The Power of Imagination

May 29

Richardson doodle dated May 6, 1970, while serving as Deputy Secretary of State. The probable inspiration for this doodle was Operation Fishhook, a U.S. and South Vietnamese assault on North Vietnamese and Viet Cong staging areas in Cambodia taking place at this time (April 29-June 30, 1970).

It would be difficult to find a better personification of political imagination in the second half of the 20th century than President Gerald R. Ford’s ambassador to Great Britain and Secretary of Commerce Elliot Richardson (1920-1999).[1]

Widely remembered, both for his principled resignation as Richard Nixon’s attorney general during Watergate, and for his broad government experience—from Dwight Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush—his life is a testament to the importance of political imagination.[2]

One of his early childhood memories was that of Marguerite Brown, the governess who helped raise the three Richardson boys after the death of their mother. Her “strongest criticisms of other people were reserved for those whom she regarded as lacking in imagination,” reflected Richardson. “The more I have seen of life and government, and of the problems besetting the world, the more I am struck by the importance of the power of imagination.”[3]

Those who have observed and written about Richardson took note of this belief in the power of imagination. Emphasizing this point, Kenneth W. Thompson wrote in a Nixon anthology, “Perhaps a one sentence introduction is to say that Elliot Richardson [was among] a handful of Americans who contributed selflessly and with imagination to the tasks of American government in critical periods of our history.”[4] Conservative philosopher Russell Kirk once said, “Mr. Richardson distinctly thinks for himself … if anyone could restore some imagination and order to the blundering Executive Force (under either Republican or Democratic administrations), Richardson can.”[5] Christopher Lydon, who reported on Richardson for years, believed that his “conventional exterior masks an independent imagination.”[6]

During his tenure as ambassador to the Law of the Sea treaty negotiations, Richardson delivered the commencement address at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. In granting an honorary degree to Richardson, he was recognized as an individual who “has exhibited intelligence, imagination, vitality, and courage … and has used his mastery of the complexity of foreign policy, his keen intellect, and his superlative administrative skill in the service of the United States in the community of nations.”[7]

In his book, Reflections of a Radical Moderate, Richardson wrote, “Our imaginations can help us to anticipate the future in the same way that they can make the past come alive or enlarge our comprehension of the present” and that “imagination’s capacity to grasp reality can be trained by use.”[8] Previously, in The Creative Balance, Richardson discussed how to strengthen the two-party system, saying, “this requires a far higher priority for ideas, imagination, and issues than this country has seen for a long time [emphasis his].[9]

Problem-solving was one of Richardson’s most celebrated traits. According to one of the best profiles on Richardson, Tad Szulc observed that he was “an obsessive problem-solver on every level. Sometimes it looks as if no problem, no matter how intractable it may be, is enough to satisfy Richardson’s hunger.”[10] A 2009 Harvard thesis stated that “Richardson relished the opportunity to solve public problems that had defied solution.”[11] Another study commented on Richardson’s “devotion to objective analysis and problem solving.”[12]

This creativity was not only for the workplace. Richardson, a philosophy major at Harvard, was an accomplished artist; when Richardson died, his brother George wrote a memorial listing five traits: scholar, soldier, artist, statesman and thinker.[13] Family friend Roger Tory Peterson, author of the famous bird field guide, taught young Richardson drawing and painting. According to Richardson, Peterson “taught us about the use of our senses, the role of our imaginations, and the love of beauty in all its forms …”[14] Richardson drew cartoons for the Harvard Lampoon, “imaginatively, with intricate design and subtle pen strokes,” observed biographer Donald Carr.[15] Richardson went on to paint watercolors and even created his own official cabinet portrait following his tenure as Commerce secretary—as a cost-savings gesture.

Yet, it was his doodling that manifested itself in Richardson’s workplace and became a trait often reported by the press.

The New Yorker interviewed Richardson while he was serving as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, capturing his creative nature. The embassy residence was decorated with six landscapes by Richardson, three of them completed during a recent trip to Scotland. In the interview, Richardson discussed his painting, shared some of his poetry—including a sonnet he wrote in France during World War II—and his on-going book project (The Creative Balance) in addition to his official duties as ambassador. It was his doodling, however, that made the biggest impression:

“Though we had listened to what he had been saying, our attention had been captured by what he had been doing,” wrote the singular reporter, using the editorial ‘we.’ “We had never seen such intensive dedicated doodling. Each drawn line seemed to be as carefully considered as each spoken word … The effort appeared to require complete concentration on the scratch pad, thus severing visual contact and hence upsetting the creative balance, so to speak, of normal conversation.”[16]

Richardson, who listed politics as his career goal in his 1941 Harvard yearbook, believed that politics “is the most difficult of the arts and the noblest of professions.”[17] He demonstrated his talents in this area repeatedly, with imagination in both elected and appointed posts.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-2023), a recipient of the Elliot Richardson Prize for Excellence in Public Service in March 2004, quoted Richardson a few months later in an essay on public service: “Imagination is the only tool we have with which we can rise beyond reality, beyond the reach of our own immediate perception.”[18]

Notes:

1 See the author’s “Documenting a Ford Administration Legacy,” Ford Leadership Forum, Feb. 6, 2025. https://fordforum.org/2025/02/06/documenting-a-ford-administration-legacy/.

2 Political imagination is defined as “the ability to envision new and creative ways to make the political system work for ordinary people and to ask ‘what if’ questions,” David Hubert, Attenuated Democracy: A Critical Introduction to U.S. Government and Politics, Salt Lake Community College’s Pressbooks, 2020, p. 8. Hubert uses this ‘what if’ approach throughout this free online textbook to encourage students to use their political imagination.

3 Richardson, The Uses and Limitations of Law, Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture, 1981, p.9.

4 Thompson (editor), “The Paradox: Elliot L. Richardson,” The Nixon Presidency: Twenty-Two Intimate Perspectives of Richard M. Nixon, 1987.

5 Quoted in Szulc, “The Smile on the Face of Elliot Richardson,” Esquire, July 1974, p. 138.

6 Lydon, “Richardson and Justice: Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit,” The New York Times Biographical Edition, May 20, 1973, p. 883.

7 Delivered on June 10, 1978, quoted in Selected Speeches of Elliot Richardson, Tom Vance (editor), 2017, p.59.

8 Richardson, Reflections of a Radical Moderate, 1996, p. 129.

9 Richardson, The Creative Balance, 1976, p. 97.

10 Szulc, p. 77.

11 Vivek Viswanathan, Crafting the Law of the Sea, 2009, p. 10.

12 Michael Koncewicz, They Said No To Nixon, 2018, p. 117.

13 Unitarian-Universalist World, March/April, 2002, p. 45.

14 Richardson, “Rara Avis: Roger Tory Peterson, Naturalist and Artist,” Yankee, September 1995, p. 50.

15 Carr, Elliot Richardson: A Man of Principle, 2024, p. 46.

16 The New Yorker, “Ambassador” (author not credited), Nov. 10, 1975, p. 40.

17 Richardson, Reflections of a Radical Moderate, p. 69.

18 Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, ,” Government Executive, June 1, 2004, “A Bridge to Service: It’s Up to Civil Servants to Tell Young People About the Great Opportunities to Change Lives and the Nation:” https://www.govexec.com/magazine-advice-and-dissent/magazine-advice-and-dissent-viewpoint/2004/06/a-bridge-to-service/16874/?oref=ge-author-river. The Elliot Richardson Prize for Excellence in Public Service, originally established under the auspices of the Council for Excellence in Government, has been hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration since 2010. https://napawash.org/award-programs/the-elliot-l-richardson-prize