Picture yourself as the most powerful person in the free world. Ask yourself the question, “How much is one American life worth?” Could you put a price tag on it? Would you be willing to come up with challenging new ideas or, potentially, do what is wrong to save a life?
Ronald Reagan, Americas 40th president, knew changes needed to be made in the world. He was quoted as saying, “Status Quo, you know, is Latin for the mess we’re in (Reagan, n.d.).” Reagan was talking about a wide of range things in this quote. Therefore, I want to relate it specifically to two aspects of his presidency: defending The United States of America and the release of seven American hostages.
During the 1980s, the U.S. was engaged in the Cold War with the Soviets
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Reagan possessed visionary ideas on how to protect America from Soviet missiles through the Strategic Defense Initiative. Additionally, by selling arms to Iran, Reagan focused his ethics on securing the release of seven American hostages. Reagan created a felt need for change, inspired America’s intellectual stimulation, faced ethical dilemmas and had to think critically to solve problems. In his eyes, the old ways of doing business were outdated. This essay highlights, like Reagan, when my visionary leadership challenged the status quo of a fuel, bombs, fix and my ethical leadership changed the culture in aircraft maintenance by choosing to follow tech …show more content…
He did this by creating a felt need for change, as well as inspiring America’s intellectual stimulation. Prior to his presidency, the status quo from combatting Soviet aggression was deterrence through the threat of retaliation. “The Soviet Union would not attack the United States, because it knew it would be destroyed in response, perhaps along with much of the rest of the world. Deterrence had worked so far. Or at least it had not failed (Brands, 2015, p. 415).” Theoretically, we were pointing guns at each other, waiting for one to pull the trigger, which would cause the other to follow suit. It was a dangerous way to live. H.W. Brands’ book, “Reagan The Life,” explains how, during the “Evil Empire” speech, Reagan wanted to create a new strategy to “destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies (Brands, 2015, p.415).” “Reagan granted that constructing the defensive system he envisioned was not possible at present (Brands, 2015, p. 415).” “Yet current technology permitted making a start (Brands, 2015, p. 415).” Intellectual stimulation is “the need for brainstorming ideas and finding creative solutions to problems (BCEE, 2017, p. 13).” Using intellectual stimulation, Reagan encouraged his followers to be innovative and challenge their minds to determine just