THERE IS NO VICTORY AT BARGAIN BASEMENT PRICES

Every four years we witness what can best be called a political paradox. The presidential campaign ends with a winner and a loser.  I think these terms are contradictions.  I believe the declared winner may be the undeclared loser, and the declared loser may become the undeclared winner.

You remember how George Bush was the winner in the 2004 election, and Al Gore was the loser. Well, Gore went on to win the Nobel Prize, and President Bush became saddled with the recession. Now we have another opportunity to declare a winner and a looser. Only time will tell the real winner and the real loser. I am confident that I don’t want the President’s job. Not for the money, the prestige, the power or even for the knowledge that I would not be charge extra for taking more than two bags on Air Force One.

I sleep knowing others contend to be presidential winners. I lose sleep over the choices offered. Campaigning for President of the United States of America is an energy draining, thankless and time-consuming job. Along with 305,000,000 other Americans, I have no desire to have a large percentage of the 6.7-billion people on earth dislike me, regardless of the stance I take. But, I do find one thing of interest in a presidential campaign: the candidates advertising slogans. Some slogans are winners; some slogans are losers. Some are very memorable. For example, Williams Henry Harrison’s, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” Or, Herbert Hoover’s slogan, “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”

The presidential slogan that sticks out most in my mind is the simple but effective slogan from the 1952 Presidential campaign for General Dwight Eisenhower, “I Like Ike. There is a lot to like about the thirty-fourth President of the United States. He was a five-star general in the United States Army, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War and father of our Interstate Highway system. While the candidate’s three-word slogan was catchy and memorable; I find deeper insight into this eight-word quote from his address to the troops before the invasion of Normandy: “There is no victory at bargain basement prices.”

Winners pay the price of success by pushing themselves beyond what they currently do. It doesn’t matter whether they are in politics, military, business, sports or any other field, achievers continually push the envelope. They see limitations as only temporary restrictions. With laser focus and persistent endeavor, they work at their highest level to move beyond or around obstacles or constraints that stand between them and their goals. In the final analysis, achievement often requires the ability to get more out of yourself than you’ve got. You push yourself just beyond your limit, and you discover you have broken a self-imposing limit.

If you want to be a winner and not a loser—presidential or otherwise —you must willingly pay the price. Victory has a cost, and it doesn’t come at bargain basement prices.  The price is often high. When you do more than you think you're capable of doing, you achieve more than you thought possible. Show me a person that works beyond their limit and I’ll show you a winner.