Great leaders ride to the sound of the guns.
It is an old saying central to the heart of leadership.
A great leader shows courage by dealing with danger and disaster, and not hiding out or abandoning his post and running away.
And we are not talking about photo ops with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Applied today, it is the soldier who risks his life in combat to save his endangered buddies, or the firefighter who rushes into a burning building when everyone else is running out, or the cop who faces down a gunman while protecting the innocent.
It is the president of the United States going to the southern border, a place he has never visited — maybe even to Eagle Pass or El Paso — to view first-hand the humanitarian disaster his open borders policy has brought about.
That would have taken courage.
Instead, President Biden has put as much distance as possible between him and the border. He went to Korea.
It reminded me of another president some time ago who also went to Korea.
That was former Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower who, in the 1952 presidential campaign, during the Korean War, rode to the sound of the guns.
The U.S. was fighting the army of the Communist Chinese, sent into Korea to rescue the defeated North Korean Army that had invaded South Korea, a U.S. ally.
Eisenhower, a World War II hero, promised that, if elected, he would end the war honorably.
“I shall go to Korea,” Ike vowed.
Shortly after Ike, a Republican, defeated Democrat Adlai Stevenson, he went to Korea to talk to the troops and see the battlefield for himself.
No sooner was he sworn in then Eisenhower sent a veiled message to the Chinese that hinted of an increase in military pressure if the Chinese did not come to the negotiating table.
The Chinese and the North Koreans, exhausted after two years of war, agreed to terms and an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.
A demilitarized zone (DMZ) was set up separating North and South Korea that is still in effect today.
It is has been manned by U.S. troops for almost 70 years, most of whom police the border. It is the most secure border in the world.
So, it comes to mind that while Biden visited Korea as part of his Asian tour, he did not visit the DMZ. He has never visited the Korean border just as he has never visited the U.S. southern border. It is too bad. He might have learned something.
By contrast, former President Donald Trump not only visited the DMZ in 2019 but crossed over to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Also Trump as president visited the southern border at least five times.
The difference between the borders in Korea and in the U.S. are vast. While the U.S. has 37,000 troops guarding the border in Korea, it does not have a single soldier guarding the border with Mexico.
Nobody crosses the border in Korea. Everybody crosses the border in the U.S.
It is a different world now, of course, and there are no Eisenhowers around. Our woke political leaders do not run to the sound of the guns. They run away and complain about the noise.
Imagine the shock if Biden, instead of going to Korea, decided to go to the southern border to talk with overworked border agents and see for himself what his ruinous open border policy is doing to the country.
Squinting into his teleprompter, he could even have invoked Eisenhower. But instead of announcing, “I shall go to Korea,” Biden would say, “I shall go to El Paso.”
Yeah, sure. Dream on, bro, dream on.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.