The nation was desperate for leadership.
His improbable but swift ascent to fill the vacuum was as dramatic as it was unlikely. Humanly speaking, it was propelled solely at the behest of a praying mother.
Outside of her influence, the rest of his family’s situation was, to say the least, dysfunctional. In fact, the lessons that he learned there, as well as what he saw in his only other spiritual mentor, may have factored into the shortcomings that were evident in his own family later in life—the only ailments that hampered a career which otherwise succeeded all reasonable expectations.
