Principled Leadership in a Time of Crisis Rudy Giuliani

a publication of UNIVERSITY of the CUMBERLANDS
December 2012 • Volume 3, Issue 4
®
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph W. Giuliani is often referred to as “America’s Mayor.” Although
he has held many positions in and out of government, he will always be
remembered as the man who was mayor of New York City on the day
in history when the 9/11 tragedy took place. His courage and leadership
displayed on that day and in that time period will live on in American
history forever.
The following is an adaptation from a speech delivered at University of the Cumberlands on 3 April 2012
sponsored by the Forcht Group of Kentucky Center for Excellence in Leadership. This speech has been
divided into two installments. The final installment will be in the next issue of Morning in America.
Principled Leadership in a Time of Crisis
People ask me, “Are leaders born or made?”
And I always say they are made. Of course, they
have to be born first. But after that significant
fact occurs, everything these people know about
leadership, they learned it. They may not be aware
of exactly where they learned it, but they did.
I know that because about 11 years ago, I
decided to write a book about leadership. Before
September 11, I sat down to figure out what I knew
about leadership and how I could explain it to
other people. As I was writing the book I realized
that almost everything I know about leadership I
learned from somebody else. I learned it by working
for them. I learned it by reading about them. I
learned it by example, going through difficult times
with them and seeing how they handled it.
I became convinced that leadership is
something we don’t spend enough time teaching
to people. We could teach it to young people by
focusing on what the principles are, what the
examples are, and things they can improve. In any
organization, if you can be a leader you are going
to succeed, whether it is government or business,
athletics or religion. If somebody can lead, they are
going to succeed. The principles of leadership are
the same principles that get you through difficulties
in life—the same principles you use to take an
organization, give it morale, get it through difficult
times. Those are the same principles you use to get
yourself through the difficult times that all of us
have in life. There are a lot of different principles
and a lot of different examples. I am going to talk
about the six I think are the most relevant, the most
important, and the easiest to illustrate.
The most important principle of leadership, the
first one that I always talk about, is: To be a leader
you have to have a strong set of beliefs. You have
to know what you believe. If you run a business you
have to have goals for that business. If you run a
government agency, you have to have goals for that
agency. If you run a city, you have to have ideas. If
you run a country you have to have ideas that inspire
people, and we don’t focus on that enough. What is
the best example you can think of for a leader?
The captain of a ship is a quintessential leader.
The captain has to do many things. But what is
the primary thing a captain has to decide before
anybody else on the ship can do anything? The
captain has to decide on the destination. The
captain has to decide, “We are going to Bermuda,”
or “we are going to the Bahamas,” or “we are going
to Los Angeles.” If the captain can’t decide, nobody
else can contribute because they don’t know what
they are doing.
That is what happens in many organizations, in
many businesses, or at times in government when

2
we have leaders that can’t decide. When we have
leaders that try to be all things to all people, it is
like the captain of a ship that can’t decide. The
ship ends up any place the winds take it, any place
the storms take it. It could end up some place
good, some place tragic. Don’t you get the feeling
at times that is happening with our government?
It is going where the latest poll wants it to go. It is
going where the latest media enthusiasm wants it to
go. It is not going someplace that is predetermined.
If you feel that way, that largely means that
we don’t have leadership. Leadership, first and
foremost, sets a goal. It says “this is where we are
going.” It says “this year we are going to expand
our business, take on new areas of sales, or new
areas of production.” If it is a government agency,
“this year we reduce crime, this year we reduce
unemployment.” You set goals when you lead.
I learned that from Ronald Reagan when I had
the great fortune to work for him for two-and-ahalf
years in Washington and then all the time I was
United States Attorney. The thing about Ronald
Reagan that has always stuck with me and has been
such a great influence on my life: Reagan really had
only a few beliefs, but what he believed he believed
very strongly, and he wasn’t swayed about his core
beliefs by what was popular or unpopular.
Ronald Reagan’s main belief was that
communism was evil, not just another economic
system, not just another social system, not just
another government. And why was it evil? Because
it took away people’s rights that were given to
them, according to our belief, by God. The right
to vote; the right to practice your religion or not;
and the right to determine who represents you.
Communism takes that all away from you. You
don’t have that anymore. Your human rights, your
God-given rights are taken away from you.
To Ronald Reagan that isn’t just an alternative
economic system; it’s about human rights, and
communism was an evil form of government.
So Reagan decided to confront communism, not
negotiate with it. You can’t negotiate with evil. If
you do, they take advantage of you. Reagan thought
that détente, negotiating with the communists,
had led us to a very bad and dangerous position,
so instead he confronted them. He built up our
military to its greatest strength since World War
II, he took all these missiles and deployed them to
Europe and pointed them at Russian cities.
The day after he did that, ABC did a two day
“Every morning my faith is restored when I
see the clean cut, mannerly, hard working,
mountain students walk with purpose,
with head held high, body erect and with
pleasant smiles on their faces.”
President Jim Taylor
docudrama about how this was going to end the
world. They thought that Ronald Reagan was a war
monger, and he was bringing us as close to nuclear
war as we had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Then he decided to develop a nuclear shield to
defend Europe and the West. Again this was going
to lead to a war. Well, what did it lead to? Within
one year of Reagan leaving office, the Soviet Union
was gone. The Berlin Wall was down. Poland and
the Czech Republic were free.
Ronald Reagan liberated more people than
any American president in the twentieth century,
save maybe Franklin Roosevelt. That is a great
achievement, and he did it because he had strong
beliefs. The thought that communism was evil was
not the accepted thinking in America when he said
it. Reagan didn’t say this because it was popular.
He didn’t say it because he conducted five public
opinion polls and a focus group. He said it because
he believed it. He said it because it was a sum total
of his study, his thinking, his praying. It came from
him and it wasn’t going to be changed because
it made him more or less popular. That is a
leader. That is how you define leadership.
President Ronald Reagan speaking in front
of the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall
on June 12, 1987.
The second thing Ronald Reagan believed
was that the New Deal had good intentions, but
like many things it had gone too far. Rather than
moving people out of poverty, it was locking them
into dependency on government. Government
had become too big and was keeping people down
rather than giving them a chance to get up. He was

considered mean, he was considered dumb, he was
considered backward, but he stuck with it because
he really believed it. That eventually led to welfare
reform, a complete change in our entitlement
system. It led to tax reductions for the first time in
twenty or thirty years to lower rates than we even
have today. It led to an economic boom that lasted
for about ten years.
So, the first thing you have to do if you want to
be a leader is to figure out what you believe. You
have to figure out what you want to accomplish. You
can’t lead someone else unless you know where you
want to go. If you don’t know where you want to go,
how are you going to tell them where to go? So, the
first thing I tell young people is spend a great deal
of time reading, thinking, praying, and talking to
other people and figure out what is really important
to you and what you want to accomplish. That is
the first principle of leadership.
The second principle is: If
you want to be a leader you
have to be an optimist. Now
I know that sounds frivolous
to some people; it sounds like
you should go around telling
jokes all the time. I don’t mean
that. What I mean by that is you
have to be a problem solver, you
have to be an optimist. Suppose
when I came out here, I started
my speech this way: “[Sigh]
Things are bad, things are really
bad. The price of gasoline, it is
going to get higher. Iran is going
to become nuclear. You think
our economy is getting better,
but wait and see. You know
things are really bad and there
is no hope. None. Follow me.”
Now I didn’t notice anybody
getting up and following me.
Nobody ever does, except in one
place: New York.
There is always a little group,
usually on the far left. New
York gets really far left. They
always get up and they just sort
of follow me when I say that.
And there is a reason for that:
they follow the person who
is offering the solution to the
Editor
Eric L. Wake, Ph.D.
Contributing editor
M.C. Smith, Ph.D.
Advisory Committee
Christopher Leskiw, Ph.D.
Eric L. Wake, Ph.D.
Graphics Editor
Meghann Holmes
Production Manager
Jennifer Wake-Floyd
Staff Assistant
Fay Partin
Copyright ©2012
UNIVERSITY of the CUMBERLANDS
The opinions expressed in
UC Morning in America® are not
necessarily the views of
UNIVERSITY of the CUMBERLANDS
Permission to reprint in whole or
in part is hereby granted, provided
the following credit line is used:
“Reprinted by permission from
UC Morning in America®, a publication
of UNIVERSITY of the CUMBERLANDS.”
problems that they are facing. So if you want to be
a leader, you have to turn yourself into a problem
solver. You have got to turn yourself into somebody
who thinks solution, not just problem.
There is a tendency that people have when
they are first doing something, and they face the
problem for the first time. Let’s say we have a big
case and the other side files its brief. We are going
to argue the case in the Court of Appeals and their
brief is really good. The young lawyer kind of panics
and wails “we can’t win this case!” Or when I was
mayor, somebody would come running in a panic
to announce that something we had predicted
didn’t happen and our budget was going to be in
trouble. I would always say to them, for their good,
not just mine, “Whenever a problem is presented
to you, don’t come and tell me about it unless it is
an emergency and we don’t have any time.” Those
are rare but they happen.
But if we do have time, if we
have an hour, a couple of days,
or a week, before you come into
my office I want you to sit down,
calm down, take a deep breath
and figure out how you would
solve it. I want you to walk
into my office and tell me, “We
just had a big budget shortfall
because Wall Street had a big
decline and all of our pension
funds are in trouble,” and then
I want you to tell me what you
would do about it. Don’t just
give me the problem, give me
the suggested solution. I want
you to train yourself to do that
every time that happens because
if you do that I am going to
turn you into a problem solver
from a person that just absorbs
and repeats problems.
You know people who do
that, right? People who just
absorb and repeat problems.
They can sit there for hours
and hours and tell you how bad
things are, how terrible things
are, how awful they are. And
by the time they have finished,
things are ten times worse than
they really are. But they can’t
3

4
spend any time on figuring out “What the heck
can we do about it?” There is always something
you can do about it. The power of optimism is
overwhelming if you want to be a leader. My father
taught me a very long time ago: if you are ever in
a fire, he used to say, become calm. If you are not
calm, pretend you are. Because you will think better
if you are calm than if you get nervous and really
upset. I can’t tell you how much that helped me
on September 11. The emotion of seeing so many
people die, the emotion of losing so many friends,
the emotion of being trapped in a building for 15
or 20 minutes and really not knowing whether we
would get out.
But every time that happened, I would say to
myself, “I am going to do what my dad said. I am
going to pretend I am calm. If I pretend I am calm,
I can think better for everyone else and also that
will give everyone else an example to remain calm.”
The best thing you can do in an emergency is just
remain calm or pretend you are. You are going to
be able to think much better, you are going to be
able to think, “How do I make this better?”
The third principle of leadership is: To be a
leader you have to have courage. Many people
are in awe of the principal quality of courage
because they think it is only for people who have
no fear. They think of it as the
person who wins the Medal
of Honor, or the firefighter
who runs into a building to
save someone, or the police
officer who goes into gunfire
to pull someone out. They
look at these heroes and they
think “I am not like that; I
would be afraid.” But courage
is much more common than
you think. Most people have
it. We just don’t understand it.
Courage is not the absence
of fear. Any firefighter who is
not afraid to run into a burning
building is not courageous—
he’s crazy, right? Of course he
is afraid. Of course a soldier is
afraid to go to battle. We are
all afraid. Anyone who is not
afraid in this room, raise your hand and go to the
psychology department, because you need help.
You should be afraid. Life is risky. When dangerous
A New York City firefighter
purveys the remains of the
World Trade Center on 9/11.
things happen, they are dangerous. If you are not
afraid, you become reckless. Fear is an enormously
valuable emotion because it warns you of danger.
What defines courage is what you do with
that fear, not whether you have it. If you let
fear immobilize you, then you are not going to
accomplish anything. But if you let fear motivate
you to work harder to reduce the risk, then it
makes you a courageous person. If you are able to
overcome it so that you can do what you have to do,
then you will be a successful person.
When I was the mayor of New York, whenever
one of our uniformed services did something
particularly heroic I would bring them to City
Hall that day or as soon as they were capable, and
I would hold a press conference and explain what
they did. I wanted people to see what these people
who risked their lives to protect others are really
like. Because if sometimes something goes wrong,
or even when sometimes they do something wrong,
that becomes the big headline. What happens daily
is they save people.
So I thought I could balance that by having
these press conferences. I’ll never forget the first
time this happened. It was a police officer who had
jumped into the East River in January or February
to rescue a person who had fallen into the river. He
saved the person’s life. It was
a tremendous thing to do, to
take the risk of dying from
hypothermia himself.
It led me to the principle
about how courage and fear
can work for you—If you are
afraid of failing in business, or
you are a firefighter and you
are afraid to go into fire, or
you are a soldier and you are
afraid to go into battle—how
do you deal with that fear? I
think here is the way we deal
with that fear. “Be prepared,” it
is called. Anticipating fear and
understanding fear allows you
to show courage when it is
needed to lead.
[We hope you have enjoyed
the first installment of Mayor Giuliani’s presentation.
Be sure to watch for the conclusion in the next edition
of Morning in America. —eds.]

Rest in Peace
The Patriot Guard stands along a funeral
route to honor a fallen soldier.
This account was written by Dr. Melvin
“Chuck” Smith, an associate professor of history at
University of the Cumberlands.
Sergeant David K. Cooper was mortally
wounded by small arms fire while on dismounted
patrol in Qadasiyah, Iraq. He died of these wounds
in Baghdad on 27 August, 2008.
On Sunday, 7 September 2008, Sergeant
Cooper was laid to rest in Jellico, Tennessee, following
funeral services in nearby Williamsburg,
Kentucky. The Patriot Guard attended the services
and provided escort from the funeral home to
the cemetery at the family’s request. The Patriot
Guard are motorcycle riders who, at a family’s request,
attend the funeral of a fallen service member
or civilian police or firemen. They will serve
as a flag line to honor the fallen and ride as escort
to the graveside, and sometimes stand as a barrier
between the funeral party and protest groups.
I am not a regular member of the Patriot
Guard. I am a resident of Williamsburg, however,
and asked permission from the Ride Captain
to stand with the Guard and to ride escort, both
of which were granted. We arrived at the funeral
home shortly after noon and established a flag line
(riders holding 3 x 5 American flags on staves) on
the perimeter of the funeral home parking lot, facing
the area reserved for the threatened protest by
the Westboro Church cultists. I wasn’t at the airport
when Sergeant Cooper’s casket arrived on
Thursday, but I am told that four of these people
did show up there.
There was little traffic in downtown Williamsburg
on a Sunday afternoon; the churchgoers had
already headed home by the time we deployed, and
most folks were about getting their Sunday dinners.
We stood vigil until the funeral party arrived and
the service got under way, shortly after 2:00 p.m. It
was very hot and muggy, very uncomfortable.
Once the service finished and we paid our
respects to Sergeant Cooper and his family, we
formed another flag line around the rear of the
funeral home and the hearse. This is done in case
there are any protestors who want to disrupt the
ceremony or hurl curses at the family of the deceased.
It is the Patriot Guards’ desire to interpose
themselves between the family and those who have
no respect for the dead, that instead of seeing hatred
and vitriol, they will see respectful flag-bearers.
We were fortunate that no incidents occurred
during the service. With this complete, we stowed
flags and mounted up to escort Sergeant Cooper
to the cemetery in Jellico, some fifteen miles away,
right about 3:30 p.m.
We couldn’t see Williamsburg’s Main Street from
where we staged the bikes or from either of the flag
lines. As we turned on to Main I felt a surge of anger.
Williamsburg, like a lot of small towns, holds
a Fall Festival—here it is called “Old Fashioned
Trade Days.” They close off Main Street, put up a
lot of canopied booths and display their quilts and
pickles, raffle off a shotgun or two, and fill up on
carnival food. Trade Days began on 4 September
and ran through Sunday. When we turned on to
Main, there were the canopies, there were the people.
I thought to myself, “Can’t these people show
some respect?”
And then I saw that they weren’t looking at
quilts or buying Polish sausages. They lined the
streets four and five deep, almost all of them holding
American flags or signs expressing their gratitude
to Sergeant Cooper or their condolences for
his family. There was no festival atmosphere in the
crowd, no jaunty waving of flags, no rah-rah momentary
patriotism.
This was a community bidding farewell to one
of their own sons.
We rode on through downtown and crossed
the tracks and climbed the hill that runs parallel
to the University of the Cumberlands campus. The
crowd had grown thinner as we got close to the
5

6
tracks, but only because there aren’t many good
places to stand right there. As we approached campus
the numbers picked back up again, students and
townies standing together to honor a fallen soldier.
There were no protestors.
We rode between packed sidewalks up to the
traffic light by the high school, turned left and proceeded
to link up to Kentucky Highway 92.The
crowd thinned out at this point; only the occasional
house owner stood in his yard or on his porch as
we passed. We turned on to Highway 92, then on
to US Highway 25W, the old main road from Williamsburg
to Jellico.
Another huge crowd of mourners greeted us
as we reached this corner, packed into the parking
lot of the Dollar General Store and the Save-a-Lot
grocery and the car dealership. A ladder truck was
parked there, ladder extended and flying a flag the
size of a pickup truck. We rode between packed
crowds for the better part of a mile before getting
out of Williamsburg.
But at each little community between Williamsburg
and Jellico there was another solemn
crowd. Each volunteer fire department we passed
had their engine run out, their flag at half mast, and
their volunteers turned out and rendering honors
as we passed. Every little crossroads had a knot of
mourners standing vigil. In some places it was a
single individual or single family, solemnly holding
a flag and standing to honor Sergeant Cooper.
As we crossed into Tennessee we ran into
packed sidewalks again, thousands of people lined
up to pay their respects as the hearse passed. We
escorted the graveside party through town and up
to the high and lonesome cemetery where, with a
guard of honor from the Whitley County Junior
ROTC program, a funeral detail of Army Regulars,
and full military ceremony, Sergeant David K.
Cooper was returned to the native soil from which
he had sprung 25 years earlier.
I was honored to be allowed to pay my respects
and stand vigil over this young man. I was
touched by the quiet dignity with which his family
endured the services and laid their son and brother
to rest. But my heart was both broken and mended
by the public display of respect and shared grief
that attended Sergeant Cooper’s funeral.
It was a hot Sunday. It was muggy in the way
that only the American Southeast can produce. The
service itself ran long at the funeral home. These
people who lined the streets and the highway stood
in that heat for a couple of hours, all for the brief
moment in which they could pay their respect to
the family as the funeral procession passed by.
And there were thousands of them. Williamsburg
is a town of perhaps 5,000 people. Jellico is
about 3,000. Yet there were literally thousands of
people turned out to honor this young man.
And they were sincere. David K. Cooper was
not a Medal of Honor winner, nor a distinguished
general with decades in uniform, nor a veteran
who had returned to his home town and spent
years in public service. He wasn’t a celebrity. He
was just one of us.
Just. One. Of. Us.
And so we honored his passing. Even if we
had never met him in life, we wept the tears as if
we were laying our own blood and our own bone
to rest. We stood in solemn review as he passed by.
We felt the grief in a young life ended, but that grief
was tempered with the fierce pride in a young life
not wasted.
To those who think America has lost its way, you
should have been there; you would have seen the soul
of a people reaching out to hold those who grieve.
To those who think America has lost its heart,
you should have been there; you would have seen the
beating heart of the nation pulsing deep and true.
Choose Cumberlands
Chartered in 1888, University of the Cumberlands
is an institution of regional distinction, which
currently offers four undergraduate degrees in
more than 40 major fields of study; nine preprofessional
programs; twelve graduate degrees,
including two doctorate, two specialist and eight
master’s degrees; certifications in education; and
online programs.
Listed as a “TopTier” institution by US News and
World Report, our graduates enjoy a high acceptance
rate to graduate and professional schools.
In fact, within five years of graduation, 66% of
our graduates have completed or are pursuing a
graduate or professional degree.
If you or someone you know might be interested
in our programs, please visit our website at
www.ucumberlands.edu or contact Erica Harris
by email at erica.harris@ucumberlands.edu or
by phone at 606.539.4241. She will be happy to
provide you with information and an admissions
application. We hope to have the opportunity to
serve you.

You can remember Cumberlands in your will or trust, or you might want to create a charitable
gift annuity to provide you with a lifetime income as you assist deserving students.
With charitable gift annuities:
• The rates are significantly greater than bond rates and certificates of deposits.
• Annuity payments are fixed and based on the age(s) of the annuitant(s).
• Annuity payments are extremely favorably taxed.
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valued on the date of the gift; capital gains taxes are not immediately due as they are when
securities are sold by the donor.
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A Charitable Gift Annuity will not only provide you a fixed income, guaranteed for life, but also
will create a significant legacy here at University of the Cumberlands.
University of the Cumberlands offers numerous planned giving vehicles guaranteeing income
for the remainder of life. Some have established trusts and deferred gift annuities naming a
loved one as the income
beneficiary. With the low
payout rates currently
on certificates of deposit
(CDs) and the volatility of
the stock market, deferred
gift annuities are becoming
extremely popular for
young adults who will not
be retiring any time soon
but want to plan and secure
a steady, fixed income that
will begin when they retire.
For instance, a 45-year-old
can defer a gift annuity
for 15 years and receive
Remember Cumberlands
Age
Yearly
Rate
Annuity
Payment
Charitable
Deduction
65 4.7% $470 $2,661.10
70 5.1% 510 3,469.30
75 5.8% 580 4,101.60
80 6.8% 680 4,669.30
85 7.8% 780 5,418.90
*based on minimum age of 65; a gift annuity of $10,000; figures for
annual payment & IRS discount rate of 1.2% as of November, 2012.
income at a rate of 6.67% percent for life. The charitable gift tax deduction would be immediate
(during working years when your tax bracket is higher) and the income would not begin until you
are 60. As with regular gift annuities, the entire amount of the annuity would be backed by all of the
University’s assets.
If you are considering the establishment of a Charitable Gift Annuity to provide life-long
income for yourself and vital support for University of the Cumberlands, please contact Jim Taylor
at presoff@ucumberlands.edu.
Remember, as a financial supporter of Cumberlands, you are encouraging today’s students as you
also demonstrate your continuing commitment to the University’s mission to educate individuals for
lives of responsible service and leadership.
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