in his mind, talks absurdities, and makes my blood boil to listen to his nonsense" (Field Marshall Alanbrooke). This is just one of many, many parallels that are listed. We remember that Reagan was charged with being a warmonger. So was Churchill. He alienated himself from many in his own party during the 1930s for his strident warnings of German fascism. In fact, Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946 was not received very well and his own government made a point of distancing itself from it. Forty years later, Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech at the Berlin Wall had his own aides fearing that he would only embarrass himself. Even after Reagan's presidency, when the Berlin Wall had in fact come down, and the Soviet Union was no more, some felt that the credit belonged to Gorbachev. Time magazine, in fact, named Gorbachev "person of the decade" in 1990. But I think it is appropriate to ask for Gorbachev's assessment, since his early opinion of Reagan was far from flattering. His presence at Reagan's funeral in 2004, seated next to Margaret Thatcher reinforced his words in 2002 that "I am not sure what happened would have happened had he (Reagan) not been there."

In his Iron Curtain speech Churchill said that World War II could have been prevented "without the firing of a single shot." According to Margaret Thatcher, Reagan brought the cold war to an end "without firing a single shot." Both men believed in peace through strength. Both men doggedly spoke their minds and followed convictions that had not only their political adversaries, but also those in their own party, scratching their heads. Especially regarding what they considered the evil of communism, both men stood alone at times, but history has vindicated them. They were far from perfect, but how many great men are? Arriving at a conclusion of greatness is made even more difficult when the concept of greatness itself in the modern world is called into question. Steven Hayward has done a masterful job of not only allowing us the possibility of considering greatness abstractly, but of applying it to these two remarkable men.