Remembering David M. Abshire

Two years ago today David M. Abshire, my life long mentor, friend and second father passed away. Much has been written about Dr. Abshire -- the West Point graduate, the decorated veteran, the Georgetown historian, the advisor to presidents, the diplomat, and the institution builder. The Center for Strategic and International Studies was his creation. He is credited with saving the Reagan Presidency.

But most of all, today, in this great nation of ours, we should remember Dave's character, his principles and his hopes for our country. All that Dave stood for in Washington seems so lost, so distant, so beyond our reach. Dave taught us all what the word “character” truly means. He wore ethics on one shoulder, and humility and grace on the other. He was a moral compass, a beacon of courage under fire, overflowing with empathy and compassion. He personified honor, duty and courage. Patriotism took on new meaning around Dave; when he spoke of serving God and country or protecting the Presidency, the hair on your arms would stand up and chills would run down your spine. He woke up every day on a mission to apply the lessons of history to the greatest challenges of our time. And he always rose above the fray. He built bridges with knowledge and demonstrated that bipartisanship and compromise in Washington must not be sacrificed to dogma. So for those that have given up on our nation's potential, and the pride and hope that Washington leadership might once again take the high ground, we must remember Dave Abshire.

Along with Senator Sam Nunn, I was honored to give the Eulogy for Dave and in his memory am re-posting it.

Jay Collins’ Eulogy for Dr. David M. Abshire

St Paul’s Episcopal Church

November 14, 2014

As most of you may know, Dave could recite many a famous quote. Perhaps his favorite quote was by Mark Twain. “History does not repeat itself, ” Dave would say with his charming yet commanding Chattanooga draw, “but it does rhyme.” And indeed, the rhythm of history underscored most every facet of Dave’s life. 

Dave studied history from early childhood, and wrote with passion about exceptional leaders -- the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Eisenhower, -- often focusing on the character traits that distinguished them. Dave effortlessly managed to make his own character rhyme with those same exceptional leadership traits he so admired. The pulse of human history, Dave believed, is the best guide to steer us through the promise and the peril of our times.

On October 31st, 2014, that pulse, and the rhythm of history itself, surely faltered.

Dave was a decorated veteran, an Ambassador, a trusted advisor to Presidents, an applied historian and a builder of enduring institutions. To those of us here today, he was also a rock-solid-anchor as a friend, a beloved husband, father and grandfather, and a magnanimous, charismatic presence in all of our lives. He was irreplaceable.

Thankfully, David Abshire’s inimitable spirit will transcend his own time here with us. He will forever remain a pillar of integrity and civility, humility and loyalty; an old and wise soul with a forever young and deeply caring heart.   

Many will say that the Center for Strategic and International Studies was his greatest creation. Some will say his greatest achievement was saving the Reagan Presidency. I personally agree with a third cohort, those that argue that Dave’s greatest gift was his unique ability to connect with, teach and inspire the next generation. A 28-year member of the so–called Abshire brigade, I am honored to have called Dave my mentor, my friend, my second father. 

To say I learned a lot from Dave would be an understatement. He had an awful lot of knowledge to impart, and a seemingly endless well of energy with which to do so! I am sure I am not alone in recollecting the singular experience of taking walks with Ambassador Abshire. 

As many of you know, Dave didn’t live to be 88 by ignoring his health, and one of the ways he stayed fit was to embark on daily walks. And I do mean embark. Because, you see, first, Dave didn’t believe a walk was proper exercise unless you were speed walking. And second, it wasn’t fun unless you were discussing something truly compelling, like how to prevent World War III. And thus, routinely, he would find a lucky soul and take off on a walking voyage. It didn’t matter where your feet actually took you -- your mind was transported to the strategic miscalculations in Sarajevo in 1914 or the colossal failure of the Maginot line in 1940.  And so for decades, dozens of Dave’s protégés were blessed with strategy lessons of historic proportion.

Those walks uniquely energized Dave so much so that he would speed walk into his most important engagements. The more significant the meeting, the faster he walked. I once asked him why we entered a meeting with the Prime Minister of Japan at close to a full on jog. He told me that this was his way of “pumping himself up.” It was easy to see the truth in that statement. Dave’s energy radiated through any room he entered. That energy was as contagious as it was luminous. Whether on a road trip through Europe or a weekend in Old Town, Dave was capable of marathon-like brain storming sessions on his next programmatic idea for the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress or writing --and then incessantly editing -- his next opinion editorial. You never grew tired around Dave.

Nowhere was Dave’s energy so palpable as it was when he was on a mission to change the policies, direction and fate of his country. For Dave Abshire was a man of action. With the creation of CSIS and later at CSPC, Dave spent 60 years teaching Washington how to use the best and brightest thinkers outside of government to apply intellectual rigor and candid dialogue to the art of policy making. He poked fun at vast collections of unread books collecting dust on shelves. Instead, Dave favored relevant and actionable recommendations that would make a real difference.

With Dave’s doer attitude came dogged persistence. Lord help you if you were on the other end of the phone or alone in a room with Dave and he wanted something. If you were a donor, you wound up donating. If you were a politician you wound up compromising. But perhaps the most significant and wonderful example of Dave’s persistence came 57 years ago. You see, it was then that Dave met this Navy gal named Carolyn. And boy was he smitten. But Carolyn was no pushover. Dave asked no less than three times for her hand in marriage! Ultimately, thankfully, even she could not resist the Abshire persistence. I have no doubt that their marriage and his extraordinary children and grandchildren were the source of Dave’s greatest joy.  

Dave’s energy, persistence and optimism were all grounded in a deep and beautiful faith. And his spirituality was not something he separated from work. To the contrary, Dave integrated faith into every aspect of life, with a forgiving heart, open spirituality and intellectual curiosity. For example, Dave loved the fact that Lincoln knew most of the bible by heart and that the Anglican George Washington conversed with Jews, Catholics and Quakers, building unity around our country’s magnificent religious diversity. As a devout Episcopalian, Dave was one of the best Catholics I ever knew. He had a relationship with Georgetown University so deep that sometimes I thought he was secretly a Jesuit! 

Dave also lived life with a willingness to “joke about Abshire”. We used to openly tease him about his “Abshire-isms” -- his unique use of strategic terminology. Can’t you just hear him now? “We will start with a net assessment, and develop a conceptual framework for a long term anticipatory grand strategy, break down the silos and synergize the key strategic components, making tactical concessions, acknowledging and bolstering our strategic shortcomings and acting with agility and courage.” If you knew Dave, that sentence actually made sense.

Dave brought humor to even the most serious moments. Dave could go from a deep conversation on how Secretary Kissinger conceived one of the most brilliant strategic moves in history in total secrecy, to laughing hysterically about how Anne Armstrong would make Henry raise his hand like a schoolboy before he could speak in the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board meetings. After his near death experience in Tokyo many years ago, Dave was given a blood transfusion that enabled him to joke with Japanese leaders that he was really part Japanese.

Is there anything Dave wasn’t good at? Well you wouldn’t have him teach math in French, or for that matter, teach math in English. Lets set math aside. Those of us that worked with Abshire on articles, books, or speeches, knew Dave was the source of truly brilliant ideas. But David had no time for syntax. Deep and insightful, simple or complex, Dave’s thought process was simply incredible. But proper grammar was simply absent. Some of Dave’s epic run-on sentences filled pages of yellow legal pads.  

And quite frankly you would never want Dave to teach anything while driving. When Dave came back from NATO, he explained that he “had forgotten how to drive” and enlisted interns to ferry him around town. At some point, he professed to have relearned. And he may have. But none of his brigade was ever fully comfortable with Ambassador Abshire behind the wheel. We all knew that if Dave were driving around the Mall while expounding eloquently on President Lincoln’s virtues, we could easily end up on Lincoln’s lap.

Were he standing among us today, I think Dave would take one last opportunity to call us all to action. As a great patriot, he would ask us to resurrect the American dream. He would reiterate the lessons of David Key on bipartisanship and the importance of building bridges across the aisle. He would reference Cincinnatus, as he insisted that service to our country is always more important than serving one’s own political interests. He would remind us that Presidential effectiveness depends on the relationship the President has with Congress. There can be no alternative. And Dave would look around the world at the enormity of our grave challenges and plead for more strategic thinking.

Were he standing among us today, Dave would urge that we put trust and humility back into Washington’s lexicon. But most importantly, Dave would plead one last time for a return to civility. He once said: “in its deepest sense, civility means respect, listening and dialogue. It does not mean watering down or giving up cherished beliefs or principles. Indeed, civility has often been exercised in the American experience in order to move to the higher, common ground. If we can listen to each other with humility, the positive—almost sacred—accomplishments and qualities of the American experience can enrich and fortify us to live the fullness of the American dream.”

The rhyme of history may have faltered momentarily on October 31st. But if we listen hard, we can still here Dave’s speed walking footsteps accompanied by his comforting voice giving us hope for a better world.