AP Roosevelt sits at the steering wheel of his automobile in April 1939

Monday, April 13, 1998
"Perhaps no form of government," said Lord Bryce, "needs great leaders as much as democracy." For democracy is not self-executing. It takes leadership to bring democracy to life. Great democratic leaders are visionaries. They have an instinct for their nation's future, a course to steer, a port to seek. Through their capacity for persuasion, they win the consent of their people and call forth democracy's inner resources.

	David Ben-Gurion Ho Chi Minh Winston Churchill Mohandas Gandhi Mikhail Gorbachev Adolf Hitler Martin Luther King Ayatullah Khomeini V.I. Lenin Nelson Mandela Pope John Paul II Ronald Reagan Eleanor Roosevelt Franklin D. Roosevelt Teddy Roosevelt Margaret Thatcher Unknown Rebel Margaret Sanger Lech Walesa Mao Zedong Categories Artists/Entertainers Builders/Titans Scientists/Thinkers Heroes/Icons

Democracy has been around for a bit, but the 20th century has been the crucial century of its trial, testing and triumph. At the century's start, democracy was thought to be spreading irresistibly across the world. Then the Great War, the war of 1914-18, showed that democracy could not assure peace. Postwar disillusion activated democracy's two deadly foes: fascism and communism. Soon the Great Depression in the 1930s showed that democracy could not assure prosperity either, and the totalitarian creeds gathered momentum.

The Second World War found democracy fighting for its life. By 1941 there were only a dozen or so democratic states left on earth. But great leadership emerged in time to rally the democratic cause. Future historians, looking back at this most bloody of centuries, will very likely regard the 32nd President of the U.S., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the leader most responsible for mobilizing democratic energies and faith first against economic collapse and then against military terror.

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