In this section I will look at two leaders who, despite great differences of character, circumstance and time, have some interesting things in common (in addition to unusual height). Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles de Gaulle were highly ambitious and intellectually dominating men with early intimations of individual greatness, each believing him-self, though in very different ways, a chosen instrument of fate. For both, too, personal ambition was subsumed within and put at the service of an ideal which gave it expression and meaning while simultaneously placing restraints upon it. In each case the ideal was connected to the historical destiny of a particular nation, for Lincoln to the United States as the testing ground of democratic government on earth, and for de Gaulle to a semi-mystical notion of France as the exemplary nation among nations, the nation par excellence. Because of this, the main thrust of the politics of each was similarly aimed at preserving the ideal they believed their nation embodied. Despite their political restraint, both men were at times suspected of dictatorial tendencies and tyrannical intentions. Both were consummate political operators, skilled at the kind of maneuvers and obfuscations that wrong-foot or neutralize opponents. Each came to understand the political possibilities of burgeoning media outlets – the press in Lincoln's time, radio and television in de Gaulle's – and each proved highly adept in their use. Both were (or became) deeply interested in military strategy and appeared to have a gift for it.