William Henry Harrison: Don't die
Leadership lessons of the presidents
The briefest presidency produces the tersest advice: Don't die.
William Henry Harrison was the third of America's military presidents. His victories were not as great as George Washington's nor even Andrew Jackson's, but his defeat of an Indian alliance at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 cast a glow over the rest of his life. All who settled and made lives for themselves and their families in the territory north of the Ohio River felt a debt to Harrison.
He ran for president in 1836 as part of a four-candidate Whig effort to deny Democrat Martin Van Buren the presidency by splitting the vote multiple ways. Harrison and the other Whigs indeed split the vote, but Harrison was the candidate denied the presidency. Van Buren won, with Harrison second.
Harrison was the Whig’s obvious choice for a rematch in 1840. Van Buren was crippled by the economic depression following the financial panic of 1837. Harrison campaigned on a theme of “log cabin and hard cider,” a misleading representation of his background and sensibilities. Harrison was a gentleman but felt obliged, in the age of Jacksonian democracy, to present himself as a modest man of the people. The strategy worked, or at least it didn't negate the advantage Harrison derived from the country's economic distress. His popular margin wasn't great but the electoral vote in his favor was a landslide.
Harrison was the oldest man to be inaugurated president till then, and for a long time after. At 68, he sought to show that he was as hale and hearty as he had been in his soldierly youth. The weather for the outdoor inauguration was cold and rainy. Harrison spoke without coat or hat for two hours. He fell ill with what resulted in pneumonia and, thirty days after becoming president, his death.
No accomplishments are associated with Harrison's presidency. Its lesson is the cautionary one: Don't die if you can help it.
Harrison's death wasn't entirely his fault. Yet his failure to take reasonable precaution against the weather made his demise more probable. Leaders like to exhibit strength. But they ought to exhibit common sense as well. John Kennedy took a page from Harrison's book by refusing an overcoat and hat in freezing weather for his 1961 inauguration. But Kennedy was a much younger man.
In a broader sense, leaders must keep in mind the prerequisites for success. If they can't stay healthy, they can't accomplish what they want to. Sometimes this means taking a vacation. Sometimes it means delegating authority. You can't do everything yourself.
A corollary is to make the most of one's time and opportunities. No matter how healthy and strong you are, you won't live forever. You won't be president or CEO forever. The clock is ticking for us all.
Do what you can, and do it today. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed.
“You can't do everything yourself.”
Polk didn’t believe this. As a consequence, after instigating and executing the war on Mexico, he barely survived his presidency.
Indeed, even if counterfactual history might suggest a counterfactual. In the event a truly bad president died early in his tenure, one who in office might have done untold damage to the union and the people, might not that premature death be entered into history's positive column? I guess like any other counterfactual, we'll never know. And we have to assume that a life lived to full effect, including for a president, must be seen as a positive good. Who knows?