Well, what
can I say? It’s pretty damned impressive. Nothing like the memoir of Africa’s first female president to make you feel like you
haven’t done nor will you ever do anything truly meaningful in your life. Madame
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, you are amazing.
I recommend
this book not just for the interesting historical aspect of knowing more about
the life of such a remarkable woman. It is that, but it is also much more. She
is an extremely educated and very smart woman, and while half of the book is a
fascinating history not only of her life but also of a country that I really knew
nothing about until now, it is also a very instructive book about economics and
politics.
Now I know
nothing about economics and I am very aware that, at the end of the day, this
book was written by a politician. I jumped in completely ignorant of even the
basics of economics, so I realize that I was entirely taking her word for it
and I know full well how people can distort economic policies to make them
sound logical for their own political agenda. However you can look up Liberia since
2006 and see how it’s doing. It seems as though her policies are working, and
despite her being a politician I do not doubt her sincerity in how much she
cares about her people. In a chapter about what makes a leader, she had this to
say:
Sitting in prison day after day, coming to the
understanding that if I were going to help the people, I needed to know, really
know, their lives, was a humbling and important experience for me. Whenever I
was inclined to feel sorry for myself or afraid I would reflect, “Hey! Poor
people go through this all the time!”
Perhaps
this should be part of the proper grooming of leaders: to be put in a position
where you suffer what the common person suffers. How else can you really
understand what you’re working to do?
I agree
1000% with this statement, and it is a point I and many other have made time
and time again. It is the point that Michael Moore was making when he was
trying to get Congressmen that voted for the war to sign their kids up for the
army, and it is glaringly obvious when watching the campaign of candidates like
Mitt Romney that they haven’t the slightest clue what the average American has
to struggle with every day. To hear it from a politician is particularly
refreshing, and it is definitely a policy that I would fully support and think
all countries should consider implementing.
It’s not
only her passion for her people that makes her so special (and exceedingly rare
among people of her profession). She’s nicknamed “the Iron Lady”, but I think
only because that is far more polite than stating that she has iron balls. I
just love her for her personality, which I think is excellently captured in
this anecdote about when she was working in government overseeing spending on a
particularly lavish Organization of African Unity conference:
In a nutshell, we simply did not have the money
to host the summit. I found myself taking rather strong positions in
opposition, both to the overspending on the summit itself and to the many
blatantly inflated or downright fraudulent invoices being submitted to the
government by contractors on behalf of OAU projects.
I
remember one bill that found its way to my desk […]. The bill struck me as
outrageous. I decided to use one of the rubber stamps I had bought in a small
souvenir shop in the United
States that said BULLSHIT. I felt it was an appropriate
response to what I was seeing, so I stamped the bill and returned it to the
British contractor.
HA! I love
it! Who does that?! Of course this was the most humorous example, there are
plenty of others in which she demonstrates that she is not afraid to stick to
her principles and speak her mind regardless of the consequences to herself,
which makes her an exceptionally rare kind of politician indeed.
Our current
economic turmoil makes this instructive aspect of the book ever more relevant
to us in the “Western world”. Although of course there are some fundamental
differences in our history and where we need to rebuild from, I still think
that there is much to learn from a woman such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in this
regard.
If you know
more about economics than I do and do not agree with the efficacy of what she
has to say, please explain in the comments section and we can discuss it. I
would love to begin to fill this gap in my knowledge. If, like me you know very
little about this sort of thing, combined with the amazing historical
information, you will love this book.
However, if
there is one lesson that I think is essential to take away from this book and apply
to the situation we find ourselves today, it is this one:
My release from prison shows the power of the
public, the power of the people both home and abroad. Public opinion matters;
if it is pointed, focused, and intense, it can turn things around. In this
global age individuals are sometimes tempted to believe that they have no
power, not even collectively. This is not true. The public can make a
difference if it is willing to take a position and stand up for a cause in
which it believes. Against a united and committed public, even the harshest of
governments cannot stand, for certainly this was a harsh military government
against which no one thought they could do anything.
A message
of hope that I fully support, and Italians especially need to take note. Go
forth, spread the word, get up off your lazy ass, quit whining and start that change!
You can’t wait around for an Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to come run in our
presidential elections and save the day. Women like her are one in a million.
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