The ten lessons of Winston Churchill

"Was ist Freiheit?" I kept asking. A crowd built around me with people chipping in their thoughts. In that cold, wet night on the communist side of the Berlin Wall, I had stirred up my first "Hardball" show. Finally, I came to a young guy - he was a wearing an army surplus jacket like the kind we wore in the Sixties.

This young guy looked me in the eye and said, "This is Freiheit, this standing in a public place arguing openly about such things as democracy, capitalism and socialism." "Four weeks ago," a young nurse jumped in, "we couldn’t have done this."

So talking to me was freedom. Don’t think I’ll forget that moment.

Today we live in a different danger arising between east and west. It’s not a wall of brick and mortar or a curtain of iron. Just the opposite, a newspaper in Denmark publishes some incendiary cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. From that small lighting of a fuse, the Islamic world explodes in protest. What we have here is not a failure to communicate but a world that is as wired politically and religiously as it is electronically. So hooked up east to west, north to south, through round-the-world time zones that we find ourselves in one of those old-time pinball machines where every hostile word or act bounces globally, flashing every light, ringing every bell.

What we need are people - especially at the top - who know how to lead in this new environment - how to be true democratic leaders who champion their values in a way that unites rather than divides.

What I can offer you is a down payment on that kind of leadership. It’s a legacy really. Here, on this great anniversary occasion, I offer you the principles, the traits, the joys that Winston Churchill taught me, and reasons why he’s a hero, perhaps the greatest hero to those who want a better world, who dream of great leaders who will get us through all this.

1. "I LIKE A MAN WHO GRINS WHEN HE FIGHTS!"

Churchill loved the political life from the start.

Here he is describing to his girlfriend Pamela Plowdon what it was like being in his first campaign. The year is 1899:

Churchill loved the give-and-take, the wild, over-the-top language politics permits.

Here’s what he said of the haughty, difficult French General Charles deGaulle:

"We all have our crosses to bear. Mine is the Cross of Lorraine."

"He looks like a female llama who has just been surprised in her bath."

But as colorful as Churchill could be in lampooning his rivals, he bore no grudges.

Here’s his secretary Jock Colville who worked with him through much of his high-pressure career.

"He behaved in public just as he behaved in private. There were no two faces, no mask that would drop when the audience had retired."

When Lord Beaverbrook was asked to name Churchill’s chief virtue, the best thing about the man, the great press lord said "magnanimity."

"Anger is a waste of energy," Churchill said. "Steam which is used to blow off a safety valve would be better used to drive the engine."

As prime minister Harold MacMillan said of Churchill:

"He was a warrior and party debate was a war. It mattered and he brought to that war the conquering weapon of words fashioned for their purpose - to wound, never to kill; to influence, never to destroy."

In those years back when I worked for the Congress, I used to love Thursday nights. It was when the House would vote on final passage of a bill that they’d been arguing about all week. I remember one Thursday night just as the floor was emptying after the big vote. I saw a member from the Republican side of the aisle crossing over to where a member from the other side was sitting. It was down in the first row near the well.

"What are you doing this weekend?" the Republican said to the Democrat. "Say hello to your wife for me." And he was off.

Both men had been arguing red-faced at each other not long before. I think if Jefferson and Madison and all the others who designed this country could see that they would say this is what we wanted. This is it, the thing we risked our necks for.

This is the way it’s supposed to work. "Congress" means coming together. It’s the whole idea. You don’t mail it in or telephone or e-mail it in. You meet, get used to each other, form something of a community. You at least see the other side. You compromise and you get it done. You get things done for your country.

"All the years I have been in the House of Commons," Churchill once said, "I have always said to myself one thing: Do Not Interrupt! - and I have never been able to keep to that resolution."

Neither have I.

Neither was Churchill. He was forever speaking out.

Elected to parliament as a Tory, he used one of his first speeches - after just three months in the Commons - to attack the party leadership for a military budget he called excessive.

And because he spoke up in the 1930s against the rising danger of Adolf Hitler, he had the "street cred" to lead Britain in the 1940s.

Sometimes the true patriot must resist the call-to-arms, just as Churchill did when he broke in those early months of his career with the conservative party leadership.

What was missing in this country between 9/11 and the war in Iraq, were people who spoke up, who dared to raise the full consequences of going into Iraq.

So much of what is happening today - after the loss of 2,000 Americans, 30,000 Iraqis, a trillion dollars and the goodwill of the world - was knowable before we got ourselves involved over there.

Brent Scowcroft, who was the first President Bush’s chief national security advisor, James A. Baker, who was his secretary of state, the former president himself all knew the dangers that lay in Iraq, the historic sectarian hostility, the real prospect of civil war. They had seen all of this coming when they decided against invading in 1991.

I believe it is the duty of public leaders who know something to say it!

Here’s how Churchill put it:

"Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable."

I once worked for Senator Edmund Muskie, who lost his race for president back in 1972. On the night of his 1976 election to the Senate from Maine - a difficult state for a Democrat in those days, Muskie told those of us on his staff - after a few drinks:

"The only reason to be in politics is to be out there all alone and then be proven right."

Which brings me to Churchill’s third lesson.

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