Of all the films whose central character demonstrates a highly developed moral compass, High Noon tops my list. Why does High Noon still matter? Never has one film captured the essence of an ethical dilemma along with the variety of rationalizations against doing the right thing as this 1952 western does. Written by Carl Foreman (who was facing his own dilemma with McCarthyism...

Historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin knows presidents. The Pulitzer Prize winning biographer has written on the Kennedys, Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and her book on Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln was the source material for Steven Spielberg’s latest film. Washington Post writer Lillian Cunningham recently asked Goodwin for her thoughts on presidential leadership. W.P.: “You’ve done several interviews lately about...

Last Friday’s post talked about business ethics. One reader asked about a potential conflict between the needs of a shareholder to make money versus needing to do right by employees. “Can you be equally ethical to both? Is it ethical for a company to deprive shareholders of additional money in order to maintain an ethical working environment?” Creating and maintaining...

The level of thoughtful comments I received regarding my character question was impressive. On March 2, I asked, What does it mean to you to have strong moral character? Amanda from North Carolina wrote, “My thoughts on morality and ethics continue to evolve as my understanding of the historical concept of morality develops. Do I care about a president’s sexual affairs? No....

“A good moral character is the first essential in a man.”  – George Washington After the Florida debate in January, Republican candidate Newt Gingrich called rival Mitt Romney “fundamentally dishonest.” The former House Speaker expanded his comments with conservative commentator Sean Hannity about Romney’s tenure at Boston-based venture capital group Bain Capital. Gingrich said, “We’re talking about the character, the...

England’s finest Prime Minister and Statesman Winston Churchill famously said, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Considering the ticking clock deadline for Congress’s bipartisan supercommittee to find a path to cut at minimum $1.2 trillion from the budget over ten years, Churchill’s words seem sadly prophetic. “It wasn’t so much of a...

“Gerald R. Ford became President not because he was popular with the American public, not because he campaigned for the job, but because of his character,” writes James Cannon inCharacter Above All, a collection of essays about presidential character and courage. “More than any other president of this century,” Cannon says, “Ford was chosen for his integrity and trustworthiness; his...

“I’ll tell you,” Franklin Roosevelt once told a friend during the toughest years of his presidency, “at night when I lay my head on my pillow, and it is often pretty late, and I think of the things that have come before me during the day and the decisions that I have made, I say to myself — well, I...

Several years ago I was in Philadelphia speaking to about 400 administrators and trustees of a large teacher pension fund. At the end of the talk, I left the group with a story that asks, in essence, if we all had to make decisions with our families looking over our shoulder, would we be comfortable, proudeven, of the decisions we make?...

At the age of sixteen, George Washington copied, by hand, 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. Based on rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595, the conventions outline how we demonstrate respect for others. In a time of widespread self-interest, the rules focus on others. In his biography of Washington, historian Richard Brookhiser writes, “all modern...