Phil Williams Commentary: We need leaders who will stand behind their convictions

When I was a young paratrooper, I was making my first jump off the ramp at the back of the aircraft as opposed to jumping out the side door. The jumpmaster was a Green Beret master sergeant who did all the usual air safety checks and gave all the right commands, and I was expecting him to tell me when to jump and then to follow me out.

But he didn’t do that. He stood up and looked at the jumpers, all of us waiting earnestly, and when the green light went on, he yelled, “Follow me!” and went off the ramp into the abyss. He was first off the ramp, and we would have followed him anywhere at that moment.

People will follow when a leader stands up and says “I see the way forward and I’m willing to go first. I’m willing to risk it. Follow me!”

The Alabama Republican Party recently held its Winter Dinner with the keynote address delivered by Florida Gov. Ron Desantis. As expected, he knocked it out of the park. Whether he runs for president remains to be seen, but everything he spoke of in front of a crowd of well over 1,500 needs to be a part of the next presidential administration regardless of who takes the helm.

Phil Williams

Desantis spoke on fiscal discipline, traditional values, taking care of our kids and pushing back on woke ideology. He talked about the southern border, the Constitution cutting red tape, fighting good fights and ending bad fights.

But the most important thing he said was what sold me on his potential to be a national statesman. He said, unequivocally, “You can be right on all of the policies, but if you don’t have the courage of your convictions, you will never beat the left.”

He is right. Policies don’t matter, rhetoric doesn’t matter, plans and budgets and agenda items don’t matter if the leader at the helm doesn’t go into each of them with the courage to back up their convictions, and the willingness to fight to make them happen.

We don’t need, nor do we have time for, public officials who look for the most expedient route — the easy road, the soft landing. Conservatives should know the left does not care about your political future, or whether you made the debate go smoother. Far-left progressives want to burn your political and cultural house down with you in it, and could care less about you offering compromises or avoiding going on the record.

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It is not enough to have “convictions,” We must also have the courage to stand when our convictions are challenged.

Ronald Reagan comes to my mind as someone who had the “courage of his convictions.” Reagan was trounced on by the left on a regular basis. “What could a guy who was a movie star possibly know about leadership? He starred in movies with monkeys!”

Never mind that he had been on the record for years as a conservative. Never mind his successful run as governor of California back when California elected conservative governors.

Reagan stood in the face of extreme opposition in the wake of the Carter era. He faced the Cold War with the Soviet Union. He dealt with a broken economy, at a time when U.S. foreign policy was in the tank and political expediency was the norm. But Reagan had convictions and the strength to do something with them no matter what the naysayers threw at him.

One account of Reagan’s legacy says, “The defining feature of Ronald Reagan was his moral courage. It takes tremendous moral courage to resist the overwhelming tide of received opinion and so-called expert wisdom and to say and do exactly the opposite. It could not have been pleasant for Reagan to be denounced as an ignorant cowboy, an extremist, a warmonger, a fascist or worse by people who thought themselves intellectually superior to him. … During Reagan’s presidency, America enjoyed its longest period of sustained economic growth in the 20th century. ,,, By the time he left office, the faith of Americans in the greatness of their country had been restored. … He ended his days as the single most important American conservative figure of the last century. Not bad for an ignorant cowboy.”

But it did not happen because Reagan took a walk on the hard stuff. He believed it and he acted on it, and the world was better because he did.

There is something magical that takes place when a leader is willing to get out front and take a position and stake out ground unequivocally. Naysayers will show up, but so will people who are dying for someone to actually lead.

Not everyone has the gift of leadership, but those who do have an obligation to use that gift effectively. They have a duty to refuse to waffle, to decline to look for the easy way out. People will respond to a leader who says with the courage of their convictions “I see a better way! Follow me!”

Phil Williams is a former state senator from District 10 (which includes Etowah County), retired Army colonel and combat veteran, and a practicing attorney. He previously served with the leadership of the Alabama Policy Institute in Birmingham. He currently hosts the conservative news/talk show Rightside Radio on multiple channels throughout north Alabama. The views reflected are his own.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Phil Williams looks at leadership