Bold Ben Bradlee

I'm envious of this guy Ben Bradlee, former editor of The Washington Post. Not because of his journalism career, stellar as that is. (He was in charge of Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate story.) But because he decidedly doesn't have the slightest smidgeon of obsessive-compulsive disorder, of any kind of anxiety disorder.

I know this because I'm reading his intriguing autobiography, A Good Life. It came out in 1995 and was a bestseller; I ran across it recently in my favorite Chapel Hill thrift shop. What strikes me about this man is how joyfully he copes with risk. If I were publishing stories that said a sitting president was a crook, I'd be so damn nervous that I wouldn't be having any fun. I can handle risk. And I can do fun. But I don't know how to do them at the same time.  And I so wish I did. 

Here's a high-level meeting back in 1973.   I'd be worrying the way Publisher Katharine Graham appears to be. 

In a recent interview on Youtube, Bradlee's wife, writer Sally Quinn, says his main weakness is thinking he's invincible.  He has to be well into his 80s now, and I heard him on the radio not too long ago talking about doing yard work with a chain saw. 

Again, it's not the chainsaw I want.  It's the genuine jauntiness and zest while taking career-threatening chances.

 

Categories: boldness, courage, personal