What Makes a Great President?

In this episode of Wake Up, Look Up, Pastor Zach explores what makes a great president through a Wall Street Journal article reflecting on 250 years of leadership history. He unpacks four key traits of effective leaders, including character, influence, principled compromise, and the ability to learn from failure. He also connects these ideas to Proverbs 29:2, challenging listeners to consider leadership and decision-making through a biblical lens of wisdom.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Zach Weihrauch

Follower of Jesus who has graciously given me a wife to love, children to shepherd, and a church to pastor.

What is Wake Up, Look Up?

Check out new episodes of our daily podcast, Wake Up, Look Up, with Zach Weihrauch as he interprets what's happening in our world through the lens of the gospel.

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, what makes a great president? This is prompted by an article I read in the Wall Street Journal called what kind of a leader makes for a great President? It's actually, kind of a celebr of America's 250th anniversary, a bipartisan, meaning Republicans and Democrats, collection of historians, past presidents, journalists, military leaders, public servants. Kind of reflected together on what history teaches us about presidential leadership. In other words, they were looking at past presidents who were great and asking what made them great. What was interesting is they identified four traits of a great president. The first was character. the presidents who have influenced our country the most at its most needed times, were men who displayed great character, public and private integrity. They were also men of what's called soft power or influence. They didn't have to be bombastic. They didn't have to wage a war in the media. They were men who could move the needle with other leaders through conversation and, and the force of their character. They were also men of principled compromise. Politics demands it, particularly our two party system. They knew how to work with the other side. They knew how to go in with 10 things they want, come out with seven, and still call it a win. They were also men who could learn from failure, which meant they could admit failure and then take the lessons from it and step into even greater leadership in the future. when I read this article, I was struck by the fact that this is, is a great way of thinking about how to vote for president. Looking at past performance for future results. We all do that in our industries every day, right? So what a great idea to look over 250 years of history and say, who have been our greatest leaders and what were they like then? To create a template of a candidate and to vote for that. But what I also thought was this is spitting into the wind, really. people don't think this way about voting. I wish we did. I, I wish we would, because I think our country would be in a much better place. You know, the writer of Proverbs says this in Proverbs 29:2. He says, when the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan. The, writer of Proverbs, a book of wisdom, understood that a great leader increased the capacity of the possibility of human flourishing. For as many people as possible. But a bad leader reduced that capacity. You know, unfortunately, in our country, we don't think in terms of bad leaders or good leaders. We don't think in terms of qualified or unqualified. We just simply look for the man or woman who represents our political party of choice and throw our support behind them and vilify the other person. But I gotta ask you, in an honest moment, in a nonpartisan moment, are you happy with the results of that? You know, when I read the second part of Proverbs 29:2, when the wicked rule, the people groan. It's interesting because I see a phenomena happening in America where many American Christians, depending on their political persuasion, when their party has the White House, will say, oh, good, we have a righteous person in office. But they spend all their time groaning about the state of the country. But the writer of Proverbs says, wait a minute. When you have a righteous leader, you don't groan. That's not the result. You rejoice. So which is it? Do we have the right leaders? And if so, why are we complaining all the time? We should be rejoicing? Or does our complaining, our groaning, actually show us the truth? We haven't had great leadership for quite some time. I'll let you decide that. But I can tell you this. I think this is a great roadmap for how to think about voting. It's a Proverbs 29:2 approach to voting. every candidate, we should be asking, do they display character? Are they able to influence leaders? Do they understand what principled compromise looks like? Can they learn from failure? Can you imagine a presidential debate where these are the topics being discussed, where we're less interested in the 90 second sound bite that's going to run on CNN for the next 48 hours and actually interested in whether or not this person is fit for office? The truth is, we don't have to ask what makes a great president. 250 years of history have shown us what makes a great one and what makes a mediocre one and what makes a lousy one. The question is not what makes a good president. The question is, are we interested in having one and will we vote in that direction? Hey, thanks for checking out Wake Up, Look Up. For more content, be sure to visit the Christ Community Chapel app or website cccchapel.com.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at [e-mail]!