Shoveling the Roof

Leadership is about anticipating, preventing, and deterring future problems, “looking around corners,” not just resolving what lands on our doorstep. Leaders with whom I have worked, civilian and military, public and private, Reagan and Powell to Fortune 500 CEOs, all knew this.

Many years ago, growing up in rural Maine, we would – as we just did – get a big snow. We were prepared, wood for stoves, food up, sand for traction, shovels, snowshoes, and sleds for action.

As winter came on, deep freezes caused snow to pile up on roadsides, lakes, and roofs. Our house, like many, was built a room at a time, as money allowed – a one-story string of rooms, two woodsheds, and three chimneys on a mountainside. We heated with wood. We were cozy.

That said, we looked ahead. Heating with wood, our roof – thick with snow this time of year – would warm. The warmth would cause snow to melt, freezing into icicles along the eaves.

Beautiful, melting snow is also heavy – and rafters have limits. It fell to me to shovel the roof. Roof shoveling was a thing back then; most shingled. It was about looking ahead, reducing weight, protecting the roof’s integrity, limiting the leaks and sudden snow slides, and preparing for spring.

In many ways, despite the current cold and recent snow, we are on the eve of spring, and that means preparing.  What has piled up across America, in addition to snow, is growing anxiety, a sense that old norms – rule of law, respect for law enforcement, long-held freedoms, faith and family as central to society, parents’ authority, affordability, and limited government – are slipping.

In truth, they are slipping, just like that underlayer of snow would melt, drip, and slip – unless properly shoveled this time of year. Looking around corners – taking stock of where we are – this moment calls for mature leadership – at every level of society, leaders modeling calm, not chaos.

From California to New York City, Minnesota to Maine, we see a kind of reckless emotionalism, the gradual escalation of rhetoric by the political left, producing dangerously thoughtless conflict, loss of life, and pretending that overreaction to constitutional enforcement of laws is somehow normal.

It is not. Neither is the idea that those we elect to high office should be fanning the flames of public insecurity, anxiety, senseless fear, and – we see it happening everywhere – mounting instability.

History teaches that instability grows when left unchecked, when indulged, when those spun up with emotion are not spun down, when leaders replace rationality, reason, and calm with hysteria, violence, and ideology.  The role of a leader is to lead, not join “the crowd,” not to encourage chaos.

America has almost always – but not always – resisted the temptation to fall into senseless, life-threatening, and property-destroying violence. In the 1960s, hundreds died as politically stoked riots, ideological mayhem, and terror consumed whole cities. The decade was badly marred, a president, presidential candidate – former attorney general – and civil rights leader were killed.

We cannot go there again. We cannot accept as normal the intentional stoking of public emotions and incitement to violence by those who present themselves as leaders. That is not leadership; it is recklessness, and leads to bad places, undermining our constitutional society for political gain.

In short, we need to start – all of us – “looking around corners,” preparing for what lies ahead, not with hysteria or escalation but with calm and renewed appreciation for our republic’s norms.  In the parlance of old New England, we need to slow things down and “shovel the roof.” It is that time.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!