“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...

“Why do we study ethics? What does it mean to be a person of character, integrity, honor?” Those were the questions I posed to students at the beginning of a week-long class at the New Hampshire Technical Institute on ethics. “Most people want to do the right thing,” I said. “They want to be worthy of the respect and admiration...

No single word can adequately sum up any individual, but for Elizabeth Edwards, the former wife of presidential candidate, John Edwards, character would have to rank high on the list. Edwards died yesterday of breast cancer. In a final message to friends and colleagues, Elizabeth Edwards wrote, “I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my...

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan had an interesting take this weekend (July 17) on President Obama’s poll numbers and problems with the economy and other issues. “…you know what I think people miss when they look at Washington and our political leadership,” Noonan asks. “They miss old and august. They miss wise and weathered. They miss the presence of bruised...

Ernie Allen has spent much of his life in public service and is currently president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In a conversation from 1999, Ernie shared this story with me about the importance of accountability. “I have found that it is not enough just to strive to do what is right, because oftentimes, right...