Joseph Sabino Mistick: Like Truman, Zelenskyy a true leader

“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” No one is sure who first said that, but there is no mistaking what it means lately. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian and television personality, has astonished the world with his ability to lead and unite his people in the face of a brutish and criminal Russian invasion.

Zelenskyy also seems to have united the rest of us in a manner that we have been struggling to do on our own. On Wednesday, wearing the trademark olive-green T-shirt of his soldiers, he spoke to a joint meeting of Congress, at times bringing the entire assembly of long-divided American lawmakers to tears and to their feet for prolonged ovations.

Zelenskyy pointed to our duty to defend each other from power-hungry tyrants, wherever they arise in the world. And in an era that has been marked by our differences here and abroad, Zelenskyy reminded us that we still share core values.

Earlier in the week, President Joe Biden signed legislation that gives Ukraine close to $14 billion for military, economic and refugee assistance. And hours after Zelenskyy’s speech, Biden announced that we would be delivering another $800 million worth of weaponry, including anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles and deadly “kamikaze drones.”

America is doing all that it can for now and will do more. Ukrainians could have caved and accepted Russian occupation, but they are fiercely fighting for freedom instead. And that would have been harder without the leadership of Zelenskyy, one common man who has acted with uncommon courage.

In another time, Harry S. Truman was that leader for us. Truman emerged from the chaos of war, a regular guy with a hidden talent for leadership just when his country could not afford to falter. That’s the point of Jeffrey Frank’s recent biography, “The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953.”

Not much was expected of Truman when he became president upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As Frank writes, “Roy Roberts, the Kansas City Star’s managing editor and not a Truman admirer, was struck by the idea that someone who not so long before ‘was still looking at the rear end of a horse’ should find himself leading the world’s most powerful nation.”

Yet there he was, vice president for only three months when FDR died in 1945, becoming president at a turning point for the nation and the world. Often described as a failed haberdasher and the only American president who did not attend college, Truman racked up enormous accomplishments as president.

He was the author of the Truman Doctrine, which was designed to combat the spread of Soviet communism and led to the creation of NATO, which is currently providing military and economic aid to Ukraine as it battles Vladimir Putin.

Truman’s nearly eight years as president included the end of war in Europe and the Pacific, the Marshall Plan to rebuild postwar Europe, the desegregation of American armed forces and the recognition of Israel.

Seventy-five years after Truman announced the Truman Doctrine to Congress on March 12, 1947, Biden has revived NATO and made it again an instrument that is helping Zelenskyy defend his nation and democracy.