The World and Everything in It: April 26, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. I’m Paul Allen, retired Naval officer and more recently retired teacher of high school physics and environmental science at Winston Salem Christian school in North Carolina. You might say my students and I were studying the world and everything in it. I hope you enjoy today’s program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

It’s official that President Biden seeks another term in office. How will this time differ from last time?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, World Tour. Plus, celebrating life, no matter how short.

LAURA SUTTON: We still see it as a good thing, we still see it as a beautiful thing. I feel like we would, knowing how it turned out, we would have still gone through it.

And real leadership is more than mere management.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, April 26th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now news with Kent Covington

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden » 

SOUND: [Four more years!]

President Biden greeted by supporters just before addressing the union audience in Washington.

Hours earlier, the president officially launched his reelection bid in a video announcement.

BIDEN: When I ran for president four years ago, I said we’re in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are.

He’s asking voters to give him more time to—quote—“finish this job.” If reelected, Biden would turn 86 years old in the White House.

He faces a smooth path to the Democratic nomination, with no serious challengers.

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed Biden on Tuesday, ruling out a campaign of his own.

Haley speech » Meantime, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Tuesday vowed to run a staunchly pro-life campaign.

NIKKI HALEY: I said I want to save as many babies and help as many moms as possible. That is my goal.

But she offered few specifics during a speech at the headquarters of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List.

SBL favors a federal pro-life law and has criticized former President Trump for saying the matter should be left to the states.

For her part, Haley said Tuesday:

HALEY: I do believe there is a federal role on abortion.

But she stopped short of endorsing federal pro-life legislation.

She suggested Republicans should soften their tone on the matter, and said we must “find consensus” on the issue. But she did not specify what that means.

CBO on McCarthy debt plan » House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s plan to cut spending while raising the debt ceiling would slash the national deficit by nearly $5 trillion dollars over a decade. That’s according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

McCarthy unveiled the plan last week. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday:

CHUCK SCHUMER: I urge Speaker McCarthy to stop wasting any more time on this DOA, dead on arrival, bill.

Democrats insist that Republicans sign off on raising the nation’s borrowing limit without condition.

And the White House says a separate analysis suggests McCarthy’s plan would hurt the economy.

The two parties have until sometime this summer to reach an agreement and lift the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on US debts.

Taliban-ISIS » In Afghanistan, a ground assault by the Taliban killed the ISIS militant who spearheaded the a deadly suicide bombing at the Kabul airport during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: U.S. intelligence has reportedly confirmed “with high confidence” that the ISIS leader is dead.

Initially, neither the U.S. — nor apparently the Taliban — were aware that the mastermind was dead. He was killed during a series of battles early this month in southern Afghanistan between the Taliban and ISIS fighters.

Over the weekend, the Pentagon began informing the families of the 13 US troops who were killed in the blast at Abbey Gate.

Nearly 200 Afghans also died in the attack.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Scripture reading » 

READER: And He took bread, gave thanks, and broke it. He gave it to them saying “this is my body, given for you, do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19)

Hundreds of people have gathered in Washington D.C. for a days-long Bible reading marathon that began over the weekend.

Volunteers are reading the whole Bible aloud over the course of 90 hours.

The 34th annual reading is wrapping up this morning in the West Terrace of the U.S. Capitol.

Members of Congress participated in the reading yesterday in the House Chaplain’s office.

Belafante obit » 

SOUND: [Day-o]

Harry Belafonte has died. The singer, actor, and civil rights activist passed away at his home in New York.

Belafonte was one of the first Black performers to gain a wide following on film and to sell a million records as a singer with hits like Banana Boat and Jump in the Line.

SOUND: [Jump in the Line]

But he scaled back his performing career in the 1960s, organizing civil rights marches and benefit concerts, sometimes working closely with Martin Luther King Jr. Harry Belafonte was 96.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Washington Wednesday with Henry Olsen. Plus, finding hope through butterfly wings.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s the 26th of April, 2023.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Washington Wednesday.

A familiar voice has joined the 2024 presidential race.

BIDEN CAMPAIGN VIDEO: When I ran for president four years ago, I said we were in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. The question we’re facing is whether, in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be, and I think you do, too. This is not a time to be complacent. That is why I’m running for reelection.

After months of hinting, President Joe Biden announced his candidacy in a video posted on Tuesday morning. The three-minute mashup includes various images of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and we see footage from the U.S. Capitol riot back in January 2021. We hear Biden castigating “extreme MAGA Republicans” clearly framing up a rematch with former President Trump.

But will this be a repeat of the 2020 election cycle? What are Biden’s chances after three years in office so far?

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about it is Henry Olsen. He is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Good morning to you, Henry.

HENRY OLSEN, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, let's turn our attention first to the elephant—I guess I should say donkey in the room: returning Democratic candidate Joe Biden. The White House said earlier that it wasn't in any particular hurry to announce another run for him, seeing as the Democratic Party did so well in the midterms. Henry, what do you think of the timing to launch Biden's campaign now?

OLSEN: Well, they're clearly trying to get to the anniversary of when he announced his campaign in 2019 so that they can have some sort of symmetry. I also think they know they need to act early enough to raise money and preempt any uncertainty within the Democratic field. So presuming that the announcement is interpreted as unambiguous from the Biden campaign, you never know. I think that'll serve their purpose. But the fact is, they will still have to be on the lookout that this is a candidate who remains liked, but not popular with many Democrats. The polls regularly show that large numbers, in some cases majorities of Democrats, don't want him to run again, even though they approve of the job he did. And that means that even though he's announced now, he shouldn't be convinced that he's going to have a essentially free ride. So getting in now, kind of helps set that 'I'm running and scaring some people’ who might otherwise be tempted to get in the race now.

At 10:00 REICHARD: The Democratic National Convention seems fully behind the president, despite challengers getting in. There's no official endorsement yet from the DNC, but it also said there's no plan to hold primary debates. Even if it did, the DNC would refuse long shot candidates that chance anyway. Henry, what do you think this means? Is Biden automatically the Democratic nominee?

OLSEN: Well you know, first of all, neither Marianne Williamson nor Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the only two candidates who are in the race, are serious candidates. You know, they're the the democratic equivalents of William Weld and Joe Walsh, from 2020 against Donald Trump, you know, they'll get a couple of percent of the vote, but that's pretty much all that they'll get. And so as long as they are the only ones in the race, there is no reason for the Democratic National Committee to weaken the person who's going to be the nominee anyway. What happens if somebody starts getting 30% in the polls? I doubt Williamson or Kennedy could, but what happens if instead of President Biden having no serious candidate, there is somebody who was emerging with significant support, somebody who's raising millions of dollars, somebody who's throwing rallies. I think at that point, they would have to allow debate.

REICHARD: I wonder if this was correct, what I saw that RFK did come in, in the first initial poll, after he announced it, around 14% approval. Was that, is that not even close to what's needed to be included?

OLSEN: Yeah, it's not even close. You know, the thing is that you need 15%, just to get a single delegate. So 14% means that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would get zero delegates in any place that can contest it. This isn't like a presidential campaign in the general election where in order to be somewhat fair to non-two party candidates, they've established a 15% floor saying, if you've got 15% of the people, then you've reached the status where you should be able to have a free platform. In the Democratic primary, somebody gets 15% and you know, 14%, they've got nothing. And I don't think the Democrats will do anything unless and until somebody starts breaking 30.

REICHARD: Henry, do you expect to see a repeat of Biden's 2020 campaign? You know, he basically just stayed at home and let the headlines be about his opponent. If he's going to conduct a new campaign. Is it going to be the same old same old or is there going to be a new strategy?

OLSEN: He can’t literally sit at home the way he did during the pandemic. But it's not unusual for a president to run what used to be called the Rose Garden strategy, which is to say “I'm going to spend my time in the White House and govern the country and you can do the tawdry stuff about campaigning.” During the Democratic primary, as long as there's not a serious energetic challenger, Biden will not actively campaign, I think he will make a couple of pro forma appearances. But let's recall, Donald Trump did not stump Iowa against Joe Walsh, or William Weld in 2020 personally, he let his campaign do the crushing. And I think that's what Biden will do in the absence of a serious challenge. Now, if there's a serious challenge, if we're talking about October or November, as somebody who's emerged, who is getting crowds, who is raising millions of dollars, he's moving up in the polls, then I think he will come out of the White House and begin to engage.

Let's then fast forward to the spring, let's say that he is the putative nominee by April, I think he will then begin to have a few heavily scripted events, to set the stage much as he did, during the midterms, where he will say basically try and wrap himself around the flag of America, cast whoever the nominee is, as being the Republican nominee is or could be as an ultra Maga out of the mainstream candidate. I don't think he'll be active, running around a lot. I think, though, that he'll give a few campaign speeches, and he will give presidential speeches, which is what presidents do. I do not think he will actively campaign in the model of most candidates until after Labor Day, and then it will be less energetic than a normal nominee would, you would expect from a normal nominee.

REICHARD: Okay. My final question here. You've mentioned as far as talking points for Republicans, age will be an issue, but Trump also has to deal with that if he is indeed the candidate. What other opposition material, so to speak, do Republicans have as it comes to Biden?

OLSEN: There's lots of things that you can say with respect to Biden, but again, you have to have a strategy. You can't have a “throw everything at the wall” strategy. That doesn't work. So the question is, clearly, there are things that motivate Republican voters, you want to talk about abortion, you want to talk about the size of government spending, you want to talk about wokeness. The question is, how do you craft these together with a message that also reaches the voters you need to win. You know, take a look at Georgia, there are thousands of people who voted Biden-Kemp. There are thousands of people who voted Biden-DeSantis. That's the voter that you need to focus on. And to focus on that voter, I'm not sure what they think. I have some ideas on what I think you ought to do. But it really depends in part on the candidate. There are things that a Nikki Haley or a Ron DeSantis might be able to say that Donald Trump simply can't say. And vice-versa, there are things that a Donald Trump could say that they simply can't say. So I think they will obviously focus on themes that resonate with a Republican base audience. But to be successful, they also need to have themes that will communicate to that swing voter who is somebody who may not like Biden, but also is not an automatic Republican, and how you craft that is going to be key to whether you can win.

REICHARD: Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the ethics and Public Policy Center. Henry, thanks so much for joining us.

OLSEN: Thanks for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Sudan update — Today’s roundup kicks off in Sudan, where evacuations are still ongoing as fighting continues.

SOUND: [Airplane]

More than a thousand European Union citizens left Sudan over the weekend. Other governments including the United States, Canada, Jordan, and Japan are also rushing to get their diplomatic staff and citizens out of the country.

On Monday, the first group of Kenyan evacuees landed at the airport in Nairobi.

This businesswoman was among those who returned.

BUSINESSWOMAN: I thank God that I’m home finally. I have gone through a lot of trauma in Sudan and I walked from my, my apartment when the shooting was still going on.

The Sudanese military forces and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces are battling for control. The two generals on the warring sides are former allies who orchestrated a coup together in 20-21. More than 420 people have died, many of them civilians.

The fighting has destroyed dozens of hospitals and left people without food, water, and electricity.

Abdullahi Hassan is a researcher at Amnesty International.

ABDULLAHI HASSAN: Most of the hospitals in key cities including Khartoum have been shut down, people have been unable to access them in the first place and there are no services being provided at those health centers. Doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers are getting targeted, they are also, you know, afraid for their own safety.

Airstrikes have also destroyed civilian planes and at least one runway in Sudan’s international airport, leaving many Sudanese to seek shelter in other provinces or travel by road.

Kenya cult deaths — Next, to Kenya.

SOUND: [Forensic workers]

Police are still looking for more victims after exhuming the bodies of over 70 cult members.

Authorities said Pastor Paul Makenzie Nthenge of the Good News International Church had instructed church members in southern Kenya to fast to death in order to meet Jesus.

Authorities began uncovering the bodies in shallow graves on Nthenge’s land in the town of Malindi on Friday, after a tip from a human rights group.

Kenyan President William Ruto likened the pastor’s actions to terrorism.

PRESIDENT RUTO: Terrorists use religion to advance their heinous acts. People like Mr. Makenzie are using religion to do exactly the same thing.

Authorities detained Nthenge earlier this month. He was arrested twice before in cases linked to the deaths of children. Both cases are still in court.

Australia defense review — In Australia, authorities are mulling over a defense overhaul.

SOUND: [Meeting]

The country plans to spend more money on defense and munitions to increase its regional security. On Monday, a committee made the recommendation after a government-commissioned defense review.

Australia is trying to shift from its decades-old strategy of protecting its borders… to deterring enemies before they reach its shores. The review noted China’s military buildup as a regional threat.

Here’s Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles:

RICHARD MARLES: Now most of those objectives as part of the new mission of the Australian Defense Force are well beyond our shores. And so we need to have a defense force, which has the capacity to engage in impactful projection through the full spectrum of proportionate response.

Defense Industry Minister Pat Conroy said the army’s maximum range of weapons will extend from 25 miles to more than 186 miles. The military will also acquire precision strike missiles of more than 300 miles.

Haiti mob killing — We close today in Haiti, where a vigilante mob in the capital city of Port-au-Prince burned 13 suspected gang members to death.

SOUND: [People watching]

Police detained and disarmed the gang suspects at a traffic stop on Monday when a crowd pulled them away.

Witnesses said the crowd stoned the suspects before burning them to death with gasoline-soaked tires.

The Haitian National Police confirmed the vigilante killings, but did not say how the crowd was able to pull the suspects from custody.

Criminal gangs control about 60 percent of the capital in Haiti.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, this is National Library Week. Libraries around the country are celebrating in various ways.

But one library is doing something a little different. The Hopewell Library in New Jersey is celebrating the return of a book checked out back in 1979!

Here’s the boss, Andrea Merrick, inspecting a box of books that someone dropped off.

ANDREA MERRICK: And when we were going through it, we saw like, this looks like an old library book.

It was called Back to Basics and it's about flying planes.

I wonder if it says anything about flight delays. I mean, 44 years since it was checked out?

MERRICK: We still have overdue fines.

If you do the math, it’s a doozy, strictly speaking. Ten cents a day, we’re talking more than $1,600 in fines. But ...

MERRICK: Because this book was so old, we don't have a record of it anymore. So nobody would've been fined for it. And even if you do get fined, we have a cap at $6.

Hmm. Maybe no extensive collection of economics books.

So Merrick is going with moral suasion, She says, regardless of how much time has passed.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Just bring ‘em in.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 26th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: grieving tiny lives.

Yesterday, you met Laura and Michael Sutton and heard their journey of suffering and miscarriage, and their testimony of God’s faithfulness. Today, Part Two of that story. Here now is WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown.

LAURA SUTTON: This is the butterfly bush. Most of this last batch of caterpillars already got eaten—that was something else that we realized.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: For the first two years she lived in this house, Laura Sutton didn’t even know this bush existed. The previous owner had planted a butterfly bush. But she didn’t like butterflies. And she spent those first two years dealing with traumatic health issues and miscarriages.

LAURA SUTTON: People kept asking well, how was Wisconsin and I'm like, Well, I can take a shower without passing out now. But I have no idea how Wisconsin is.

In the fall of 2018, she noticed the butterfly bush. It was completely covered in Monarch caterpillars.

LAURA SUTTON: And for whatever reason I got into my head, you know what, we're going to build a butterfly box. And we're going to grab some of these monarchs, and we're going to watch them turn into butterflies.

She set up a butterfly box and filled it with caterpillars.

LAURA SUTTON: And what followed was such an interesting mixture of the horror of death and the beauty of life all wrapped up into one.

After two devastating miscarriages, Laura and Michael Sutton felt that God was closing the door on more biological kids. They started looking into adoption.

The process took about a year. Fifty hours of state training, meetings and interviews and background checks and fingerprinting and $50,000.

They had to make a profile of their family to present to birth moms. The moms then get to choose who their baby goes to. It took a couple of tries. They got rejected a few times. But they finally got connected with a pregnant mom in Florida. The baby was due in the summer.

LAURA SUTTON: And August 8, we got the call that the baby was born, but she had been born by emergency C section, and she was two months premature.

They never did find out what went wrong—why the doctor thought Keira needed an emergency C-section, and why she was two months early.

LAURA SUTTON: So now we're waiting in the waiting room, waiting to find out whether we get to meet Keira in the NICU, little 32-weeker, all the questions going through my mind. What is it going to be like to have a NICU baby? Is she going to be okay?

When she got to hold Keira for the first time, Laura thought it would be hard. Everyone had told her adoption was difficult. You don’t have the biological bonding hormones helping you to instantly love that child.

LAURA SUTTON: But I was psyched up for it to be hard, and I was not prepared to fall in love with her so quickly. She was so beautiful. She was so perfect. She was everything I wanted.

She was so small. Somewhere around three and a half pounds. 

The birth mom signed the papers. And legally, Keira was theirs, their brand-new daughter.

LAURA SUTTON: In the NICU with her, skin to skin, all the nurses were reporting that she was strong and kicking, that she was doing awesome for 32 weeks, and she was going to graduate very quickly and be on her way in the world.

But the next morning when they got to the hospital, they knew something was wrong.

LAURA SUTTON: There were personnel everywhere, maybe was not there, they wouldn't let us in. They ushered us to a back room. And the doctor came in and asked whether I knew what hypoplastic left heart syndrome is.

MUSIC: [Heart Shaped Hole]

During the night, Keira’s body had abruptly started failing. Her heart stopped. Doctors resuscitated her, but she had massive brain and organ damage. That’s when they found out that Keira had hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

Two of her four heart chambers were severely malformed. So much so that they couldn’t be operated on. The doctor said it was one of the worst cases he’d ever seen. Maybe a full heart transplant could save her, but she was so tiny, she likely wouldn’t survive the operation.

When the doctors finally gathered for a full staff meeting with Laura and Michael, no one would make eye contact with them.

MICHAEL  SUTTON: It had the feeling of, of, you know, the funeral home, right, where no one wanted to be the one to break the news.

The doctors eventually admitted the truth: There was no way Keira was going to survive.

LAURA SUTTON: And so we asked to go ahead and take her off life support so that she would not have to suffer any longer than she already was.

We were there. We got to hold her. And they pulled all the tubes and we got to hold her and we sang. We sang to her and we prayed over her while she died.

JOHANSEN BROWN: What did you sing?

LAURA SUTTON: Hymns. And I don't even remember which ones. Whatever we could think to sing in the moment.

The hospital staff offered to get them a chair, an old fashioned, true wood, beat up rocking chair, set in this small dark hospital room full of machinery and lights and screens and stainless steel rails.

MICHAEL SUTTON: And so I just wondered, I wondered how many other families had sat in that same chair that we sat in with Keira? How many special last moments have been? How many how many stories? How many stories are in that, that one chair. 

And so we had we had about I don't know. Maybe an hour maybe it was only 20 minutes. I don't have a clear sense of time. But we had a few moments where we were able to sit with her.

LAURA SUTTON: And it was surreal because the room was dark. It was one of these cardiac intensive care units. Everyone walks by on tiptoe. The doctor declared the moment of death, and then he left us alone. And we had some time with her body afterwards.

They flew home empty. No baby in the car seat carrier they’d brought.

LAURA SUTTON: Grief is a funny thing, because I remember the first couple of months after Keira died after we came back, and we tried to resume normal life on the other side. I remember how strange it felt that I wasn't crying, much. I cried. But I felt so numb. So incredibly numb.

That’s when she found the butterfly bush. That’s when they started watching those tiny caterpillars die and be reborn.

LAURA SUTTON: And can you see the shape of the butterfly wing forming inside there?

That first year with the butterfly box, most of the caterpillars never made it into their cocoons. The vast majority of them got eaten by spiders or killed by parasites.

LAURA SUTTON: So we got to watch what really was that was a butterfly graveyard as these caterpillars got devastated by disgusting forms of death.

But at the end, they still had five or six Monarchs that made it.

LAURA SUTTON: You never could have dreamed of the beauty that would come out of the death of this little caterpillar was so profound, to to be reeling with the ugliness and the horror of the death. And then to stand in such awe of the hope of this life that came out of it.

Butterflies have very short lives. But they are beautiful while they’re here.

The Suttons don’t regret loving Keira.

LAURA SUTTON: She was a soul that God created and loved and that it was right and worthy to love her. Even if it was only the smallest bits that we were able to give her.

MICHAEL SUTTON: God gave us Keira for a week. And who are we to say, how long we get any of our loved ones. And so I feel like we would, knowing how it turned out, we would have still gone through it.

MUSIC: [Before and After]

A few weeks after Keira’s death, the Suttons got a small white box in the mail. The funeral home in Florida had mailed Keira’s ashes to them, to bury on their property.

The company that came to plant the tree brought a massive drilling machine. Loud as all get out, noise and fumes and shaking the very earth.

LAURA SUTTON: You would think that any kind of wildlife would be as many miles away as possible. While Keira's tree was getting lowered by this machine into this hole, there were monarchs dipping in and out of the tree as it was going in, like multiple monarchs flying through her tree. And I sat there and cried. God sent monarchs. And I don’t know why monarchs would do that naturally because there were no flowers on the tree. We’ve never seen monarchs on the tree since, in three years. The monarchs have no interest in the tree, it doesn’t have anything flowering on it. It was just God, who told the butterflies to be there.

Reporting for World, I’m Anna Johansen Brown in Burlington, Wisconsin.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 26th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: World commentator Janie B. Cheaney on real leadership–and how the fate of a nation depends upon it.

JANIE CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: When leaders lead, victory is possible. Without leadership, failure is assured.

Deborah’s song, in Judges chapter 5, is all about victory. Here’s how it begins:

“That leaders took the lead in Israel, that the people offered themselves willingly, bless the Lord!”

Deborah goes on to recall how her countrymen, oppressed by their Canaanite enemies, cowered in their homes and slinked down the byways. Until she arose—“a mother in Israel.” Guided by the Lord, Deborah called Barak to marshal ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun. They gathered at Mt. Tabor and there, with the strength of the Lord, they routed their enemies. With victory in the air, more men of Israel joined the fight, and even Jael, the wife of Heber followed through with a tent peg when the enemy commander took refuge in her tent.

When leaders lead, the people volunteer. But when leaders don’t lead, everyone does what is right in his own eyes, and things fall apart. Doing what is right in one’s own eyes is the highest virtue of western society now, and so-called leadership flatters that conceit.

Most office-holders are not leaders; they are managers. What they manage is the status quo, or their constituents’ demands, or their own reputation, or all three. A typical U. S. President manages his reelection or, in a second term, his legacy. A typical bureaucrat manages the viability of his job. Without leadership, though, what they ultimately manage is failure.

The book of Judges is a record of failure, seasoned with occasional success. That’s the theme from the beginning, where the tribe of Judah failed to drive the Canaanites out of Jerusalem. Manasseh failed, Ephraim failed, Zebulun and Asher failed, and so on. Failure led to apostasy, apostasy to bondage and oppression, oppression to crying out to the Lord. In response, the Lord raised up a Deborah, a Barak, a Gideon, a Jephthah. And the people volunteered.

Presidential candidates are usually not short of vision. They project their own ideals of American greatness on the political stage in bright colors, however impractical or improbable. You may remember one candidate who speculated that with his election the planet would begin to heal. They all know what they want; they are less clear on how to get it, beyond wish-casting and slamming their opponents.

A true leader understands not only the goals, but also the obstacles. A leader will see not just the vision, but also the pitfalls on the way. Well after Deborah’s time, the prophet Samuel led a revival in Israel by first telling the people to put away their foreign gods and idols (I Sam. 7:3). Our diverse culture has many foreign gods and idols to put away, but a leader should recognize the greatest dangers to ordered society, like class envy, racial strife, and family breakdown, and direct our vision away from them. When leaders lead, the people volunteer.

Any leaders out there?

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: What’s behind the ongoing conflict in Sudan? We will bring you expert analysis.

And, cochlear implants are an incredible invention that give people the ability to hear, but not everyone in the deaf community is on board.

That and more tomorrow. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Apostle Paul wrote: What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” Romans chapter 7, verse 7.

Go now in grace and peace.

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