Fred Smith

A LITTLE EXTRA EFFORT:
HARD WORK AND STRAIGHT TALK
IN A SOUND BITE WORLD

Reviewed by Patrick Killough


  I. for amazon.com

Reviewer's Rating of A LITTLE EXTRA EFFORT: * * * * FOUR STARS

Title of this Review: A Campaign Autobiography In A Class Unto Itself

In 1750 Caspar Schmit migrated from Ingelheim, Germany to Philadelphia. His North Carolina descendant Fred Smith was born in 1942. A North Carolina State Senator since 2003, he declared in March 2007 his candidacy to be elected Governor in November 2008. In pursuit of this new goal he wrote A LITTLE EXTRA EFFORT: HARD WORK AND STRAIGHT TALK IN A SOUND BITE WORLD. The fast-paced campaign autobiography makes Fred Smith known to voters of North Carolina, most of whom may never have heard of him. Before he decided on this new campaign, Mr Smith calculated the odds.
"I will face questions about every part of my life. Even if we're victorious, 40-some percent of the state's voters will still not like me enough to give me their vote" (p. 145).

In 2001 Fred Smith entered political office: a four-year term as an elected County Commissioner for Johnston County, NC. He sees his qualifications for increasingly responsible positions as simple and evolutionary:

"My qualifications are that I have met a payroll and raised five children"
(p. 125).

Senator Smith has written a short, unusually frank and self-critical autobiography. Since he has contended less than seven years in the arena of elective politics, politics rather surprisingly, but from his point of view rightly, takes up little space: only the final 55 pages of a slim 168 page paperback. He confesses that he is neither spell-binding orator nor theoretician of power. Where other political conservatives base themselves on Ayn Rand, Fred Smith invokes Presidential models, the personal examples of great leaders like the Roosevelts, Eisenhower and Reagan. His source of spiritual strength is the Southern Baptist Church. His views of business leadership replicate those of Jim Collins in his 2001 book GOOD TO GREAT: WHY SOME COMPANIES MAKE THE LEAP ... AND OTHERS DON'T.

Not surprisingly what makes both good companies and good American States great is quite simply  "a little extra effort!"

As credible autobiography, A LITTLE EXTRA EFFORT will appeal outside North Carolina. The political and social ideas are not new. But they are presented simply, straight from the shoulder and with a sense of why and how they have worked for the author.

A LITTLE EXTRA EFFORT can be read for some of the same reasons that people enjoy another simple book, John Bunyan's 1678 masterpiece, PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Senator Smith's autobiography tells the slow coming of age tale of a gifted and tenacious, single-minded but plodding achiever whose life slowly gathers positive momentum despite setbacks. By far the worst blow was his 1980 divorce from his mentally ill first wife and mother of four of his five children. Smith is blunt both about his personal failings and also about how he learns from his mistakes and how he with difficulty tames tendencies toward autocracy and harshness.

Fred Smith's earliest years were in a Methodist orphanage where his parents  were employees. He went to Baptist Wake Forest University on an athletic scholarship, playing good but not great football and baseball. He took his law degree from the same institution and served four years during the Viet-Nam war in the Army JAG. He then practiced law in and around the North Carolina State capital, Raleigh, and dabbled in real estate. Mr Smith broadened his reach,  taking up cattle ranching and farming and real estate development. He acquired the habit of wearing cowboy boots. At one point, as he overextended himself financially, he might reasonably have declared bankruptcy but, with the help of bankers who believed in him, rode out bad times for the American economy and created a successful, multi-faceted and still thriving family business.

Smith's managerial and entrepreneurial philosophy evolved  over time from the autocratic one of his father's generation to a more consultative, employee-respecting one. In the North Carolina legislature he was appalled by one-party rule and the failure of the dominant Democrats to make generous use of his own talents and those of other Republicans. Once upon a time he himself might have behaved the same way. But he had mellowed, having learnt his lessons in the school of hard knocks in the business arena. The Lord had humbled him through his failures and he had become a better man, devoted (though when he found time from a hard-driving, detail-immersed business life is hard to imagine) to his second wife and children.

This book grows on you. Fred Smith comes across as a human, all-too-human, unpretentious Horatio Alger hero, a man of solid talents propelled by an iron will and discipline. He admits his faults, including a tin ear for the viewpoints and needs of some near and dear, but shrugs off failure and marches onward with ever growing insights. If Fred Smith can do it, so might any of us! A book refreshingly unlike any other campaign autobiography.
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