Viewpoint -- Labels, Paul Wellstone's Life And CEO Leadership

Dec. 21, 2004

Real reform requires executives to become passionate advocates.

Inevitably, the media reports, the obituaries, and the appreciations of Paul D. Wellstone, the Democratic U.S. senator from Minnesota who died in a plane crash on Oct. 25, referred to him as a liberal. Some suggested that he was the Senate's most liberal liberal. In 1990, Mother Jones magazine welcomed his upset election to the Senate against Republican incumbent Rudy Boschwitz with the words that Wellstone was "the first '60s radical elected to the U.S. Senate." In more recent years, as the Republican Party has become more conservative and the Democratic Party has moved more into the middle ground between liberal and conservative, there was a sense in Washington that Wellstone, whom the Washington Post described as "an unapologetic liberal" in its obituary, was increasingly politically isolated, that the new alignment of partisan politics was marginalizing the '60s radical. There is a major problem with such labels as liberal, or conservative or even middle ground -- particularly in Paul Wellstone's case. They do not even begin to describe the person, the human being on whom the label is being placed. "Liberal" Paul Wellstone worked with "conservative" Pete Domenici, a Republican senator from New Mexico, to secure insurance coverage for mental illness. "Liberal" Paul Wellstone worked with "conservative" senator Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas, on human rights legislation. "Despite the marked contrast between Paul's and my views on matters of government and politics, he was my friend and I was his," said Jesse Helms, the "conservative" Republican senior senator from North Carolina, who did not seek re-election this year. Integrity was one of the characteristics that Domenici, Brownback and Helms saw in Wellstone, even -- or perhaps one should say particularly -- when Wellstone was in dissent. One of the first votes Wellstone cast in the Senate was against the Gulf War. One of his final Senate votes was against a resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use force in Iraq. "Some may have found his persistent and passionate advocacy grating at times, but it was honest, dependable and valuable," said a "Washington Post" editorial that appeared the day after Wellstone died. This is a time for persistent and passionate advocacy that is honest, dependable and valuable, not only on Capitol Hill but in corporate offices as well. Paul Wellstone did not so much march to a different drummer as he was a different drummer. With his words and his actions he tried to sound a special cadence. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. and recent corporate scandals, far more CEOs than have been heard from so far need to be putting their special cadences to the work of reform. CEOs need to be doing more than focusing on the security of their supply chains and the integrity of their financial statements -- even as important as those tasks are. Jeffrey E. Garten, dean of Yale University's School of Management, writes with eloquence and urgency in "The Politics of Fortune," (2002, Harvard Business School Press) about the need to develop a new leadership model for a new world. Asserts Garten, "Depending upon the full ramifications of the response to terrorism and the Enron-Andersen debacle . . . these two milestones could shake our faith in the viability of an open society of the kind that Americans have known -- a society in which ideas flow freely; civil liberties and privacy are protected; markets are free to generate products, services and wealth; and government intrusion is kept to the bare minimum." The challenges are great, Garten says, and among them are thinking about security in economic as well as military terms and about understanding that there are fewer borders between domestic and international problems. "For business leaders in particular, the new paradigm of leadership must go beyond pleasing Wall Street and delivering ever higher profits on a quarterly basis," he insists. "Besides considering all the stakeholders of a company -- employees, customers, suppliers, communities -- business leaders must also consider the concerns of society, such as a cleaner environment and a higher level of integrity in business dealings," states Garten. The call to reform is being sounded. The issue now is whether or not CEOs will respond with persistent and passionate advocacy that is honest, dependable and valuable. John S. McClenahen is an IW senior editor. He is based in Washington, D.C.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.