Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.

The line frames leadership as a moral vocation rather than a technique: “duty, honor, country” invokes a traditional civic-military code in which personal ambition is subordinated to service and national responsibility. By adding “character,” Bush emphasizes inner qualities—integrity, steadiness, and reliability—as the foundation of public authority. The final clause, “listening from time to time,” introduces a corrective to command-and-control leadership: even leaders who must decide and act should periodically attend to counsel, criticism, and the lived experience of others. The juxtaposition suggests an ideal of principled decisiveness tempered by humility and receptiveness.