No Leaders

Originally untitled, from Letters to a Grandchild, Spring 1987

By Ron Haybron. (Title and light editing by Dan Haybron, June 13, 2025)

I was raised in the thirties and forties in southeastern Ohio by my grandmother. She was born in 1889, and her attitudes and ethics reflected a lot of frontier thinking. She had been raised on tales of the Civil War and the Wild West, told to her by relatives who experienced those times, so her notions about the way people are supposed to behave were straightforward and easily expressed in sayings.

One of the first ones I learned — the axiom that was at the heart of her philosophy — was: “Paddle your own canoe.”

The essential meaning of this was to not expect help from anybody or ask for it. Now, that can sound exclusionary and misanthropic, but it wasn’t really meant that way. The idea was: if you were out in the woods and got into a jam, you’d best not sit around waiting for the Lone Ranger or anybody else to come and rescue you. It was based on the belief that everybody is responsible for themselves. You can’t count on someone else to solve your problems.

There were corollaries to this old saying too. “Keep your elbows in” was another I can recall. That meant to minimize the effects you have on others. Don’t go through life “jostling and crowding,” taking more room than is sensibly yours, or making more of a fuss than necessary to get your job done.

To “paddle your own canoe” didn’t mean that you had no regard for others or that you wouldn’t help in bad times. People on the frontier had to cooperate to survive, and they had to be willing to give aid to a neighbor in times of need. But the idea was not to expect it or depend on it. The idea was not to bite off anything you didn’t think you could chew yourself.

And the consequence of this kind of belief system was a feeling of self-sufficiency and an independence of mind that was right at the root of being an American, as I saw it in those simpler days.

I’ve been thinking about some of these old sayings lately as I contemplate the recent presidential campaign. The thing that’s bothering me is all the attention that’s been paid to the “leadership issue” — the question of who was best qualified to “lead the country.”

Now, poisoned as I am by my old-fashioned conditioning, I may be a poor one to comment, but the idea that America needs a strong leader runs against my grain. The way I was raised to think of it, the people of the country are supposed to be the leaders. The Congress we send to Washington passes the laws we want; the President we elect makes sure the laws are turned into action. He or she (if that ever comes to pass) is an administrator — but not a leader.

A leader is supposed to come up with the ideas and tell the people what to do. When I think of leaders, I think of kings and dictators. From what I’ve heard, Hitler was a leader. Stalin was a leader.

Now it’s possible the term was misused in these recent campaigns. All these folks were so busy trying to simplify their messages to fit in little time bins on TV that they probably used a lot of shorthand that I didn’t fully appreciate. Maybe when they were talking about leadership, they only meant to establish that their man was a good administrator — that he would do the best job making sure our laws were implemented the way we wanted.

If that’s the case, then I can go on “paddling my own canoe” and not worry. But if anybody was serious about this leadership idea, then I think we ought to ring the alarm bell and let our elected officials know what the American Constitution is about.

It’s about freedom from leadership. When we threw King George out, we were rejecting the idea of leaders and embracing the notion that a country could and should be run by the people.

So I’m not sure my grandmother would approve of all this leadership stuff. I think if she were still around, she’d be looking for some reassurance that the term was just election “hype,” and she’d want it clarified that we don’t want or need a leader — just sensible public servants who do our bidding.

And I feel pretty much the same way. Just make sure that nobody in Washington thinks they are my leader, and I’ll rest a little easier in the days to come.