GUEST COLUMN.

Not long ago, I went through some medical treatments and couldn’t do anything but watch movies. So I started working my way through the greatest westerns ever made (and some not-so-great). There are some terrific lessons for public administration buried among the bullets that were flying back and forth.

1.                  Never be trapped by what hasn’t been tried. In the first truly great western, Stagecoach (1939), director John Ford coached a stuntman to jump from a horse, leap onto the lead horses of the stagecoach, get shot (in the cinematic sense), fall between six galloping horses and then under the stagecoach, and end up amid riders trying to chase the stagecoach down.

It was a stunt the likes of which had never been done before, and it scared Ford so much that he would “never shoot that again.” Like almost all westerns of the era, “The film’s attitudes towards Native Americans are unenlightened,” as film credit Roger Ebert later said in a masterpiece of understatement. But Ford demonstrated one of the most important lessons of filmmaking—and public administration: don’t let what hasn’t been done before keep you from trying something that ought to get done.

2.                  Persistence pays.  John Wayne had his breakout role in Stagecoach and returned to work with John Ford again in The Searchers (1956).  In a raid by native Americans (again, a truly pernicious cliché), a young girl is taken away. Wayne plays an old Confederate soldier, Ethan, and he’s determined to bring the girl, his niece Debbie, back home.

Ethan sets off on a years’-long quest to find her, through exquisitely shot scenery and eventually reunites her with her family—although, at the very end of movie, he finds himself standing alone in the doorway as the rest of the family turns to its celebration. But the movie teaches an important lesson: even if it’s a lonely job, persistence pays off.

3.                  Courage counts. In High Noon (1952), Marshal Will Kane (played by Gary Cooper) decides to hang up his spurs when he marries Amy Fowler (played by Grace Kelly). But then he gets word that a vicious outlaw he sent to prison, Frank Miller, has been released and that he’s heading for revenge. Kane is sure that his friends will rally to his side, but he can’t convince a single one to stand with him.

So Kane walks alone in facing the danger. Through his skill and bravery—and with help from his new wife—he takes out Miller.  The townspeople gather in thanks, but Kane drops his badge at his feet and rides off in a carriage with his wife to start a new life. Courage does count.  

4.                  Don’t underestimate the power of female leadership. Women were treated almost as badly as native Americans in the westerns, but that certainly wasn’t the case in Johnny Guitar (1954), where Crawford played the role of Vienna, a tough saloon keeper, who more than holds her own with the local cowpokes. She’s more than equal to Johnny Guitar, her former boyfriend (played by Sterling Hayden).

She finds herself in a battle with Emma Small (played by Mercedes McCambridge) over a man with whom they both once had a relationship, The Dancin’ Kid. That gave Emma all the excuse she needed to rally the cowpokes against Vienna. In the film’s final battle, Emma leads a group of the locals against Vienna, who eventually dispatches her.

It doesn’t happen often in westerns, but in this movie the women run the town, from start to finish

5.                  Make the rule of law the moral center. The West of the westerns was a pretty loud and rowdy place, with law often loosely defined and even more loosely enforced.

In The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), the townspeople get word that someone has murdered one of the local ranchers and stolen his cattle. The sheriff is out of town chasing down another hombre, so the townspeople form a posse and take off in search of the murderer. They find a man, Donald Martin (played by Dana Andrews) and his two companions. They have the cattle but claim to have purchased them from the rancher. The posse, however, is convinced that they’re lying and prepare to hang them. In a last-minute plea, Martin asks to write a goodbye letter to his young wife—and then the posse lynches each of the three men.

A few minutes later, however, and sets the record straight: the rancher wasn’t dead, the ones who shot him had already been arrested, and Martin had actually purchased the cattle legally. The posse ended up back at the saloon, wracked with guilt. One of the men, Gil Carter (played by Henry Fonda) hadn’t taken part in the lynching. He read the letter to everyone else around the bar:

A man just naturally can't take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurtin' everybody in the world, 'cause then he's just not breaking one law but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity. There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience?

The rule of law is a powerful force, pardner.