Creative Response

An examination of how 3 leaders handle it

In this article we take a look at spontaneous creativity and examine how three leaders handle it.

Hillary Clinton

used a playful analogy to explain her position with regard to Trump supporters. Unfortunately it may well have cost her the election.

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

But the “other” basket — the other basket — and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that “other” basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Joe Biden

is subject to the same kind of faux pas

‘Listen, you’ve got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden. It’s a long way until November. We’ve got more questions.’

‘You’ve got more questions?’ Biden replied. ‘Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.’

Eisenhower

was the master of creative response and had just the right touch.

Once before a press conference, his press secretary, Jim Hagerty told him about an increasingly delicate situation in the Formosa Strait.

“Don’t worry, Jim, if that question comes up I’ll just confuse them.” he replied.

The question did come up.

His response was:

The only thing I know about war is two things: the most changeable factor in war is human nature in its day-by-day manifestation; but the only unchanging factor is that every war is going to astonish you in the way it occurred and the way it was carried out…So I think you have to wait and this is the kind of prayerful decision that may some day face a president.

Afterwards he joked that he must have given fits to Russian and Chinese translators trying to explain to their bosses what he meant.

Jim McAulay🍁 says, “ I hate it when I think I’m buying organic, but when I get home I discover that they’re just regular doughnuts.”

Interesting word: “soli” it’s the plural form of solo.