In a story printed in the April 20, 2004 edition of the Nashua Telegraph: “Decision halts rail funding”, Robert Sculley, the president of the of the New Hampshire Motor Transport Association was simply ecstatic about his group’s “slam dunk” in halting development of the rail line between Nashua and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority line in Lowell, Mass. This is the line that would not only have provided a much needed transpiration link for southern New Hampshire commuters to the Boston area but would have also provided easy access for Massachusetts residents directly to the tax-free shopping districts in Nashua. This is also the line that would have provided the starting point for future extensions to Manchester and Concord and would have eventually paved the way for high-speed rail transport between Boston and Montreal.

Mr. Sculley was successful in halting the use of approximately $12 million dollars from state fuel tax monies for rail improvements. The State Supreme Court agreed with Sculley’s group that those monies could ONLY be used directly for highway work. But let’s not forget that Mr. Sculley has also deprived the citizens of New Hampshire of the $26 million dollars that the Federal Government had agreed to provide us for the rail project. Sculley’s group also deprived New Hampshire citizens of countless dollars of commerce not only from shoppers coming to the tax-free Granite State but also from likely tourists who might wish to visit or vacation in our fine state if they had easy rail access from Boston.. And let’s not forget the prospective home buyers who might have chosen to live in southern New Hampshire if only they knew they would have had easy access to their work places in Massachusetts.

Yes Mr. Sculley and his group had their “slam dunk” and won in keeping $12 million of state fuel tax revenues for their comrades within the highway transportation sector. But the citizens of New Hampshire lost: both 1) the multiples of millions of dollars that would have flowed to the state from the federal government for the rail work and 2) the untold amounts of commerce that could have come to New Hampshire and benefited every citizen in our state.

Stephen Nodvin

An important principle quality of leadership is judgment - making difficult decisions in a short time frame with imperfect data. From the information released in recent weeks through the press and the 9/11 commission, it seems pretty clear that our nation’s leaders, including National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice and President George Bush, exhibited failures in judgment. Our leaders failed to make difficult decisions in a short time frame with imperfect data that could have prevented or reduced the damage inflicted on 9/11.

Another principle quality of leadership is character – those personal qualities that define who we are. Part of that character is defined by integrity - our concern with individual wholeness and conscience. The fact that personal integrity has eroded in our society in recent decades is pretty obvious: scandals in corporate governance and management, documented increases in cheating in schools and colleges, and even incidences of plagiarism and faked reporting by supposedly top journalists at our nation’s newspapers. Implicit in this decline in integrity is the increasing unwillingness of many people to take personal responsibility for every one of their actions. Rather more and more, individuals are assigning the cause of their problems to other people and/or to outside events. It seems to me that almost everyone that I encounter these days, from students to our highest leaders, is more than willing to decline responsibility and to deflect blame for their failings on to someone or something other than themselves.

When students blame their bad behaviors and decisions on their cohorts, that is one thing. But when the leaders of our nation do the same, that is not only a failure in integrity but also a failure in leadership.

When Dr. Rice, the National Security Advisor to the President, appeared last week in front of the 9/11 commission much of her testimony boiled down to a defense of why she and the President failed to do more during the early days of their administration to prevent or reduce the impacts of the terrorist threat that was to come. Throughout almost three hours of testimony, Dr. Rice’s major defense for why she and the President failed to make decisions or take action against the terrorists prior to 9/11 was that their subordinates or subordinate agencies, never provided “actionable” items nor “asked” them to take specific actions to prevent the attacks.

What the 9/11 hearings have demonstrated is that our nation’s top leaders exhibited failures of leadership prior to 9/11 in at least at least two areas. First, the failure of judgment: our leaders failed to make difficult decisions in a short time frame with imperfect data that could have prevented or reduced the damage inflicted on 9/11. All humans make mistakes and this failure of judgment by our nation’s leaders was a big one.

While I am concerned about this failure of judgment, I am even more concerned about the second area of failure: past and ongoing failures in character and integrity. The leaders of our nation are failing to take responsibility for the decisions – or lack thereof – that they made prior to 9/11 to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. Failing to take responsibility for one’s actions is a failure of character and demonstrates a lack of integrity. It is said that a leader “best leads by example”. That the President of the United States and his National Security Advisor, a former Provost of Stanford University, are failing to take responsibility for their actions sets a terrible example for all Americans and especially for our young people. This is the real tragedy of our time and the worst failure of our nation’s leadership.

Stephen Nodvin