The Makeup of a Great Leader
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.” -John Buchan
I was pulling in to work today at Indiana University’s Assembly Hall (home to the Hoosier basketball team) when I saw about 2,000 people lined up around the entire building. I knew that IU was announcing the hiring of their new men’s basketball coach, but I could not fathom why that many people of all ages would be there to watch that. As I walked into the building, I began to see both pro and anti Hillary Clinton signs everywhere, and again, I thought how strange that was.
I dropped my stuff off where I work and walked to another building to attend my Financial Management class. The class lasted about an hour and a half. I figured that by the time I returned to Assembly Hall, all of the commotion would have died down. To my great surprise, there were news crews, police cars, and people everywhere. There was also political propaganda everywhere.
As I walked into the building for the second time, they were allowing people to enter the approximate 20,000 seat arena in a very orderly fashion. Security seemed to be very tight, so I knew something big was going on. I walked up a tunnel and I saw an usher and asked what was going on. The usher said, “President Clinton is on his way to give a speech.”
When she told me that, I became very excited. I did not become excited because I agree with his political views, morals, or anything else (I am not turning this into any kind of political article). I became excited because a part of America’s history was coming to Assembly Hall, and I was going to be able to see him. After going into the arena and finding a seat with one of my friends, I found out that he was suppose to have given his speech at 2 P.M. Well, the time was currently 4:20, and he was still a no show. The man was two hours and twenty minutes late, and there were still 8,000 people sitting in their seats waiting on his arrival.
