OBAMA: True Leader??

From the Daily Herald, on Sunday March 8, 2009: the article entitled, "Obama: Time of crisis can be 'great opportunity" came these statements.

"We've experienced great trials before," Obama said. "And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper -- to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do."

(and)

"From the day I took office, I knew that solving this crisis would not be easy, nor would it happen overnight," Obama said in the weekly address. "And we will continue to face difficult days in the months ahead. But I also believe that we will get through this -- that if we act swiftly and boldly and responsibly, the United States of America will emerge stronger and more prosperous than it was before."


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Leaders throughout time have come from every walk of life. The difference between a great leader and a leader with little following and impact are really non-existent as it relates to who they are and how they were framed. They have all come from various walks of life. Whereas both types of leaders may have common beginnings, they do not share common struggles and thought patterns. Each leader is uniquely poised and challenged by life and struggle; but great leaders find themselves in tighter spaces with less oxygen than their counter parts with little to no time to respond. It is is in those life-threatening moments that leaders either die, become stagnant or burst through and create anew and find themselves in the fabric of universal history.

President Obama is in such a place. His back is against the wall. In fact, as my one of my very successful friends puts it when we are all alone hammering out life......"it's balls to the walls time." President Obama is in that position of "results now".

In the statements above their are a few things that I gather

1. Addressing it as it is. President Obama is not denying the truth of where we are as a nation, but rather speaking as if he were eye to eye with each of us the cold fierce truth.
2. Bridging where it is to where it can be. He naturally compels us to listen, by not leaving us with calloused truth and ensuring that before that statement is settled in our hearts and minds that -- we are headed to a better place by taking action collectively now.
3. Making the belief or Call to action for us to believe. He invites our hearts and faith to follow his by stating his aloud with clarity. In the statements above he boldly commands us to rise by speaking to our spirits; bypassing our minds.
   
4. We are in this together. He includes us in the vision of victory so that we understand our role and are reminded of our own strengths and abilities that must be used now.
5. Kisses us with the dream. He concludes those thoughts with visions of us in "that place of health" that's down the road. We all of a sudden see ourselves alive and prosperous...all within a 1 minute time frame.

The strength of President Obama is not that he made great political statements as former presidents, but we somehow know that we can believe him. Its not political rhetoric.

I am convinced.