- The Lessons of Inchon
- A Leader Worth Knowing
- A Results-Based Perspective
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
A Results-Based Perspective
Virtually every reader who opens this book will have a preconceived opinion about Douglas MacArthur. He has been the subject of hundreds of books and films. American Caesar, the MacArthur biography by William Manchester, was a national bestseller; Gregory Peck played the title role in the feature film MacArthur.
Throughout his lifetime (and in the four decades since his death in 1964), MacArthur has been both widely admired and disparaged. His reputation has risen and fallen more than once. It, and the many events and controversies with which he was associated, will surely continue to be hotly argued in the future.
Today, like other great leaders of his generation, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill (both distant relatives of his, by the way), MacArthur is often the subject of revisionist criticism. Sometimes the criticism is justified, but we have found that it often exaggerates a flaw or foible and underplays MacArthur's actual achievements. Perhaps this is a natural response to the iconic stature MacArthur attained and attempted to maintain during his lifetime. Perhaps it is simply because icons are really only caricatures of whatever they represent and are thus easy targets.
In any case, famous personages are judged in many ways. MacArthur has often been judged by his personality, beliefs, and image. He is also often judged with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Of course, he was not infallible and sometimes behaved in ways that were less than attractive (like most of us). But it is not our purpose to judge MacArthur from any of these perspectives.
We are interested in MacArthur as a leader; in that light, we have chosen to examine him based on his effectiveness as a leader and the results he obtained. Toward that end and before we detail the leadership lessons he offers, the next chapter of biography is meant to familiarize you, the reader, with his life and give you a chance to decide for yourself whether MacArthur was a leader worth knowing.