History, not politicians or media, puts credit where credit is due

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

President Harry S Truman is generally cited as the author of that statement, though President Ronald Reagan’s update 40 years later — “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you do not care who gets the credit” — also puts him in the running and, really, is the statement so profoundly original that it’s not unlikely to have antecedents going back centuries?

It of course does not matter who said it. History knows. And what matters is that the statement is demonstrably true. It has been proven countless times throughout history and probably in each of our own daily lives that success is most easily and satisfactorily achieved when the people involved in a project are focused first on the goals of the project and not on who will get credit for achieving them.

But the theme has been somewhat embarrassingly prominent in the lead-up to and aftermath of Wednesday’s announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the 15-month war that began with the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.

President-elect Donald Trump was taking credit for the agreement even before it was announced, declaring on his Truth Social app that the deal “could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November.” In his press conference announcing the deal Wednesday afternoon, President Joe Biden pointedly emphasized that representatives of the incoming Trump administration were directly involved with his own administration’s representatives negotiating the agreement, but went on to stress, after reporters repeated Trump’s statements, that the agreement was “exactly the same” as he himself had proposed as far back as early last year.

And outside of American politics, others were happy to shoulder their way into the picture. Even leaders of Qatar, the Middle Eastern nation that mediated the talks along with Egypt, spoke of the nation’s “humanitarian duty” to help end the war.

Suddenly, all the people breaking their arms patting themselves on the back began overshadowing the undeniable good news that there might actually soon be an end to the fighting and suffering. And they laid the groundwork for what is surely to be a long and tiresome media debate in the coming weeks and months.

Not surprisingly, considering that press conferences are more often acts of theater than true news events, Biden’s press conference Wednesday ended on that note. As the president turned to leave, a Fox News reporter yelled, “Who in the history books gets credit for this, Mr. President, you or Trump?” The president turned to reply, “Is that a joke?” and then departed. Within an hour Fox News had the story of that exchange with the coverage on its website under the headline “Biden balks when asked if Trump deserves credit for Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal: 'Is that a joke?' ”

The one undisputable truth in the reporter’s question is that it will be history that levels authoritative credit for the achievement — not Fox News, not CNN, not Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, not Benjamin Netanyahu, not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Jerusalem Post or Al Jazeera or me or you or any other individual or organization. History will look back on the agreement, as it does with all major events, with its own less passionate eye.

And, if history is any true judge, the answer regarding credit for the accord will be that a host of participants played a role.

Success, if success it proves to be, came because, whatever their individual reasons, all the parties decided, for a moment at least, to share credit. It’s only afterward that they each now try to claim it for themselves. As they do so, and as the pontificating and punditry begins to swell, the rest of us should sit back and rest confidently in the knowledge that we know better.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His new book “Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.