HENRY CLAY ON PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP
by Nancy Baker Kassebaum

If Henry Clay were alive today, he might ask, “Which of the presidential candidates would bring the skills of statesmanship to the enormous challenges facing our country?”

 Clay was Kentucky’s greatest statesman. His skills of negotiation and compromise helped hold the country together for the first half of the 19th century – delaying the civil war for two vital decades in the early stages of our country. He eloquently and successfully represented the United States through the art of statesmanship, utilizing the values of public discourse. Those values are still relevant and critical in the 21st century.

The Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship believes that by promoting the principles and practices of statesmanship, we have the opportunity to help the nation become a reflection of the highest ideals – of the noblest goals – of justice and peace and compassion.  

To help educate a new generation in the skills and processes of statesmanship, including training in dialogue, listening skills, negotiation and mediation, the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship will host an annual one-week gathering of undergraduate college students to study and apply Clay’s principles of statesmanship.  As many as 50 students, one from each state, will gather in Lexington this July to attend this Student Congress. Because of generous local and national support for the Center, the students will receive full scholarships to attend.

The intent is to capture America’s youth at the very point that they’re making their life decisions.  This will be a group of students who have just completed their junior year, about to go for their final year at university. The Center wants to bring them together in an environment where they can share and learn the skills that embodied Henry Clay’s life.

“As a nation we’ve always been one of high ideals and one of those ideals is statesmanship:  mediation and compromise.  In recent years we’ve seen a concern that we’re focusing more on action, not words.  And maybe that’s just part of our culture.  We have these expressions, ‘actions speak louder than words’ and ‘shoot first and ask questions later.’  But this wasn’t Henry Clay’s approach.  Henry Clay’s approach was about finding a middle ground; not the idea that there was a right way and a wrong way, but, in fact, a mutual way.  We think that part of statesmanship has come into disfavor, and our program will help reinvigorate it,” said Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh, when the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship was launched last year in Clay’s historic law office on North Mill Street. Ambassador Cavanaugh is the director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky and is working with U.K.’s Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, Transylvania University and Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, to develop the curriculum for the Student Congress.

Cavanaugh is one of 18 prominent local and national board members who have come together to support the Center. I am honored to serve as the National Advisory Committee Co-Chair with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.   We believe we must study history and the life of Henry Clay if we are to succeed in promoting statesmanship in the future.  Justice O’Connor, who was awarded the Henry Clay Medallion in 1996 for representing the highest ideals of statesmanship, said then, “Henry Clay had an incredible impact upon the history of our nation. In his fifty years of public service, Clay served as a congressman, a diplomat, and a senator - and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Clay himself is said to have remarked, ‘Sir, I would rather be right than be President.’ Henry Clay did not act solely for his generation. Henry Clay acted for posterity's sake. And for that, I am grateful.”

Henry Clay held strong beliefs and principles. However, in order to achieve constructive ends, the means he used involved negotiation and compromise. Our hope is that the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship will help young men and women form an enthusiasm for political participation at all levels through a better understanding of the leadership role played by Clay in the growth of our nation. 

Check back here for current news about the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship and updates regarding the upcoming Summer 2008 Inaugural Student Congress.