Tiger Woods at the Masters--A Win Carrying Many Morals

I woke up very early Monday morning vividly recalling Tiger Woods striding up the fairway, a picture of unflappable, stoic discipline, red shirt, cap on, he looked no more than 30.

Striking his iron shot which slowly but surely curled to four feet from the hole on the 71st; the birdie followed.

Tapping in for a safe bogey to win by one stroke on the 72nd hole; millions roared. Off with his cap, revealing graying hair and the reality that, yes, this man is in his 40's.

Walking briskly to hug his young son and daughter and his mother with unbridled joy and love as we were reminded by TV footage of how he had hugged his now deceased father when he won this same tournament in 1997.

These are pictures in my mind. You may have your own.

For me, there is a good deal wrapped up in this win by Tiger Woods.

It is a story of redemption, as he came back incredibly from the physical and personal setbacks of the last 15 years.

It is a story of persistence and courage. .How many people could have survived four back operations and come back to win this tournament against players almost two decades younger?

It is a story of stamina and resolve. The practice was unending:  Even yesterday, Woods got up at 3:45 AM  to prepare for a 9 o'clock tee time.  The margin of victory was incredibly small: one stroke out of 275: less than 1%. Such is the difference between being first and second.

It is a story of forgiveness, as millions of fans, indeed the general public, looked past his earlier self-admitted personal mistakes to not only cheer him on but share in the joy of his recovery.

It is a story of artistic excellence. Great performance in golf seems to me to deserve the descriptive "artistic excellence". It requires a special combination of sheer talent and strength, finesse and boldness and discipline . And we observe all these things, as they happen in the instant stroke snd flight of the ball and then as we observe how the player reacts,  emotionally and physically, as he goes on to  next shot.

Perhaps most simply, it is a story of how the world loves a hero,  especially a come-back hero, a hero who shows his humanity and love of family, especially today when cynicism and examples of flawed standards surround us. Stories like this remind of what is possible and in their own way of what we at our best can accomplish.

A Book That Spoke to Me on Many Levels: "Becoming" by Michelle Obama

One of the finest memoirs I have ever read.  And already reputed to be the #1 bestseller of all memoirs ever.

I relished it for its candor, intimacy and plain-spokenness.

It is the kind of memoir my wife, Francie, would write if she brings the time to it.

In many ways, it reminds me of Francie.

Here are a few of the insights Michelle offered which I found moving.

Referring to her mother she writes “she loved us consistently but we were not over-managed.  Her goal was to push us into the world.  ‘I’m not raising babies, I’m raising adults.’  She and my dad offered guidelines rather than rules.  It meant that as teenagers we would never have a curfew.”  

Just like Francie with our children.

There is this luminous description of the challenges minority students face.  “Minority and under-privileged students rise to the challenge all the time but it takes energy.  It takes energy to be the only black person in a lecture hall or one of the few non-white people trying out for a play or joining an intramural team.  It requires effort, an extra level of confidence, to speak in those settings and own your presence in the room.”  This is why, Michelle writes, that she and other black young people relish the opportunity to be with other black people.  They felt comfortable, safe.

I admire the openness with which Michelle reveals her relationship and marriage to Barack.

At one point she wrote in her journal “I am so angry at Barack.  I don’t think we have anything in common.”  

She writes that they had to pursue marriage counseling, and it helped!  “Like any newish couple, we were learning how to fight.  We didn’t fight often, and when we did, it was typically over petty things..but we did fight.  And for better or worse, I tend to yell when I’m angry.”

I guess every couple has its "fights". It's our underlying love and respect which keep us together. 

Like Francie, Michelle was very confident, conscious of the stereotyped role of being a “wife.”  She writes, “wife” can feel like a loaded word.  It carries a history.  If you grew up in the 60s and the 70s, as I did, wives seemed to be a genus of white women who lived inside television sitcoms—cheery, coiffed, corseted.  They stayed at home, fussed over the children, and had dinner ready on the stove.”

Michelle pushed back against that. She did so much good in so many career undertakings.

Michelle is honest in saying how as a Senator’s wife she began to feel sublimated “at the heart of my confusion (in Washington) was a kind of fear, because as much as I hadn’t chosen to be involved, I was getting sucked in.  I had been Mrs. Obama for the last 12 years, but it was starting to mean something different.  At least in some spheres, I was now Mrs. Obama in a way that could feel diminishing, a Mrs. defined by her Mr." 

That sounds very familiar. 

Michelle had a revealing and in many ways chilling experience during the campaign when she was asked to look at the talks she was giving without any sound, just the visual.  What she saw was that she was “too serious, too severe.”  She needed to lighten up.  Examining how we look without the sound can be very instructive. I found that to be true as I looked at myself giving talks. 

As First Lady, Michelle knew she would be measured by a different yardstick.  She found herself as she had before “suddenly tripped by doubt.  Confidence, I learned then, sometimes needs to be called from within.  I have said the same words to myself many times now, through many climbs.  Am I good enough?  Yes I am.”

Toward the end of her memoir, Michelle writes in a way that articulates my own experience:  “The important parts of my story lay less in the surface value of my accomplishments and more in what undergirded them—the many small ways I had been buttressed over the years, and the people who helped build my confidence over time.  I remembered them all, every person who had ever waved me forward.”  

For me, there have been so many.  I recorded many of them in my paper, “If It Weren’t For Them,” and there are many more I have met since writing that paper. I have been lifted by the confidence of others, above all Francie. 

Michelle goes on:  “My early successes in life were, I knew, a product of the consistent love and high expectations with which I was surrounded as a child, both at home and at school.  I had been lucky to have parents, teachers and mentors, who had fed me with a consistent simple message:  you matter.”

Magic words--as my daughter punctuated them for me--"YOU MATTER". 

Underlying Drivers for the Brexit Controversy in the UK and "Trumpism" in America

“The Road to Somewhere:  The New Tribes Shaping British Politics” – by David Goodheart

An insightful, penetrating book analyzing the cleavage between different groups in Britain (the so-called “tribes”) which account for Brexit.

Goodheart sums up the cleavage by describing the two tribes as “Anywheres” and “Somewheres,” denoting the relative contrast between the commitment to a global-European world view contrasted to a commitment that is more locally, nationalistic, and family-driven.

The cleavage he talks about also fairly describes a fundamental difference, in my view, between Trump supporters and Trump haters.

He analyzes the several key factors of differentiation.  They include ones' relative commitment to free trade, to immigration, to family, and the depth of one’s commitment to his or her nation. 

It was an eye-opener for me to realize how the ECM has evolved from initially being essentially a tariff-free customs union to what became the common economic space of a single market with the unified Euro currency (Maastricht in 1992) and the provision that the citizen of every European country is a citizen of every other European country. Particularly with the expansion of the ECM to Eastern and Central Europe, this resulted in a massive increase in immigration to Germany and to Britain. Thus immigration became the underlying issue which probably drove the positive Brexit vote.

The political elite, better educated and higher income, failed to recognize and adequately respect the views of those who felt they were being left behind by this high rate of  immigration. They also felt decisions which should be made at the national level had been abrogated by a very loosely formed and weakly governing European administrative structure.

Goodheart develops his analysis and argument in very insightful terms.  For example, asserting “the moral equality of all humans is taken by many Global Villagers to mean the national borders and boundaries have become irrelevant and that any partiality to one’s fellow nationalist is morally flawed.  But this is two completely separate things.  It does not follow from the idea of human equality that we have the same obligations to all humans.”  

We must recognize that “all humans are equal but they are not all equally important to us; our obligations and allegiances ripple out from family and friends to stranger fellow citizens in our neighborhoods and towns, then to nations and finally to all humanity.  This does not have to be a narrow or selfish idea.  People from Somewhere can be outward looking and internationalist, generous in their donations to charity..and concerned about the progress for the world’s poor countries but they also think it is perfectly reasonable that most European countries put their own citizens first and spend about 10 times more every year on domestic health services than on development aid."

Nor is this kind of particularism morally inferior to the more universalist views of some “Anywheres.”  If everyone is my brother, then nobody is—my emotional and financial resources are spread too thin to make a difference.  The novelist Jonathon Franzen puts it like this:  “Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being.  Whereas to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of yourself.”

I cannot imagine it being said better than this.  

There are good reasons why we should resist an overly atavistic sense of “exceptionalism” when it comes to the pride we take in our nation.  We have a history loaded with events (slavery, treatment of the Native American) that we cringe at even as we recognize the reality such is the sad stuff of human history. However, that should not mask or discredit the rightness of having a strong, confident national identity.  That in itself won’t solve our social and economic problems but it provides a set of values through which discussion can take place.  It assumes certain shared norms and interests.

We have such a template perhaps greater than any other nation in the world in the founding words of the Declaration of Independence:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Even as imperfectly lived, this commitment calls on us to do what we think is right based on all we have learned over time.

How Much Immigration is Too Much and What Kind of Immigration Should We Have?

I read two important pieces of literature over the weekend:  David Goodhart’s “The Road To Somewhere:  The Tribes Shaping British Politics” and David Frum’s article in The Atlantic “How Much Immigration is Too Much?”  

This reading underscores for me how complex these questions are, how difficult getting the right answers to them have been, and how important it is to the future of our nation and indeed Western civilization that we do so.

There is no question that the rate of immigration has increased significantly over the last 50 years in the United States, in Europe and in developed countries generally.  From a low in 1970 representing about 5% of our population in the United States and 5 million immigrants, the numbers have increased to 15% of our population and 45 million immigrants.

The causes of the change are multiple, including the elimination of what had been very restrictive immigration policies, new family friendly policies allowing more relatives of U.S. citizens to come in, the entry of Eastern and Central Europeans to Western European countries (particularly Germany and U.K.) following adoption by the ECM of European-wide citizenship and the sharp increase of immigration into the United States from Mexico, Central America and, most recently, China and Southeast Asia.

Unless we change our immigration policies, particularly as they apply to family relationships and the definition of “asylum,” there will be a continued increase in immigration in the United States with a continuation of the political and economic pressures this represents.

There are familiar and altogether correct arguments for immigration in this country.  After all, we were all immigrants in the beginning.  And as you look at the last century and more, a large percentage of our entrepreneurs, Nobel scientists, etc. were first-generation immigrants and, of course, welcoming immigrants has become part of the country’s ethical morae.

Today, being for or against immigration has become a bumper sticker carrying broad-based ideological implications touching on one’s openness to cultural diversity, openness to free trade, as well as the feeling of being “left behind” or not.  Immigration likely was the defining issue in the election of President Trump and for the Brexit vote in the U.K.

There is the risk that liberals (like me) can embrace an unthinking broad immigration policy without thinking practically and specifically about what constitutes the right amount and what kind of immigration for the years ahead.

It is a tragedy that our federal government has been unable to come to grips with reaching sensible decisions on these issues.

In  my mind, these decisions will include:

1. Recognizing that for the close to 11 million undocumented workers who are in the country (most of whom for more than 10 years), we must define a legitimate path to permanent residency and then citizenship.

2. We must provide an immediate path to citizenship for the so-called “Dreamers.”

3. We must have a disciplined, sound basis for distinguishing between individuals and families seeking asylum based on genuine threats to life and those who are simply, if understandably, seeking a better way of life.  Like it or not, we cannot accommodate all the people in this latter category.  Making this distinction will admittedly not be easy.

4. We probably need to limit the degree to which extended family members can immigrate.  They should be limited to the closest members of the family, certainly spouses and likely children.  I do not believe siblings or more distant relatives should be covered.

5. We should look at some form of “merit” system of the kind Canada uses to assure that a large percentage of immigrants will be able to achieve a sustaining economic life.

6. We should invest prudently in helping countries provide healthy sanctuary in their own countries or nearby countries for people who are displaced by civil war as in Syria.

Similarly, we should invest to improve the rule of law and living conditions in those countries where large numbers of individuals are seeking to leave for good and valid reasons.  Central America probably ranks highest on that list.  I recognize this will not be easy and needs to be done in concert with other nations.

I am sure the particulars I am identifying here are incomplete and may be incorrect in some cases.  But they articulate the nature of the decisions that we must address to confront this genuine, overarching issue.

The Most Consequential Geo-Political Events in My Lifetime--And How I See Them Being Threatened

I have lived for 80 years.

I have asked myself what have been the most consequential geo-political events of my life time.

Here they are:

1. The defeat of Nazi Germany and the Imperial Empire of Japan.
2. The coming together of most of Europe in the European Common Market.
3. The peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism as an ideology competing actively with capitalism for world domination.
4. The rise of China as a preeminent economic and political power.
5. The emergence of global warming as an existential threat to our planet.
6. The immediate, individually directed and global inter-conneted communication enabled by the internet and social media.

I see significant threats for the future in how several of these events are evolving today.

The threats arise in my view from four insidious elements of human nature:

1. The challenge of putting ourselves in the shoes of the other party when it comes to working together.

2.  The human tendency to lift ourselves up by comparing ourselves to what we come to see as a somehow inferior or less deserving"other".

3. The human tendency to take advantage of power without adequate regard for the common good.

4. Our human tendency to have to face a really catastrophic situation before taking decisive action.

What are the threats I see?

1. The significant loss of political and economic strength in Europe and in Britain if Britain abandons the European Common Market.  While obviously a subject of intense disagreement, I believe that Britain and the ECM will be stronger by Britain being a fully participating member.

Yes, it is correctly pointed out that Britain sends hundreds of millions of pounds annually to support the ECM administration.

Yes,  being part of the ECM has opened Britain to a significant influx of immigrants that many understandably find objectionable.

Yet, being part of the ECM offers Britain the long achieved benefit of being a major financial capital for Europe; of having its citizens cross borders easily for employment; and of having equal trade terms with other European countries.

But, there is another benefit of Britain's remaining a key member of the European community which I  do not believe has been adequately recognized.

The ECM is still relatively young. Its rules and form of governance will and should be subject to continued improvement--in areas including  immigration policy and common currency.

What decisions should rest with individual countries as opposed to those being decided at a European level will be subject to continued debate and resolution, just as has been the case in the United States with respect to which rights should be reserved to the individual states and which to the national government.

The chances of that debate reaching a constructive result for the countries of the ECM will be greatly enhanced in my judgment  by Britain's being part of that debate as opposed to looking on from the sidelines.



2. The emerging view that Russia and China are existential enemies of the United States-- not just economic competitors but ideological enemies-- is in my view a dangerous distortion of reality.

Yes, there are differences in our theories and practice of government: the degree of authority invested in the senior leader; the balance accorded to individual rights vs. collective rights.

Yes, there is rampant corruption in both countries, just as there is in many others including our own.  Note, I am not saying these are equivalent.

Yes, Russia has worked to interfere in our elections and China has worked to co-opt our technology.

Yes, these countries insist on being recognized as legitimate key players on the world stage.

But these realties should not be conflated to suggest that these countries are seeking to forcefully convert the world to their system of government as the Soviet Union was under communism or, for that matter, radical Islam is.

 Above all,  these realities should not mask the reality that we must work with these countries on those issues which if we don't work together on the future of the world--the very future of our own nation-- are at stake.

I refer particularly to the risk of nuclear annihilation (let us never forget Hiroshima) and disastrous climate change.

 Working with your competitors, even sometimes your enemies, isn't a new thought. We worked, for example, with the Soviet Union to establish treaties to control nuclear proliferation. Dangerously, we now see those treaties being allowed to end.

3. The long term threat of of global warning continues to grow.  Sadly, I believe things will have to get worse before they get better. I believe we will need even more evidence, though plenty is already available, of the catastrophic impact of global warming before the world finally takes the action to confront it decisively.

I have no idea how long this will take. I don't know how much time we have before irreversible effects occur. I am optimistic that technology will continue to advance to enable us to provide cost effective energy without the use of fossil fuels once we muster the will to do so.

4. It is way beyond the scope of this short piece to assess the multiple implications of the final element I cite, i.e. the immediate, individually-directed snd inter-connected communication enabled by the internet and social media.

But there is one aspect of this which presents a particular challenge to our future which I want to underscore. That is the degree to which it enables and encourages us all to receive news and communicate with others who already share our views, thereby deepening partisan divides and making constructive dialogue and action much harder to achieve.

Take television: fifty years ago most people got their news on three national channels; each of them with varying degrees of success aimed to present the news in a balanced fashion. Today, most people get their news through cable channels, each of them, with little exception, presenting the news through their own political frame.

I see the need for public and media forums which bring people of different views together to respectfully share their views and seek areas of common agreement. There is also the need for political leadership which without ducking key issues,  presents and activates a common, uniting vision which is founded on respect for all people. We also need to address systemic issues, such as gerrymandering, whose very design encourage candidates to adopt and run on far-right or far-left positions, making it far harder to engage in constructive dialogue and debate.

Courage--An Irreplaceable Element of Character

In some ways, courage is the most important quality. That’s because it enables everything else to happen. It enables us to act on our deepest convictions and move forward, even when faced with incomplete information. It gives us the strength to stand alone when necessary. In early 1986, a few months before becoming president of P&G, I made this journal entry to express the deep emotions I was feeling at that point in my life:

To be greatly ambitious while knowing one’s limitations takes courage. The counsel of timidity is to stay low rather than to risk great failures. The counsel of cowardice and prudence is to avoid getting hurt. I need to lead boldly and with confidence. I will. Courage is basic. Without courage there is no virtue.
Nelson Mandela said it well: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

My own experience has proven this to be true. To me, courage means:

• Being willing to put aside fear of failure, recognizing that to accomplish anything of real value, we must risk
  wrong decisions.
• Being willing to take a stand long before I’m certain of success.
• Standing firmly for something I believe in and not allowing the views of others to deter me.
• Fighting for what I believe in, especially if it’s controversial.
• Being willing to ask others for their commitment: To ask “I need your help now”; “I need you to believe in
  each other.” Not always easy requests to make, but often necessary.
  
  Courage is the willingness to follow your deepest instincts, even if the future is not clear. I’ll always remember what a speaker said at my oldest son, John’s graduation: “Sometimes you have to leap before you look.” You're called to embark on something you’re not sure you can do, but you know it’s right and you know you need to try. I have found many of the most important things in my life have been like that.
  
  That was the case when we entered new business categories in China and Eastern and Central Europe. It was also the situation when we undertook Organization 2005. As I’ve said, I wish I had done differently many aspects of that organization change, but even so, I know it was right to move ahead.
  I called on the strength of courage in early 1999 when I agreed to lead the Development Campaign for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. I didn’t know then exactly how we would achieve our fund-raising goal of $110 million, but I felt certain that this institution could bring great benefit to racial understanding and cooperation in this country, and that I should play a part in making it happen. These decisions were ultimately sound. They were guided, in the words of Bart Giamatti, by the combination of all my “sometimes contradictory inner truths, the visceral, the open-hearted and the tough-minded.”
  
  I’ve found that you cannot make important changes or introduce new ways of working without controversy. Today, the notion that effective teamwork is critical to achieving a high-performance work system would cause little disagreement. But my journal notes reveal that this idea was not readily accepted as I introduced it to our U.S. organization in December 1986:
  
  Still a lot of controversy within the division manager group on the role of teams. I need to make my position clear and spell out more effectively the direction I want to go. I’m plowing ahead, saying as boldly and as clearly as I can what I believe is the right course for us to follow and why.
  
  “Plowing ahead” is usually what it takes. I was reminded of this recently as I contemplated the anguished words of a distraught U.S. State Department official lamenting the world’s prolonged lack of response to the mass killings in Bosnia: “If you want to take ownership of an issue, you have to do more than hold meetings. You have to make risky decisions and prove you have the courage of your convictions.” 
  1
  Courage is an intensely personal matter. It is physical and moral. We muster and strengthen it in the depths of our hearts and souls, sometimes during the lonesome dark of night. We are tested and challenged. But in the end, it is the defining strength from which great achievements are born.

Sometimes we’re conscious of acting courageously, and sometimes we’re not.
Laurent Philippe, who led our business magnificently in Morocco, then Russia, then Greater China, and who is now leading our Western Europe Market Development Organization, recently shared this recollection with me:

It was October 1998 in Moscow, only a few weeks after the dramatic devaluation of the Russian currency. You and I had been store checking the whole day. Moscow was gloomy, as only Moscow can be at the early approach of winter. I recall we did not see a single P&G shopper that day. We had abruptly priced up to recover dollar sales, but local ruble salaries had been kept under close check by the government. I was pretty depressed. But you were forward looking, as always. First, you bought a tube of Blend-a-Med for yourself, gently pretending that you had forgotten your toothpaste from home. So we had at least one P&G purchase decision made that day. More importantly, several times you expressed to the group your strong conviction that the leading brand equities and share positions
we had built in Russia before the crisis would serve us well, and that after the crisis we would emerge stronger than ever before. As we now know, this is exactly what happened. What a great lesson of courage and of leadership you gave me on that very day!

What I said to Laurent and our team that day wasn’t calculated. It wasn’t a special intervention. In fact, I didn’t recall it at all until Laurent brought it to my attention more than six years later. All of which can serve to remind us that often our most meaningful acts of leadership are spontaneous, drawing on our commitment to service and to our deepest-held values of courage and persistence.

While acts of courage are intensely personal, we can nurture and encourage courageous acts from others, as well. I often ask individuals participating in a large group for their personal point of view. For a moment, I sense the hesitation. People would rather not speak up. But with just a little coaxing, someone does speak up and others follow. They say what’s on their minds. We benefit from their points of view and they have, perhaps, experienced an act of courage whose Impact lasts long after the event.

Mark Ketchum did this with brand and advertising agency teams. He refused to accept an “agency point of view”that allows the opinions of individuals to be hidden behind a single, unilateral recommendation.
Mark said:
I go around the room and make everyone in attendance declare their personal point of view on a storyboard, a concept, a selling line or whatever. I know this has made an impact, because my long-term agency partners play back the positive effect this has had in cutting through the politics — and sometimes dysfunctional hierarchies — in the world of advertising.

It does more than that. Motivating others to act courageously becomes habit-forming and character-building.
Acting bravely is easier said than done, of course. Making the right decision — especially what could be a “gutsy”one — can be very lonely. You’re going against the grain; against the majority. You believe you’re right, but you can’t be sure. In a speech he gave at Harvard in 1886, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. described in stern terms the role of the leader when facing the toughest decisions:

Only when you have worked alone, when you have felt around you a black gulf of solitude and isolation like that which surrounds a dying man, and then entrust [yourself] to your own unshaken will, then only will you have achieved.

Decisions that rise to that level of tension will not happen often, but happen they will. And it is only with courage that they will be made well. As Edmond Burke, the 18th-century British statesman said, “The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to remain silent.” 2
The choice is ours:

• Will I speak up? Do I act on behalf of what I know is right? Or, do I opt to go with the flow, even if I believe
  the flow is going in the wrong direction?
• In a meeting when I hear something unfair or inappropriate being said about another person, do I speak upor let it pass?
  
  • If I see misalignment among people who need to work together to achieve a goal, do I do my best to correct it? Or do I let the situation pass in stony silence, hoping somehow it will correct itself, as unlikely as that may be?

In making choices like these, we draw on the deepest foundations of our character, which have been built over the years through countless, individual decisions. No one of them may seem that important, but collectively they are the cornerstone we draw on as we make the most significant decisions in our lives and careers.

This was certainly true for me. I drew on the lessons learned from past decisions as I made every major decision —whether it was changing an organizational design, expanding a major brand, entering a new country, or handling a weighty personnel matter.

I have always come back to three simple checks in order to test if my decision is a correct and courageous one:

• Is it consistent with my own vision, my beliefs and my understanding of the facts?
• Am I doing what I believe is morally and ethically right? Does it feel right? (If it doesn’t feel right, it probably
  isn’t.)
• And finally, would I feel comfortable telling my wife, Francie, and my children what I have done and why I have done it
  
  *****************************************
  
  This blog is drawn from a chapter of my book, "What Really Matters"
  
  
  

A Brief Glimpse Into Benjamin Franklin

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BY EDMUND S. MORGAN

I just finished this delightful, short (300-page) biography of Benjamin Franklin.  

Wow!  How little I knew; how much I learned.

Of course, I had heard about his extraordinary curiosity, his scientific discoveries, his luminous writing.  But I really had not appreciated the role he played in navigating relationships with Britain and then France, first in the path leading to the Revolutionary War and then the path to win the war and peace.  

He spent years in Britain, where he became a highly respected intellectual, and then later years in France as he worked, successfully, to secure loans which were essential to the American victory.  

In Britain, in the years leading inexorably to the Revolutionary War, he approached the subject as a British-American, trying to persuade the British government to rescind the taxes they were imposing,  give the Colonies a significant degree of freedom, and not subject then to parliamentary rule.  He warned them that if they did not do this, they were going to be giving up the most valuable colony they could ever have.  They didn’t listen.  He was right.

The striking out for independence was inevitable.  The size of the United States, its strength, and eventual population made it a question of time.  But it happened a lot sooner because of the intransigence of British leadership.  It took a long while for Franklin to come to see that full independence needed to happen, and when he saw that, he was riveted on it with total focus.

Franklin would have preferred not to involve the French in supporting America in the fight against Britain but, practically, there was no choice.  We needed French money in order to build the ships and provide supplies. Franklin secured the loans to do it. 

*****

There is an extraordinary felicity in Morgan’s ability to describe Franklin.  A few examples:

“People trusted him.  And with trust came power, a power he never sought or at least gave no sign of seeking.  What won in people’s trust and the power that accompanied it was his care to act the part of a foot soldier in campaigns where he was in fact the commanding officer.  He made an asset out of an apparent weakness, the fact that he was not a good public speaker.”

I can identify with some of these same qualities.

Franklin was a product of his age and his view of different ethnicities.  His focus was to have “Englishmen keep multiplying in America.”  Why allow anyone else to come, he asked.  “Why should the palatine boors (that is, Boers, peasant farmers) be suffered to swarm into our Settlements and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours?  Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them and will never adopt our language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?  

Wow.  As we have long known, racial prejudice is not a newborn thing.

Franklin again and again asserted that the right way to govern was to recognize the importance of public opinion.  In assessing the treaty to end the Revolutionary War, he believed it would not be merely a matter of hammering out the limits, boundaries and privileges of each party in a treaty.  As Morgan writes, “There has to be trust.  There had to be goodwill.  Franklin knew that nations act in their own interest, but he also believed that it was in every nation’s interest to cultivate goodwill, just as France had cultivated American goodwill by its generosity.”

Franklin wrote presciently, “If you do not with the Peace recover the Affections of that People, it will not be a lasting or profitable one; nor will it afford you any Part of that Strength which you once had by your Union with them and might (if you had been wise enough to take Advice) have still retained as its Adoption.”  

The War of 1812, which was to follow, amply bore out Franklin’s counsel, as wishful as one has to say it was at the time.

Franklin’s reputation today rests on his pragmatism, his down-to-earth realism in dealing with human relations on a day-to-day basis.

The venom with which our countries’ leaders attacked each other is a reminder that the assaults we hear today on character are not new.  

John Adams, accusing Franklin of messing up the treaty wrote:  “As if he had been conscious of the Laziness, Inactivity and real Insignificance of his advanced Age, he has considered every American Minister, who has come to Europe, as his natural enemy.”

James Madison reported to Jefferson at about the same time about John Adams’ conduct, writing that, “Congress yesterday received from Mr. Adams several letters…not remarkable for anything unless it be a display of his vanity, his prejudice against the French court and his venom against Doctor D. Franklin.”

Then there was this comment in a letter Franklin wrote to Livingston, assessing the character of John Adams:  “I am persuaded, however, that he means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes in some things, absolutely out of his Senses.”

I appreciate Morgan’s conclusion about Franklin:  “We may discover a man with a wisdom about himself that comes only to the great of heart.  Franklin knew how to value himself and what he did without mistaking himself for something more than one man among many.  His special brand of self-respect required him to honor his fellow men and women no less than himself.  His way of serving a superior God was to serve them.  He did it with a recognition of their human strengths and weaknesses as well as his own, in a spirit that another wise man in another century has called ‘the spirit which is not too sure it is right.’  It is a spirit that weakens the weak but strengthens the strong.  It gave Franklin the strength to do what he incredibly did, as a scientist, a statesman and a man.”