America's Best Leaders: Q&A with Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News channel
Who is the leader, past or present, who has most inspired you?
The first [to] come to my mind [is] my grandfather on my mother's side, who was a religious man, and I used to go to church with him on Wednesday nights. He was a janitor, but he never resented anybody else's success, and he turned to God for assistance, so that was a form of leadership that I respected. My dad was a factory foreman. Good sense of humor, heart of gold, but a bit of a temper and a fighter and a tough guy. And my mother, who I had a closer relationship with as I got older than I did when I was a kid, she was just tough as nails. And she was never–I mean you had to reach for the next rung for her, you didn't please her easily. They provided some leadership.
In terms of historical figures, well, you have to look at Stonewall Jackson. He was a guy who always won with fewer resources. McClellan always had superior forces, but he overestimated the enemy and refused to engage, and Lincoln fired him. Grant was good because he came from humble beginnings and had basically failed at everything he did in his life until he got on the back of a horse and had to take people into battle, and then he rose to the occasion. One of the lessons of leadership is, when you have to rise to the occasion, do it. Never be intimidated by superior forces, and never fail to rise to the occasion when the time comes are two of the great lessons of leadership that, if you don't have those capabilities, eventually you'll be defeated.
Martin Luther King, who I knew, [was also a great leader]. At a time when racism was–and it still exists in every direction–but when you're coming out of 100 years of repression, that was a recipe to get killed. When you know you're making a decision, when ultimately the likelihood of your surviving it is not great, but you decide that the cause is more important than your life, you become a great leader. The people who have made that sacrifice, like King, they knew what they were doing. It's an astounding act of heroism.
Do you agree that there is less leadership today than there used to be?
There's less self-sacrifice today probably on a lot of people's parts. I think there are a lot of great leaders out there. You know, there are 10 companies where the CEOs should go to jail, there are 9,000 on the stock exchange where they shouldn't go to jail–they're doing a good job, they're creating jobs, they're inspiring the troops, they're feeding families, they're doing well. You see guys sitting in labs trying to solve health problems for their entire life. You look at Simon Wiesenthal, who spent his whole life hunting down people who killed the families he knew, you know, there are plenty of heroes.
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