PART TWO
VI
My father had a talent for making friends. When I was a kid, our house was always bustling. Every Sunday after church, it was crowded with family and friends, laughing, eating pasta, and drinking red wine. My father lit up those gatherings. Even during tough times, it was hard to feel gloomy when you were around him. I think what drew people to my father was his optimism. He loved life, and he hated to see anyone down in the dumps. If you were feeling low, he’d say, “Just wait. The sun’s gonna come out. It always does.” He meant it, too. And he was right.
Pop used to tell me, “If when you die you’ve got five real friends, you’ve had a great life.” He wanted me to see that people were more important than anything else. In fact, I think what he loved most about America was the way it opened its arms to the world.
If Pop were alive today, he’d be pretty upset to see how few friends America seems to have right now. I have to admit it gets kind of depressing for me, too. Everyone wants to be liked, and it feels lousy when you’re not. You get used to having people admire your country and want to emulate you. I always took it for granted that the U.S.A. was out in front leading the pack, and that our President was the leader of the free world. It wasn’t that other countries necessarily wanted to have democracies just like ours, or to take their marching orders from our President. It was more a recognition that the United States was a good friend to have, especially in times of crisis. Anyone who lived through World War II knows what I’m talking about. We were the free world’s best friend. And then, after the war, we did something really amazing: We turned our enemies into friends, too, by helping them rebuild their countries.
I’ve got to wonder if anyone out there still thinks our President is the leader of the free world. And what is the free world? Well, it might surprise you to know that the term free world is a little bit outdated. It was a designation created during the cold war era. Believe me, those were simpler times! There was the Communist world and there was the free world. Today, there could be many definitions of the free world, having nothing to do with democracy. We form alliances with other nations for a variety of reasons. We’re trading partners, lenders, and borrowers. We come together to address common concerns such as poverty, disease, and global warming. We help each other through natural disasters. Sometimes we form wartime coalitions. But the old idea that there’s a big line separating the open, free societies from the closed, repressive societies just doesn’t play too well anymore.
It would be much easier if there were such a thing as an axis of evil and an axis of good. But the lines are awfully blurred. It gets a little confusing when one year you see the United States supporting a regime like Saddam Hussein’s (as we did during the Iran-Iraq war) and the next year we’re calling him an evil dictator. Sometimes we have trouble figuring out who our friends are, who we’re supposed to be leading, and where we’re supposed to be leading them to.
ALLIES VERSUS ENEMIES
When you’re a kid there’s always a hierarchy in every group. And usually there’s one kid in particular who’s the big cheese. He always has to have things his way, and the others tend to defer to him. They want to please him, because if they don’t, he threatens to take his marbles and go home—or worse. America is getting a little bit like that. We’re nice enough if you play by our rules, but you never want to cross us.
Look what happened to France. France has been America’s friend since the beginning. If it weren’t for France’s help, we probably wouldn’t have made it as a country in the first place. We’ve repaid the favor over time, most notably by coming to France’s aid during World War I and World War II. So when France declared that it wasn’t so willing to join Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing,” a lot of Americans saw it as an act of betrayal. I can’t tell you how many times I heard people say something along the lines of, “We saved them in World War II, and this is the thanks we get.” Well, it would take a lot more words than I want to expend trying to explain why that attitude was pure baloney, but who cares about common sense when you’ve got righteous indignation on your side? Suddenly our country was consumed with an anti-French fervor. It reached its peak of absurdity the day Congress announced that the French fries in its three House cafeterias would henceforth be known as “Freedom fries.” (Take a good look, folks. This is an example of your tax dollars at work.)
Wisely, France did not offer an official response, except to mention that French fries actually come from Belgium. And luckily, we didn’t go all out in banning the word French from our vocabulary, or you would have been “freedom-kissing” your girlfriend and eating “freedom toast” for breakfast.
Freedom fries lasted about three years, until the House cafeterias quietly restored the original French fries to the menu. But even to this day, there are a lot of hard feelings toward the French. This doesn’t make any sense to me. There’s little doubt in my mind that if the United States had a legitimate need, France would be on our side—just like it was when the President’s father made the call for a Persian Gulf war coalition in 1991. France responded by sending thousands of troops.
One thing you learn if you live long enough is how to tell the difference between a true friend and a fair-weather friend. Most of us learn the hard way. I’ll never forget when I got fired from Ford. There was a guy who’d been one of my best friends in the company for twenty-five years. We played poker together every Friday night. Our families were close. We even took vacations together. But after I was fired, he never even called. Boy, that was a bitter pill to swallow.
A leader has to know who his true friends are, and it’s not always the ones who agree with everything or follow you blindly. With a true friend, there’s got to be equality. You share the good times and you share the bad times. There’s got to be respect. If your friend takes a principled position for the other side, you don’t have to like it, but you don’t call him names, either. These basic rules apply on the world stage as much as they do in your personal life.
I wish we could lower our voices and get rid of the tootin’, shootin’ cowboy mentality. It’s not a weakness to admit the other guy has a point once in a while.
LEADERSHIP ON THE WORLD STAGE
What does it mean to be a world leader today? And especially, what does global leadership mean for the American President? When I started thinking about it, I realized that I’d lived through the administrations of twelve Presidents, and I’ve actually met nine of them. I’d say that four of them really excelled at being world leaders. The first two, Roosevelt and Truman, are obvious.
It is almost impossible to imagine a President today who could exert the kind of leadership Roosevelt demonstrated in getting major programs through Congress, such as Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the National Recovery Act. And that was just in his first one hundred days!
My father was a passionate Roosevelt fan, although the National Recovery Act really tested his devotion. At the time he owned a hot-dog restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, called the Orpheum Wiener House. He just couldn’t fathom a law that required him to pay a waitress the minimum wage and guarantee her forty hours of work when there was no business. It didn’t make sense to him. But even though my father sacrificed plenty under Roosevelt, he kept voting for the guy. In those days, sacrifice wasn’t such a maligned concept.
Harry Truman made a huge impression on me because he told it like it was. By the time he was President, I was old enough to know that this was a rare quality, in both politics and business. People were always trying to teach me to keep my mouth shut and be diplomatic, and I never did too well on that score. I enjoyed having a President in the Oval Office who spoke his mind in plain English.
Truman was the embodiment of a leader who emerged in a crisis. Nobody thought that little haberdasher from Missouri could fill the great FDR’s shoes. But Harry Truman stood ten feet tall. I think we should all pause for a moment to reflect on how lucky we were to have such a practical man of action in the White House when the future of the planet hung in the balance. Thank God Harry Truman wasn’t an ideologue.
My second two choices for world leadership are more recent, and I knew both of them quite well. They’re Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Reagan and Clinton have more in common than you’d think. They both lived through rough childhoods, so you can see that their leadership qualities were formed in times of crisis. A lot of people who grow up in homes where there’s alcoholism, divorce, and poverty end up with chips on their shoulders. Reagan and Clinton both chose the opposite path. They became optimists. Reagan was the sunniest guy I ever met. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. It was the key to his charisma, and I think that’s why they called him the “Great Communicator.” He honestly liked people, and his warmth was genuine. I got a dose of it myself. When Reagan heard that my wife Mary was dying, he made a point of calling me to offer comfort and prayers. It was a very low moment for me, and I’ll never forget his kindness.
Reagan had strong convictions and the courage to pursue them. He decided that he was going to end the cold war, but he didn’t try to go it alone. He put together the team that could do it—and it was some team—Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Bill Clinton is also a communicator. In fact, the guy will talk you into the ground. You ask him the time and he’ll build you a watch. He loves to talk, but most of the time he makes pretty good sense.
I know there are a lot of people in this country who just can’t understand why Clinton was such a popular President, and why he’s still so popular today. I think it’s his passion for governing, his openness, and his respect for people from all countries and all walks of life. The guy really seems to care about making a difference, and that’s been even more evident since he left office. There are very few places in the world where Bill Clinton isn’t welcomed by throngs of people. These days when he gives a speech, you can see the people in the audience leaning toward him in a way that kind of reminds you of a thirsty man crawling toward an oasis. They’re dying for intelligent analysis, but mostly they’re dying for words of hope, not fear. “Much has changed in the last fifteen years,” Clinton said recently. “But what has not changed is the relentless search for the common good.” Those are words that inspire.
Clinton has some pretty good advice for the current administration, if it cares to listen. He said recently, “It’s just plain crazy to stop talking to people you disagree with. As long as you keep talking, there’s hope.”
He’s right. If you’re the leader of the free world, your ideas have to be bigger than your guns.
CAN WE TALK?
Speaking of talking, I wish someone would explain to me why we’re still fighting a cold war with Cuba. JFK broke off relations and established a trade embargo against Cuba in 1961, at a time when Fidel Castro’s collaboration with the Soviet Union presented a real threat to our shores. But does anyone honestly believe that Cuba poses any threat whatsoever in 2007? The Soviet Union doesn’t even exist anymore. And we’re trading with China—and the last time I looked, the Communists were still running that country.
In the final year of Clinton’s presidency it looked as though we might stop our saber-rattling. Congress passed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act in 2000. The bill cracked the door open a bit for limited, one-way trade. Since then Cuba has bought over half a billion dollars’ worth of goods—everything from Vermont cattle to Louisiana rice to Washington State apples. But we’re barred from buying Havana cigars from them, and that really rubs me the wrong way.
But the Bush administration has tried to turn back the clock. Why? Is it because Castro is an evil Communist? Come on—get real. The reason we haven’t opened the doors to Cuba is because an anti-Castro gang in Miami has held Florida’s electoral votes hostage for over forty years. And they’ve held Florida’s elected officials hostage, too—including the President’s brother Jeb, who owed his two terms as governor to the former Batista party exiles. They live for the day when their wealth and power will be restored in Cuba, and politicians who pander to that dream tend to do very well in Florida.
The anti-Castro rhetoric sounds more and more ridiculous every year. The right thing to do—the moral thing to do—is to start talking. You’d think we would have learned by now that exclusion from opportunity doesn’t build democracy.
About thirteen years ago, I was asked to accompany a couple of French businessmen on a trip to Havana. They were good friends of Castro’s because they did a huge chicken export business with Cuba, and still do. (Eat your hearts out, American chicken farmers!) They asked me if I’d like to go along. Castro had said he wanted to meet me.
“Geez,” I said, “is that legal?” I thought I’d better check, so I called President Clinton’s chief of staff, Mac McClarty. I’d been friendly with Mac for years because his father had been my Ford dealer in Hope, Arkansas.
“You can go,” Mac told me. “Just don’t spend any money there. It’s against the law.”
The Frenchmen had their own jet, a Falcon, and one of them was a pilot. When my friends picked me up in California, their plane was loaded with food from Provence—chickens, hams, pastries, bread, cheeses. There was hardly room for my bag, or me.
I’d been to Havana a few times as a young single man. Went to the Tropicana. Saw Carmen Miranda. Smoked cigars. Raised hell. I had fond memories of my times there. But as we drove through Havana in 1994, the old playground looked a little shabby. There weren’t that many cars on the road, and most of them were clunkers from Russia or old Fords and Chevys that dated back to the pre-Kennedy era. But the Tropicana was still going strong. Havana’s nightlife and gorgeous beaches still attracted tourists from all over the world—except the U.S.
Castro seemed pleased to have this American car guy visiting, and the whole time I was there he treated me like royalty. He told me he’d read both my books. Frankly, I liked the guy. He was well read and as sharp as a tack. He explained that he’d had lots of time to read in jail.
Castro asked me, “When were you last here?” I told him in the final year of Batista’s rule.
He laughed dismissively. “Oh, yes, you mean when Cuba was America’s speakeasy. It was all being run out of Miami, with Meyer Lansky and his gang. Drugs, gambling, prostitution, corruption. That is why we needed a revolution.”
Castro was a good host, and he arranged a couple of excursions. The most memorable was a pigeon-hunting trip. We were awakened at five A.M. one morning, given camouflage uniforms, and asked to assemble in the dining room for a five-thirty A.M. breakfast. I wondered for a moment, Are we being recruited for Castro’s army?
Surprise! At breakfast we were informed that we were going on a pigeon shoot. Our destination was a sparsely inhabited island, well known for its huge influx of pigeons. Castro apologized that he couldn’t accompany us, but he sent his younger brother Raúl (now the acting President of Cuba) to see us off, and his top general accompanied us. At six A.M., we boarded a massive Russian helicopter, which bore the Cuban flag. The helicopter had a crew of six, which included two stewards, two pilots, and two copilots. It was the biggest helicopter I’d ever seen. It was more like a troop carrier!
When I expressed my amazement, Raúl smiled and said, “This is a great helicopter, but we have a very difficult time getting spare parts from Russia anymore.”
That made me a little nervous. During the flight, my mind was on prayers, not pigeons.
Castro also threw a dinner in my honor, and I was surprised to see that our own food was served to us at the dinner. The basic French staples, such as caviar, foie gras, and champagne are hard to come by in Cuba. I sat across from Castro, and he regaled us with stories. We had an interpreter, but he understood a lot of English. I’d never thought of Castro as being a lighthearted guy, but I remember laughing a lot.
As the dinner was ending around eleven P.M., Castro motioned to me and said that he wanted to talk to me alone. I followed him out to a big Mercedes with a driver and we got into the backseat. We took off into the night, and I was thinking, Holy shit, I’m in a car with Fidel Castro, driving through the dark countryside at breakneck speed. For all I knew they were kidnapping me. We finally reached his place in the country, and sat down outside on the patio for a talk. We were joined by an extremely beautiful young woman who was our interpreter. A young man stood to the side. I wasn’t sure if he was a guard, an aide, or the cigar valet. Every time my cigar went out, he’d rush forward and give me a fresh one. Castro explained that you never relight a cigar. When it goes out, you throw it away. I told him, “Easy for you to say. You own the factory.”
Castro no longer smoked cigars. He told me that after the UN gave him an award for saying that tobacco wasn’t healthy he’d felt he had to quit to set a good personal example. “Don’t you ever cheat?” I asked, a little amazed. He assured me he did not cheat.
The Cohibas I was smoking were his personal brand. They were short and thick Robustos. “You Americans like long, Panatella-type cigars,” Castro said. “Don’t you know that sucking in all that air through a super-long cigar is bad for your health?”
What did Castro want to talk about? Politics and business. What else? The guy was hungry for intelligent conversation about the state of the world.
It was obvious he was pissed off at the Soviets. They’d screwed him. They’d left him to twist in the wind. It was lonely being one of the only Communist countries left in the world. But Castro had some very interesting observations about the transition from Communism to the free market. In his opinion, the Soviet Union went about the process backward, but China was getting it right.
“Gorbachev did it wrong,” he told me. “The Soviets should have done the economics first and then thrown out the commissars. Now Russia has nothing but corruption and chaos. In China the Communists still have a strong hold. They are maintaining power while they gradually transition to open markets.”
“You’re talking like a bloody capitalist, Fidel,” I said. “You’re saying, fix the economy first, and the social order will follow.”
Castro was a very provocative guy. “Do you want to bring democracy here, or do you want to bring some of your prosperity?” he asked. “Tell me how to do the last one. I don’t want to hear about the first one.”
What could I say? Yeah, but you’re a dictator? If people get in your way you can knock them off? I kept that thought to myself, but I didn’t believe a prosperous, free market could coexist with a dictatorship.
“Didn’t you pick the wrong side?” I asked.
He said maybe, but the revolution kind of got out of hand.
“Well, what did you expect from the revolution?”
“I didn’t expect it to be so easy,” he said.
I didn’t want to overstep my bounds, but I was curious. “Fidel, I’ve been here a couple of days now, and I visited the sights. I see your picture in all the offices and on all the buildings. But it always looks to me like Che Guevara’s picture is above yours—and it’s bigger than yours.”
Castro shrugged. “To the young people, he is like a cult hero. A born revolutionary.”
“You knew Che well,” I said. “You were close to him. Can I ask you a question?”
He nodded.
“Why did Che go to Bolivia? To export revolution, right?”
Another nod.
“And as soon as he got there he was assassinated. Did you have anything to do with that?”
I suppose Castro was surprised at my boldness. Hell, I was surprised at my boldness. “Lee,” he said, “we’ve been talking openly, but if you’re interested in that kind of thing, why don’t you check with your own CIA?”
We talked until two-thirty in the morning, and I enjoyed it. I thought we’d made a real connection.
As we left Cuba, with a supply of Cohiba cigars (a gift) packed in my bag, I hoped it wouldn’t be my last visit. When I got back to the United States, I called McClarty. “Mac,” I said, “Castro is ready to talk.”
“Maybe he brainwashed you,” Mac said.
“No,” I said, “he leveled with me. Look, our policy is hurting young kids and old people. It’s doing a lot of damage—over what? Ideology?”
I was so frustrated that for a while after my visit I thought I might volunteer for the job of unofficial diplomat to Cuba. But no one was interested. And thirteen years after my visit, we’re still not talking. What a missed opportunity! What is it going to take to convince our leaders that the road forward starts with a conversation?
A TIP FROM DALE CARNEGIE
Ever since I took the Dale Carnegie course when I was twenty-five, I’ve kept his book How to Win Friends and Influence People on the shelf. I still have my original copy, and it’s pretty tattered. I must have referred to it hundreds of times in my life. Do you know what Dale Carnegie’s first rule was? “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.” That’s pure common sense—something we are often lacking these days.
Dale Carnegie also had some good advice about being a leader, and he made a point of saying that it applied to presidents and kings as well as to ordinary businesspeople. Although he wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People seventy years ago, Carnegie’s principles are just as relevant today.
Sometimes we forget that government officials and heads of nations are human beings. The greatest impediment to getting along is having preconceived notions that someone is all-holy, all-evil, or made of stone or steel. In my life I’ve been amazed by how often my negative ideas about people are proven wrong when I actually meet them. For instance, in 2005, when I was invited to a dinner party hosted by Prince Charles and his bride-to-be Camilla at Highgrove, the prince’s personal residence, I was sure I knew what they’d be like—very stiff and proper. I got ready for a dull evening of protocol and pomp. Was I ever wrong! Camilla greeted us at the door with a warm smile, and insisted, “Please call me Camilla.” Charles was relaxed and talkative. They both had great senses of humor. It was one of the most enjoyable evenings I’d had in a long time.
The point is, people are people. Even the mighty have feelings and pride. Just like everyone else, they appreciate a pat on the back or a way to save face when they’ve dug a hole for themselves. When it comes right down to it, being a leader in the world is just a matter of winning friends and influencing people with a spirit of hope.