The King's Wisdom- Robert High

"And that's truer than thy brother knows, Cor," said Kings Lune. "For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land."

One way to be an effective leader is to put yourself below those who follow you. It would be hard to imagine one of our presidents being the first one to enter the battlefields and the last one to leave. Would this change their mind in entering wars themselves. There is no doubt that it looks really good to put on your resume that you served in the armed forces if you are going to run for president. But now of day's, our political leaders are so far from the battlefields that it would be the nations priority to allow them to be the last on the battlefield and first out of the danger zones.

I don't think that this is the presidents fault that it would be seeminly impossible for him to accomplish the tasks mentioned in King Lune's advise he gave to his son. This is because our society is so fragile, we would crack at even the idea of something bad happening to one of our political leaders in a war. In the good 'ol days though, it was the leaders who were the baddest dudes of them all. How cool would it be to have a president who would march out onto the battlefield with an M16 in hand ready to fight some terrorists!