Word: napoleonism
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...could say whether the President entertained such thoughts at San Clemente last week, but it seemed unlikely. What, then, was he thinking about in his private den? An aide offered the curious detail that the President had been absorbed in a biography of Napoleon. Had he been brooding, perhaps, about the exiled French leader marking time at Elba as he waited for the tide of opinion in France to change? No one could say. At midweek, a television set was wheeled into the conference room at the Western White House for the benefit of the staff; but in his study...
...Leadership can be developed and improved by study and training," General Omar Bradley once told a class at the Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kans. "But don't discount experience. Someone may remind you that Napoleon led armies before he was 30 and Alexander the Great died at 33. Alexander might have been even greater if he had lived to an older age and had had more experience. In this respect, I especially like [the] theory that 'judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment...
CORRELLI BARNETT, British military historian: Greatness has nothing to do with morality. A leader gets people to follow him. Napoleon led the French to catastrophe, but they followed him almost to the end. Marlborough and Wellington had greatness. And Hitler, unfortunately. Al Capone was a leader in a primitive environment...
IRVING KRISTOL, U.S. writer, professor and editor (The Public Interest): Abe Lincoln is the prototype-the leader who is uncommon but not beyond emulation by the common man. He's not a Napoleon. This is American democratic politics. You don't want a world conqueror. In latter days John Kennedy had that uncommon-common quality; so did both Roosevelts, T.R. and F.D.R., although they were distinctly below Lincoln...
Much of Wheeler's argument is based on folk legend, alleged intrigues and half-formed plots to free Napoleon yet another time. But what is convincing is Wheeler's enthusiasm for a subject in whose name nearly as much ink has been spilled as blood...