Catastrophes, natural or man-made, can make or break leaders. They offer the ultimate opportunity to show the qualities that people seek in those whom they have chosen to take command: courage, empathy, serenity, fortitude, decisiveness. Under extreme circumstances, true leadership comes to the fore; if one does not possess the requisite qualities, their lack is immediately evident to all and sundry.
Few such leaders of modern times come to mind more readily than Winston Churchill, in the face of Hitler’s aerial onslaught against Great Britain, during the Second World War. As odd as it may seem to mention Rudy Giuliani in the same paragraph as Churchill, when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he behaved well, even heroically, during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His actions earned him a measure of public respect that, his latter-day transmogrification into Donald Trump’s chortling henchman notwithstanding, has endured, at least among certain Americans.
By contrast, after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, in late August of 2005, President George W. Bush flew back to Washington, D.C., from a four-week vacation at his Texas ranch, and was photographed looking down from the window of Air Force One, in passive detachment, at the devastation of New Orleans. It was one of the great failures of his two-term Presidency, and despite his trying to make up for it in the succeeding days—authorizing a massive aid package, sending in thousands of National Guard troops, and visiting the Gulf Coast—Bush never quite overcame the stigma of Katrina.
View the complete September 14 commentary by Jon Lee Anderson on the NewYorker.com website here.