Thank you, Mr. Taylor, for your kind introduction and for giving me the honor of addressing this distinguished assembly. Last year at this time I was seated in the audience, enjoying the Keynote Address of Mr. Cromwell Crawford, IICA Representative in Suriname, and thinking how much I myself would enjoy addressing the community of the AlphaMax Academy. Well, clearly, wishes do come true. It therefore gives me great pleasure to greet:
• The Honorable Chairman and members of the Board of Trustees of AlphaMax;
• The Administration, Faculty, and staff of the Academy;
• Fellow members of the Diplomatic Corps;
• Parents and guardians and family members and honored guests;
• And, most especially, the graduating Seniors.
To the class of 2009: you are the best and the brightest. You are very high academic achievers. You are National Merit Scholarship Finalists and soccer fanatics and tennis champions. You are the pride of your parents and guardians and the pride of AlphaMax Academy and you make me proud that, this evening, in the 11th year of this fine Academy and in the final months of my Ambassadorship to the Republic of Suriname, I have the honor to address you, the graduating class. So why, on this very proud occasion, have I chosen as the title for this speech, “Be Prepared for Failure”? Because you, the class of 2009, have so far in your lives had so little experience with failure. Each one of you is a star, a winner, an individual with great promise.
But even so, you will experience setbacks in your lives, and how you deal with those setbacks will, ultimately, determine the outcome of your life. When failure comes, you must be prepared to reach down into your reservoir of gifts: to your natural talents and abilities and to the love and support and education that you have received. Elbert Hubbard said, “there is no failure except in no longer trying”. And he is correct. I’d like to illustrate this point to you, by reading a passage from a book written by a well-known American politician who lost a very important election nine years ago:
“I still burn, for example, with the thought of my one loss in politics, a drubbing in 2000 at the hands of incumbent Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush. It was a race in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong, in which my own mistakes were compounded by tragedy and farce. Two weeks after announcing my candidacy, with a few thousand dollars raised, I commissioned my first poll and discovered that Mr. Rush’s name recognition stood at about 90 percent, while mine stood at 11 percent. His approval rating hovered around 70 percent – mine at 8. In that way I learned one of the cardinal rules of modern politics: do the poll before you announce.”
“Things went downhill from there. In October, on my way to a meeting to secure an endorsement from one of the few (Democratic) party officials who had not already committed to my opponent, I heard a news flash on the radio that Congressman Rush’s adult son had been shot and killed by a pair of drug dealers outside his house. I was shocked and saddened for the congressman, and effectively suspended my campaign for a month.”
“Then, during the Christmas holidays, after having traveled to Hawaii for an abbreviated five-day trip to visit my grandmother and reacquaint myself with Michelle and then-eighteen-month old Malia, the state legislature was called back into special session to vote on a piece of gun control legislation. With Malia sick and unable to fly, I missed the vote, and the bill failed. Two days later, I got off the red-eye at O’Hare Airport, a wailing baby in tow, Michelle not speaking to me, and was greeted by a front-page story in the Chicago Tribune indicating that the gun bill had fallen a few votes short, and that state senator and congressional candidate Obama ‘had decided to remain on vacation’ in Hawaii. … And so, less than halfway into the campaign, I knew in my bones that I was going to lose.”
“I’m not suggesting that politicians are unique in suffering such disappointments. It’s that unlike most people, who have the luxury of licking their wounds privately, the politician’s loss is on public display. There’s the cheerful concession speech you have to make to a half-empty ballroom, the brave face you put on as you comfort staff and supporters, the thank-you calls to those who helped, and the awkward requests for further help in retiring debt. You perform these tasks as best you can, and yet no matter how much you tell yourself differently – no matter how convincingly you attribute the loss to bad timing or bad luck or lack of money – it’s impossible not to feel at some level as if you have been personally repudiated by the entire community, that you don’t quite have what it takes, and that everywhere you go the word “loser” is flashing through people’s minds.”
Of course, the politician I am talking about is the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Husssein Obama, and the passage is from his best-selling 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope. As we all know, President Obama’s story did not end nine years ago with that terrible political loss. My own mother, the Artist D.A. Schreiber, used to admonish me that all experiences in life have value, provided you learn from them. And clearly, this is what Mr. Obama chose to do. In fact, his setback in 2000 may actually have helped him to become President of the United States in 2008!
Perhaps most of you here tonight have never heard of a radio show called “Morning Edition” on National Public Radio in the United States, but it is a very popular “drive to work” show, somewhat like the “Ontbijt” show on Radio 10 that I listen to every morning here in Paramaribo. Well, on September 19, 2007, as the presidential campaign season was just beginning to heat up in the United States, the NPR Journalist, Don Gonyea, broadcast a story entitled, “Obama’s Loss May Have Aided White House Bid.” How did it help? Well, according to Mr. Gonyea:
“Even in losing, Obama gained plenty in losing to Rush. He vastly improved his name recognition. He made political friends and gained fundraising experience. And he ran a relatively positive campaign, emerging without having burned any political bridges.”
“Mr. Chris Sautter, a consultant who worked on the Obama 2000 congressional campaign, said ‘it was almost as though Obama hadn't lost at all. After the election, editorials cited Obama as a rising star.’”
"When a candidate loses, the question is, 'will you ever hear from him or her again?' But after Barack Obama lost in 2000, the question was, 'when will you hear from him again?' Sautter said.”
“After that loss, Obama indeed went on to a U.S. Senate run four years later. His victory in that race brought him the national prominence that led to his presidential run. Sautter believes Obama would not have the same name recognition today had he defeated Rush.”
“Today, Obama would likely still be in the U.S. House, Sautter said. A rising star? Perhaps. But not the serious contender for the presidency that he is today.”
That radio show was broadcast almost two years ago. As we all know now, Barak Obama did go on to become a serious contender for the presidency and, ultimately, to win: Yes we can!
I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that, when failure comes, you must be prepared to reach down into your reservoir of gifts: to your natural talents and abilities and to the love and support and education that you have received. I’d like to conclude by speaking a bit more on the value and importance of education.
Clearly the value of education is appreciated by all here in this room tonight. I understand that it is the centerpiece, the guiding principle, of the AlphaMax experience. Once again to quote the artist D.A. Schreiber, my inspiration and my mother who passed away just before I assumed my Ambassadorship in 2006, “your education is the one thing that no-one can ever take away from you.”
“The object of education,” said Robert Maynard Hutchins, “is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and to inflame their intellects.”
And so, to the AlphaMax class of 2009: go out into the world with your minds unsettled and your intellects inflamed. I hope that you succeed in whatever you undertake but, if at first you do not succeed, then do try, try again. Be prepared for failure, secure in the knowledge that you, the stars of 2009, just like the 44th President of the United States of America, have the gifts and the ability to rise above any failure and, ultimately, to succeed.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you this evening. I wish you all good luck, and godspeed.
