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For all the nattering and chattering about how President Donald Trump and his minions are bullying individuals, organizations, and institutions, and for all the nattering and chattering about how these individuals, organizations and institutions are or are not resisting the administration, truth is that those being bullied have tended not to fight but to fold.

For this there are many reasons, many of which are good. Still, it’s become evident that even some of America’s strongest organizations and institutions have already been weakened by the strongman in the White House. Perhaps the most obvious examples are higher education as exemplified by one of the nation’s great universities, Columbia, and one of the nation’s top-ranking law firms, Paul Weiss. The details do not concern us here. What does concern us, or it should is that both powerhouses are perceived to have caved under pressure from the president.

Given that one of my mantras is “leadership from bad to worse,” it’s no sweat for me to predict that unless and until it is stopped, none of the bullying will get better. It will, inevitably, get worse.  More colleges and universities will be targeted by the administration and more law firms will be attacked by it. The more people try to appease and accommodate leaders who lust for power the more leaders who lust for power will swallow them whole. And then, history testifies, they will go on to the next.

What is to be done? Get smart. Above all, get organized. Given the administration is powerful, if the powerless want to fight to win they must, instead of fighting each other, unite to fight their common enemy.

One example: we now know the main reason Paul Weiss accommodated the administration is because it feared that if it did not, it would be badly weakened by the competition. By other large law firms reportedly waiting in the wings to exploit the moment, to poach Paul Weiss clients. Which is of course exactly what the White House was counting on. First divide, then conquer. But this time-honored tactic works only when it works. Only when those under attack instead of uniting divide.

Last month I published a post titled “For Followers Who Want to FIGHT Not Follow.” (Link below.) It had seven suggestions, seven tips for individuals and institutions who want to take on those with more power than they. If one stands out it is that those who fight in tandem are far, far more likely to win than those who fight alone. Woe unto those unable or unwilling to learn this simple lesson.

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For Followers Who Want to FIGHT Not Follow

The man meets moment theory of leadership – which is not so much a coherent theory as a free-floating idea – goes back a century or more. (Hence the word “man.”) It claims that great leaders are forged less by their traits than by the fit between their traits and the times in which they live. If this fit is extraordinarily good, great leadership can and sometimes does emerge.

The example that’s often used is that of Winston Churchill. In the years leading up to World War II, as a member of parliament Churchill warned repeatedly that Adolf Hitler was a menace to Europe, including to Great Britain. Notwithstanding the power of his argument, and the eloquence with which he articulated it, neither it nor he got any traction. More specifically, Churchill got no traction until the circumstance changed. Until September 1, 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland and Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. During the two-years between 1938 and 1940, when Churchill became prime minister, it was not he who changed. What changed was the context within which he was situated.

Same now. Same now as America’s longtime political curmudgeon – marginalized for most of his political life – moves from sideshow to center stage. Along with Representative Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez, Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders is suddenly killing it. Drawing enormous crowds wherever and whenever they appear, it’s apparent they are tapping into the feelings of Americans furious at their president but lost without a leader to personify their anxiety.

To be clear, Sanders is not new to the national stage. He became a familiar figure in 2016 when he himself ran for president. Moreover, when he ran against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries he had a considerable constituency. But thereafter, he was, again, marginalized, on the outside not the inside of American politics, presumably permanently.

Until now. Now – though his face is more deeply lined, his posture somewhat stooped, and his hair whiter and wispier – his voice still rings and, more to the point, his message remains unchanged. Now as always he rails against capitalism in its current incarnation. And he advocates for just about everything historically associated with the American left, including taxing the rich, strong unions, raising the minimum wage, and Medicare for all.

Moreover, Sanders’s anger is as palpable as it ever was – made the more real, the more visceral, because of what he is now angry about and who he is now angry at. Now his opposition is to an oligarchical administration and to the man who controls it. To an American president who embodies everything – politically and personally – that Sanders has been raging against for decades.

Man meets moment. A theory of leadership that at the present is in practice.

Since the beginning of time – well, more precisely, since 2003 – Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been the leader of Turkey. First, he was prime minister, then he became president with unprecedented powers. Erdogan is so perfect an example of a leader who went from bad to worse – in his case from democrat to autocrat – he is one of four featured in my recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers*

In the book I trace the progression from when Erdogan was young and upcoming, when Turks had reason to hope he would govern as a democrat, to years later, when it became clear he would do no such thing. Instead of being a centrist democrat he is now what he has been for years: an unmitigated and unrepentant autocrat. Given Erdogan is a strongman who, typical of his type, has an insatiable lust for power, the only way his reign will end is if, and when someone(s) or something(s) ends it.

A few days ago, Erdogan invoked what The Economist referred to as “the nuclear option.” At his instruction Turkish authorities arrested the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who happens, oh by the way, to be the president’s most likely opponent in the next election. Erdogan has, then, taken his lust for power to a new level. It’s one thing to use state institutions and the security services to undermine a political rival. It’s quite another thing to have the police remove him forcibly from his home and indefinitely detain him.

Meantime, the value of the Turkish lira has dropped, the Turkish market has slid, Turkey’s central bank has jacked up interest rates, and there are protests in the streets. So, what now? Given the government has already charged Imamoglu with corruption and terrorism, it might want to retract, or to reconsider, or to provide evidence. Then again it – Erdogan – might not. Leaders who lust are bottomless pits. Which means that Erdogan will stop grabbing power and then still more power only when his hands are tied.**

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*Oxford University Press, 2024.

** Barbara Kellerman and Todd Pittinsky, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

&. 

The title of this post is the subtitle of The Presidential Character, a book written by James David Barber originally published in 1972. For many years Barber was a political scientist on the faculties at Yale and Duke whose repute depended largely on this volume. His underlying idea was that if you knew the candidate’s “character,” you could predict what type of president he would be. Then you could and would vote accordingly.

Barber’s use of the word “character” was always problematical. He used it to describe the way the president “orients himself toward life.” Still, he might just as well have substituted the word “personality” for “character,” though of course “personality” is, like “character,” vague. The overarching point was in any case prediction, considered of supreme importance because we voted, Barber wrote, in conditions of “immense uncertainty.”  

To simplify what would otherwise be an inordinately complicated task, Barber developed a typology that identified four different character types. These types were determined early in life but they were enduring. It was assumed that character did not change – therefore once a candidate was identified as, say, an active-negative type, he would remain that type.

That though was then. This is now and now times are different. Now we have an abundance of information, enough in any case to predict performance in the White House without invoking Barber’s typology or undertaking any of the heaving lifting his typologizing required.

The second presidency of Donald J. Trump is an outlier because the first presidency of Donald J. Trump itself was a predictor. Not a perfect predictor, but a strong indicator of how he would be and what he would do if he won a second term. Additionally, there were other predictors, countless ones, freely available to anyone who paid attention during the interregnum. While Trump was out of office – during the presidency of Joe Biden – Trump became more of what he already was. Moreover, the spectacle was nonstop. Old media and new could not then, just as they cannot now, get enough of Trump. Nor could he, can he, get enough of them.

I’m not saying that Trump has no secrets, I am saying that for the better part of a decade he has been close to an open book. I am saying that no typology was necessary to predict his performance in the White House. I am saying that the glut of information has made The Presidential Character obsolete.

Here are just five examples of what we knew in advance about a second Trump presidency. Each was published at least six months before last November’s election, and each was in a newspaper or magazine of national repute.

• “Trump Fully Devours the G.O.P. Establishment.”
• “Many U.S. Business Leaders Have Faith That They Would Find [Trump’s] Second Administration as Congenial as the First. That May Be Dangerously Misguided.”
• “A Trump Dictatorship is Increasingly Inevitable.”
• “The Revenge Presidency.”
• “Climate Denial Will Flourish.”   

So, no reading the tea leaves is necessary anymore. Nor are typologies or in-depth analyses. Now, when the American people vote for president, they know, or they can, what to expect. It’s why, while so many Americans are appalled by the second Trump presidency, so many other Americans are entirely satisfied. Up to now they are getting what they wanted, what they expected, what they voted for.

Which is why this recent headline: “Trump Notches All Time High Approval Rating as Dems Hit New Low.”*

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*Based on the results of an NBC poll released two days ago.

I’ve been interested in France’s leader, Emmanuel Macron, for years.* Not long after he became president (in 2017) he ran into political trouble – which is why he has long struck me as emblematic of what ails leadership and followership in Western democracies. Specifically, he’s been an extremely smart and accomplished liberal leader during a time when even the best and brightest are undermined by their liberal followers.

Does he walk on water.? He does not. Macron has his flaws, one of which is he’s off-putting. Much of the French electorate considers him arrogant: they think he thinks himself better than they. Maybe. But has he done right by France? Has Macron done a good job leading the French republic under consistently difficult circumstances? He has.

Until a few weeks ago, Macron was seen as nothing so much as a lame duck, destined to ride out his remaining years in office as unwanted as unloved. But things change. What has changed in this instance is not the leader, Macron. It is the world within which he is president of France. It has shifted so quickly and dramatically that he, who for years was disdained for being arrogant and aloof, is now being hailed as a visionary.

President Donald Trump is threatening the world order – especially the decades-long military, economic, and cultural alliance between the United States and Europe. In consequence, European leaders nearly across the board and, crucially, the French themselves, are changing their tune. They now see that Macron was right all along. Right to warn that Europe should become much more independent of the United States. Right to warn that Europe should develop “strategic autonomy” from the United States. Right to warn that Europe might someday have to defend itself against an aggressive Russia – and that it could not and should not rely on the United States to to take on the task. Macron has been so right about this for so long that now he’s seen as prescient.

Macron may be many things – but dumb is not among them. So, he’s seizing the moment to try to lead a fragmented if not fractured Europe. With Britain still hobbled by Brexit, and Germany weighed down by a chancellor so new he is not yet officially confirmed, Macron is the only leader in Europe positioned to take on the herculean task of bringing order to a continent in disorder. And… of navigating between an extremely aggressive Russian president on the one side and an extremely mercurial American president on the other.

Macron is rising to the challenge, playing the part of organizer, mediator, and pacifier. Whether he will be given leeway to lead is unclear. What is clear is that he cannot be a leader without followers. Unless Europeans acknowledge that there is work to be done, and that work does not get done unless some are willing to lead while others are willing to follow.

The future of the European project is uncertain. But Emmanuel Macron has already proven himself. He has been a good leader. He is ethical as opposed to unethical. And he is effective as opposed to ineffective. It’s that simple.

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*https://barbarakellerman.com/another-leader-cut-down-to-size/

*https://barbarakellerman.com/french-followers-eat-their-young/

RAGE AGAINST ELON MUSK TURNS TESLA INTO A TARGET

Tesla’s charging stations were set ablaze near Boston on Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight on Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.

                                                       New York Times, March 8, 2025

TESLA SHARES PLUNGE 15%, SUFFERING STEEPEST DROP IN FIVE YEARS

Since peaking at $479.86 on December 17, Tesla shares have lost more than 50% of their value, wiping out upward of $800 billion in market cap. Monday marked the stock’s seventh worst day on record.

                                                      CNBC, March 10, 2025

How do the powerless take out their wrath against the powerful? Sometimes by engaging in violence. Sometimes by making their fury known by violent acts deliberately intended to destroy, literally or metaphorically. The destruction has two purposes. First to do harm, second to draw attention. The second is as important as the first because without drawing attention to their cause, their cause will never be addressed.

Franz Fanon was born in Martinique, educated in France, and buried in Algeria. He studied philosophy, trained as a psychiatrist, but is best known for what he did toward the end of his short life. He became a militant political activist, primarily against imperialism, against colonialism. In his famous book, The Wretched of the Earth, he extolled the use of violence as a political tool, specifically to be used by those without power against those with.

Decolonization is the encounter between two congenitally antagonistic forces …. This explains why decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives. For the last can be first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between the two protagonists.     

If Fanon’s words seem to you too radical, too violent, if you dismiss them too quickly as the words of an extremist, how about this language, from none other than Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela? (He shared the prize in 1993 with his white South African counterpart, F. W. de Klerk.) This was part of a speech Mandela gave in a South African courtroom in 1964, just before being imprisoned for over 27 years.  

It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle…. We did so not because we desired such a course but solely because the Government had left us with no other choice….

Even America’s apostle of civil disobedience, Martin Luther King, Jr., made clear in his masterful “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” that as a political tactic, nonviolence could be counted on for only so long.   

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed…. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the depths of despair.  

None of what I write is to advocate violence. Neither is it to predict that the United States will become more violent than it already is. Instead it is to point out that as history testifies, when the powerless feel ruthlessly and relentlessy oppressed by the powerful, when the former sees no other recourse, violence can be seen as a necessary political tool. Which is how Tesla became a target.   

About a year ago I posted a piece titled, “A Radical Relook at the Gender Gap.”* “We pretend that differences between genders do not exist, or that they do not pertain,” I wrote. But they do. “Women’s minds, and their bodies, impact what they (we) want to do and can do their entire professional lives.” This includes both women’s ambition to lead – and their ability to lead.

How could it be otherwise? How could menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, breastfeeding and menopause, and the signs and symptoms associated with each, have no impact whatsoever on why still so few women are in top leadership roles? This is not, obviously, to suggest that other factors do not pertain. But it is to insist that having a conversation about gender and leadership without taking account of the physical and psychological differences between women and men is ridiculous.

Still, in general, the subject remains taboo. When I recently asked an ambitious young (in her thirties) woman friend if she would ever tell her boss that she couldn’t make a meeting because she had menstrual cramps, she looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. So out of the realm of possibility was the idea that she would provide what she considered personal, and potentially detrimental, information.

Nevertheless, I predict that in the next few years will be a cultural change – one more conducive to women speaking truth to power. To women being more open and honest about how they feel personally and how this affects them professionally.

How can it be otherwise when at least in America and Europe women are becoming less inhibited than they were about, to take one example, menopause. In the last few years menopause has gone from being largely a private matter to one more freely discussed. Among other signs a spate of new books that have joined an “expanding shelf of menopause-related publications, among them a pair of best sellers.”** Nor are most of these books by bystanders; they are by and about women who professionally are highly successful but who were “blindsided by the onset of an inevitable hormonal change.”  

None of this is to say that discussing menopause is entirely new. Rather it is to point out that the context has changed: that our culture is far franker than it used to be, and that whatever is said can be amplified countless times over by social media.

The signs and symptoms of menopause, which range from minor to major, can last for up to a decade. This decade – let’s say between the ages of 45 to 55 – happens to coincide with when career trajectories reach their peak. How is it possible, then, for menopause and leadership to be in no way related? How is it possible, then, for women who want to lead menopause is never a factor?

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*https://barbarakellerman.com/a-radical-relook-at-the-gender-gap/

** All quotes in this post are from Rebecca Mead, “If You Can’t Stand the Heat” in The New Yorker, March 10, 2025.

In a piece I posted Monday I pointed out that to some male leaders – specifically to those with authoritarian preferences and proclivities – size matters as much as or even more than anything else. Before you leap to any conclusions, please note that I was referring to the size of their domains, the bigger the better. Case in point: the war in Ukraine is all about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin wanting greatly to expand the size of Russia by annexing Ukraine. Another case in point: President Donald Trump who in last night’s State of the Union speech reiterated his intention to take back the Panama Canal – and somehow to acquire Greenland. (Mercifully he did not repeat his vague but real idea of making Canada the 51^st state.)  

Given that this same State of the Union speech was the longest in presidential history, it’s clear it’s not just overall size that matters, length matters too. Specifically, the length of time that these sorts of leaders can dominate a space, command a room literally and figuratively just by publicly speaking. By publicly speaking far, far longer than usual, forcing those in attendance to, if not pay attention, at least to remain in place. And forcing those not in attendance to consider that by not knowing what their supreme leader said they will miss out.

In 2024 Putin’s State of the Union speech lasted two hours, which for him is typical. In 2017 China’s President Xi Jinping gave a speech that lasted three-and-a-half hours. (The Guardian commented he was testing “eyeballs and bladders.”) But neither holds a candle to another Strongman, Cuba’s legendary Fidel Castro. Castro famously spoke endlessly. He delivered the longest speech ever at the United Nations, clocking in at four hours and 29 minutes. But his personal best was in Cuba, where he once gave a speech that lasted the better part of a day – seven hours and 30 minutes.   

Just like bigger is considered better, longer is considered better. Longer is considered better by leaders who have insatiable appetites for more of everything than they already have.

Think Trump knows that the Gettysburg Address was 272 words? Think Trump knows that it was delivered by President Abrham Lincoln in less than three minutes? Think Trump knows that Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address was 701 words? Think Trump knows that Lincoln delivered it in under seven minutes? Probably not.

Size matters to leaders – especially to male leaders, though only to some male leaders.

In an earlier post titled “Male Leaders” (link below), I pointed out that even eons after humans separated from other great apes, mostly it was males who led. I further pointed out that mostly it was males who sought to lead, to control, to dominate not just their own groups and organizations but others as well.   

This particularly pertains to leaders at the national level where proxies serve as warriors. National leaders have at their disposal militaries, intelligence services, and weapons, many of which are deadly. So, in our own time it is male leaders at the national level who are most likely to emulate their great ape analogues.

While in the past males were prone to aggression either because they wanted more sex or because they wanted more territory, now sex is less of a factor. Not only is it much more freely available than it used to be, but procreation, having as many offspring as possible, is less desirable.

But the appetite to acquire more territory continues unabated. Leaders, though only some male leaders, continue to want not only to dominate their own domains but to acquire other ones as well, all of which they then can control.

Safe to say that some male leaders feel more powerful and successful – more manly – if the domain they dominate is larger as opposed to smaller. Enlargement, expansion, and extension are good. Stasis, not speak of shrinkage, are bad.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is an obvious example of the syndrome. Three years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. Why? To acquire it, to swallow the country whole so that Russia could get significantly larger and Putin could feel significantly more virile.

Another example is China’s president Xi Jinping. Why did China undertake its Belt and Road initiative, considered one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever? To gain geopolitical and military influence in far flung regions of the world including Africa, Oceana, and Latin America. Why did China seek to reassert control over Hong Kong? To make clear to Hong Kongers as well as to the rest of the world that the island was an integral part of China. Why does the West worry that someday not far into the future China will compel Taiwan to become part of the mainland? Because Xi has made clear he considers Taiwan to be part of China, which is to say it has no business really functioning as an independent state.     

Finally, there is President Donald Trump, who recently floated the idea that Canada should become the 51^st state. Who recently indicated his interest in purchasing Greenland from Denmark. And who recently suggested that under American leadership Gaza become “the Riviera” of the Middle East. All of these and more gestures toward American enlargement, American expansion. All of these and more indicators that if only the United States could grow in size so, as Trump sees it, he would grow in stature.

The bigger the better. To some male leaders – specifically to those with authoritarian preferences and proclivities – size matters as much as or even more than anything else. Lebensraum anyone?

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Male Leaders

          Yesterday’s Oval Office shouting match – between the President and Vice President of the United States on the one side and a foreign head of state on the other – was unprecedented. It was certainly unprecedented as a performance that anyone anywhere who chooses to see it, can see. It was yet another apparent astonishment in a series of apparent astonishments – all of which materialized in the last one month and one week.

          The changes wrought by Donald Trump have been, no doubt about it, dizzying. In a stunningly short period of time, he imprinted himself not just on American politics but on world politics. Never in America – and not all that often anyplace else – has one leader done so much so fast to redraw the landscape not merely in minor ways but in major ones.

No need for me to summarize what Times columnist Peter Baker already did.  Here’s what he wrote about Trump’s revision of the national order:

The news media is being pressured. Lawmakers have been tamed. Career officials deemed disloyal are being fired. Prosecutors … are targeting perceived [Trump] adversaries and dropping cases against allies or others who do his bidding. Billionaire tycoons who once considered themselves masters of the universe are prostrating themselves before him. Judges [who block him] are being threatened with impeachment. The uniformed military … has now been purged of its highest- ranking officers and lawyers. And a president who calls himself “the king,” ostensibly in jest, is [suggesting] that he may try to stay in power beyond the limits of the Constitution.  

And here’s what Baker wrote about Trump’s revision of international order:

Mr. Trump this week had the United Nations vote against a …resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine….Among the countries that Mr. Trump joined in siding with Russia? North Korea, Belarus, and Sudan. Those who stood against? Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan and most of the rest of the world. It would be hard to think of a starker demonstration of how radically Mr. Trump is recalibrating America’s place in the world after barely a month back in office. He is positioning the United States in the camp of the globe’s chief rogue states in opposition to the countries that have been American’s best friends since World War II or before.

What to make of what’s happened – what’s happened so fast it’s difficult to make sense of it? To answer the question, I turn once again to the leadership system. Leadership is not, as I often observe, about single individuals. About leaders in high places. Instead, leadership is a system with three parts, each of which is equally important: 1) leaders; 2) followers; and 3) contexts.

Why does this matter? Because it explains the otherwise inexplicable. It deciphers the otherwise indecipherable.

Here’s the truth of it. Donald Trump, the leader, is behaving in ways that were altogether predictable. First, as I spelled out in my last book, unless it is stopped, bad leadership always, without exception, gets worse. Second, Trump’s politics, policies, selections and decisions all were foretold by Trump himself. Trump’s second presidential term is nothing other than him doing what he said he would do.

Further, Trump’s followers are behaving in ways that were altogether predictable. His tribe, MAGA admirers and supporters, remain on board. And his team – acolytes who include but are not limited to Republican members of Congress and members of the Trump administration – remains abjectly loyal.

What then was not predictable? We the American people knew, or we should have known what we were getting when we reelected Trump president. And we the American people knew, or we should have known the stuff of which we were made. Specifically, more than half the American electorate voted for Trump for president. Virtually every prominent Republican remains as they were before, under Trump’s thumb. And leaders in other places, such as in American business, higher education, and the media are as they usually are, scared to speak truth to power.

The leader then was known. And so were the followers. What we did not however know was the context. We did not understand how quickly and nearly effortlessly America’s over two-hundred-year-old Constitutional system would buckle. How frail it was, how vulnerable to a single strongman and his slavish, silent followers. How dependent the United States of America has always been and manfiestly still is not so much on the division of powers, or on checks and balances, or on the rule of law, as it is on men and women of democratic disposition and good enough character.

It’s been an awakening as rude as sudden.