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Whoever said Donald J. Trump was not a reader?! Whoever falsely maligned the man? Well…lots of people.

In his bestselling book, Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff described Trump as barely glancing at the written word. “He didn’t process information in any conventional sense,” Wolff wrote. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.” Wolff quotes Trump’s onetime economic adviser, Gary Cohn: “It’s worse even than you can imagine,” Cohn claimed in an email. “Trump won’t read anything – [not] one-page memos, not brief policy papers, nothing.”  

Fake news! Slander! How do I know? I know because it’s obvious that Trump not only read Machiavelli’s The Prince, he’s about memorized it. The Prince is Trump’s gospel, the book in which he fully believes and whose dictates he follows.

The Prince is a primer. A manual, an instruction on leadership originally written for Lorenzo de ’Medici who became Duke of Urbino in 1516. But there’s a reason the book has endured, has been as popular as pertinent for fully five centuries. It’s because, like all great leadership literature, The Prince is two things at once. It is particular and it is universal. It speaks to the situation immediately at hand – and simultaneously it transcends it. The book is a subjective reflection, based on Machiavelli’s own experience as a politician and diplomat, who earlier in his life fell woefully out of favor, to the point of being briefly imprisoned and tortured. At the same time, The Prince is an objective discussion of governance and the nature of the human condition.

More than anything else, the book instructs on the exercise and preservation of power. It is purely pragmatic: The Prince lacks not only a moral code but a legal one. God is absent from the book, so is the rule of law and every other moral compass. The prince is the ruler, the governor, the leader who is responsible to himself and, after a fashion, to his people, but certainly not to a higher power or authority of any sort.*

Machiavelli’s view of humankind is dim, dark. “For one can generally say this of men,” he wrote. “They are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for gain.” When you are good to them, he adds, “they are yours.” But if you are not, beware. “They revolt.” In other words, pay attention. And do what you must to ensure that your subjects – your followers – stay loyal. For if  they don’t you’re done.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, Machiavelli is not what is usually thought of as “Machiavellian.” Rather he is transactional.  He argues it’s in the interest of leaders to be liked, not disliked. To this end, the prince should do what he can to be “held in esteem.” He should “show himself a lover of virtues” – though how “virtues” are defined is debatable – and “prepare rewards” for those who do what he wants them to do. The back of his hand should be reserved only for those who fail to fall into line.

The Prince is equally clear on the prince’s priorities. He should never be casually cruel. But if cruelty is necessary to maintain order and, or, the prince’s power, it could and should be employed. “A prince, therefore, so as to keep his subjects united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more merciful than those who, for the sake of too much mercy, allow disorders to continue.” So, it is much “safer,” Machiavelli maintained, “to be feared than loved.”

I rest my case. Is it not evident that Trump not only read The Prince, he took it to heart? It is.   

But one caveat. Machiavelli’s prince is careful and calculating. As Trump earlier today testified, he is capable even on a day as august as this one is, of being neither. Trump’s first speech, his scripted, formal inaugural speech, was Machiavellian. His second, delivered almost immediately thereafter to a large group of acolytes, was not. It was entirely impromptu, weirdly long, full of falsehoods, and in every way incautious. It suggested that Trump should be feared all right – but not for reasons Machiavelli would sanction.

President Trump, “Sir,” I respectfully request you give The Prince another read.

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This and the preceding paragraph are based in part on comments I made about The Prince in my edited and annotated collection of the great leadership literature. (See Barbara Kellerman, ed. Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence. McGraw-Hill, 2010.)    

Mark and Elon are so competitive, especially but not exclusively with each other, that in 2023 was serious talk about a cage match. Rumor has it that it was Musk who slunk away, fearing that Zuckerberg, known in recent years for being deadly serious about being seriously fit, including in the martial arts, would humiliate him.

Mark and I have not chatted in recent weeks. But it appears that Elon’s incessant proximity to President-elect Donald Trump, and Elon’s relentless megalomania, is getting to Zuck. Driving Zuck so nuts he’s doing what he can to assert that if he’s not King of the Hill at least he’s Co-King.

It’s true: Musk is taking chutzpah to new lengths. The richest man in the world is now wearing, on top of all his other hats, that of foreign policy czar. Musk is interfering – actively, aggressively – in major political battles now not only at home but abroad. In Britain, for example, he has already made clear his electoral agenda: to oust incumbent Prime Minister Kier Starmer and install sooner not later a government decisively to the right of center. And in Germany Musk is doing no less than engineering a break, or trying to, with what had been haloed post-war German tradition: not to swerve too far to the right. German elections will be held in just over a month – with Musk now loudly supporting the far-right chancellor-candidate. Her name is Alice Weidel. She leads the AfD, Germany’s far-right party, recently become the second largest in Germany.

Because Musk’s wealth, Musk’s power, Musk’s visibility, and Musk’s proximity are more than Zuck can handle he’s reinventing himself, again. Zuckerberg is moving to the right where he can. He is bending his knee when he can. And he is becoming as manly as he can – even more manly than he was before, if such a thing is possible.      

What signaling was desired or required happened where the gods wanted it to – on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

First, Mark took on Tim. That would be Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. Mark said that Apple had long ago stopped innovating. Mark said that Apple had “random rules.” And Mark said that Apple was “squeezing people for money.” Is it relevant that Cook was the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to come out as gay (in 2014)? Absolutely, positively, out-of-any-question not.

Second, Zuckerberg opined that corporate America had, heaven forefend, become “culturally neutered.” In virtually the same breath he implied that all that cultural neutering was largely the result of DEI, which was limp, namby-pamby, not the macho stuff of which great companies are made.

Third, Mark credited the “masculine culture” of the martial arts for making a man out of him. A real man as opposed to a fake man. A full man as opposed to only half a man. Having an activity with his male friends during which they all can, literally, “beat each other,” had been good for him, Mark insisted. It was a “positive experience.” Then he added, “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”

Finally, in case anyone missed his claim to being the manliest man on the planet Mark came right out and said it: corporate America should have more “masculine energy.” Right, just what the United States needs. Just what the world needs. More “masculine energy.”

I want to be fair here. During his chitchat with Joe, Mark pointed out that he had been surrounded by women all his life – after all, he has three sisters and three daughters. Mark avowed that “you want women to be able to succeed.” But exactly how they can succeed in a corporate culture that was any more “masculine” than it already is – 90% of Fortune 500 companies are led by men – remained for women to figure out.   

Anyway, we, we women, were beside the point. Mark Zuckerberg talking to Joe Rogan was all about men and masculinity – with Mark strutting his stuff if not literally then sure as shooting figuratively.  

Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman recently wrote a column in which he argued that the future of Europe was in the hands of two men: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Putin, Rachman argued, is a menace to Europe. Trump, in turn, is indifferent to Europe.

This post is not to take issue with Rachman. Rather it is to point out his Carlylean assumption – that men make history.* Not all men, of course, some men. Usually (though not always) powerful men in high posts. Like the presidents of Russia and the United States.     

What do I mean by “Carlylean assumption”? And is the assumption widely shared?

It might seem evident that leaders make a difference. And, to some political philosophers, biographers, and social scientists it is. The quintessential example of someone who believed that “heroes” make history was the mid-nineteenth century English historian and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle. He famously insisted that history is “at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.”

Not that Carlyle had the last word – he did not. Just a few decades later he was challenged by a fellow Britisher, the polymath Herbert Spencer. Spencer dismissed the idea that any single individual made a difference as “utterly incoherent.”

Nor has the “hero in history” debate ever been settled. As distinguished historian Margaret Macmillan wrote just this month (in Foreign Affairs), “Scholars have long been divided on the question of whether leaders shape or are shaped by larger forces.” She goes on to add that while political scientists remain wary of studying individual actors, the evidence suggests that those who “possess exceptional power” can use it to “take their societies and sometimes larger parts of humanity down one road rather than another.”  

Of course, the question is a larger one: it applies not just to political leaders but to corporate leaders, as to all leaders. Moreover, it is more nuanced than it first appears. It’s possible, for example, that a leader as powerful and prominent as Mark Zuckerberg has already left a permantent imprint on the context and culture within which he is situated. It’s equally possible that 99.9% of his corporate contemporaries are essentially insignificant.

The age-old debate will not be settled here. But for those who wonder, for example, how deep will be Trump’s fingerprints, it is as irresistible as unresolvable.

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*Given the dispute has long been referred to as the “hero in history debate,” and given that women have hardly ever held power at the national level, I’m assuming for the purposes of this post that leaders are men. The point, though, pertains of course to leaders everywhere, at all times, and of every gender.

We worry about the eventual impact of artificial intelligence. We worry it will take over the world… maybe in ways that are malevolent.  But, if we’re going to worry about the tyranny of technology, I suggest we do so starting now. No matter where we are in the hierarchy of power – high or low – technology has the potential to do us in.   

In 2012 I published a book titled The End of Leadership. My primary argument was that in many countries around the world leaders were getting weaker and followers stronger.  For this there were, there are, two primary reasons: changes in culture and in technology.

About changes in culture, I wrote, “Once upon a time we simply obeyed orders issued by our superiors, our leaders and managers. Now we are more inclined to challenge them…. The evidence of the decline in respect for authority is everywhere – and everywhere are leaders who labor to lead.”

About changes in technology, I wrote that weaker leaders and stronger followers were also the result of “advances in communications technologies that led to 1) more information, 2) greater self-expression and 3) expanded connection.”  The sequence is important for expanded connection leads logically, if not inevitably, to action. To action in which a few of the powerless can take on many or even all the powerful.     

Should anyone doubt the point about technology I would suggest they look at the front page of Sunday’s New York Times. It featured two articles that make precisely, if only implicitly, the argument that technology is changing the nature of power. This especially applies to democracies in which technology has been free to run rampant, the consequences, including threats to democratic governance, be damned.*

Consider what happened in recent weeks in South Korea. For decades the American foreign policy establishment assumed that South Korea was a stable, virtually unshakable, democracy. But this conventional wisdom has now been upended. This is not to say the country will slide into autocracy. Rather it is to indicate that the government of South Korea is in crisis – and that the fear and loathing was fueled and then fanned by technology. On the one side have been South Korean Youtubers who are persuaded that “North Korean followers” are poisoning South Korea’s country and culture. And on the other side are South Koreans who are convinced the Youtubers are being lured by “online demagoguery,” spread by right-wingers “with the help of social media algorithms.”

Not so very different from what has happened in recent weeks in South Korea has been what has happened in recent years in the United States. Technology has changed the political dynamic: it has weakened establishment leaders and strengthened those who are anti-establishment.

As far back as the 2016 election, Donald Trump used technology to his advantage whereas his Democratic opponent in the race for the White House, Hillary Clinton, did not. One study, by researchers at Columbia University, concluded that Trump had been “highly effective” in his use of social media, specifically to connect with the American people. Unlike Clinton, with her “sober position papers and policy proposals,” Trump forged a “direct and rapid link with the electorate,” absent the delays and edits that for old media were still standard practice.

In plenty of time for the 2024 election Trump and his team did something similar. They used technology to “flip the script.” They managed to turn what was, and was initially expected to remain a crippling political liability – the deadly January 6^th, 2021, attack on the U. S. Capitol – into what is now seen by many as something of a political asset.  As the Times put it, “violent rioters – prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned – somehow became patriotic martyrs.”     

“Somehow” – but how precisely? Again, primarily by using technology, in this case to rewrite history. To claim that it was Trump not Joe Biden who won the 2020 presidential election. It was this lie that fueled the January 6^th attack which, even in its immediate aftermath, was reconfigured to suit Trump. A hard right Republican Congressman promptly tweeted the mayhem had all the “hallmarks of Antifa provocation.” Within hours Fox regurgitated the lie, which then was again repeated, the next morning, by another hard right Republican Congressman. According to the M.I.T Technology Review, within 24 hours the blatant falsehood reverberated online more than 400,000 times.

Lest anyone think that the overweening impact of technology is limited to state actors, and to actors within states, think again. The recent attack by a lone wolf ISIS supporter in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, reminds us that nonstate actors not only use technology, but they also depend on it. It is their lifeline – without an online presence a loosely knit group such as ISIS would not exist or, if it did, its reach would be narrowly confined. How did ISIS connect with Texas born, American citizen and denizen Jabbar? Initially at least, only one way: through online videos and social media platforms.

Technologies are the new power players. Leaders who don’t master them will be mastered by them. Followers who don’t master them will be mastered by them.

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*Some countries – such as those in the European Union – do more to rein in new technologies than others. Additionally, even in the United States, where tech has been nearly entirely unfettered, is some evidence that times are changing, slightly. Jonathan Haidt’s recent book, The Anxious Generation, made the case that social media increase anxiety and depression, especially in teens, which is leading more schools to ban phones from their classrooms.  

The dictionary defines “nostalgia” as a “sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past.”

So, what is “Leader-Nostalgia”? It’s a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a leader from the past. How else to explain the outpouring of admiration – indeed, veneration – of Jimmy Carter?

To point out that the fervid response to his death at age 100 is astonishing is not for a moment to detract from his considerable, and multiple, attributes. No need for me to list them here, neither those evidenced during his brief presidency nor those evidenced during his extended post-presidency.  

But let’s be honest.  While Jimmy Carter was alive, he was, for decades, largely and widely ignored. Notwithstanding Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Prize; his deep, lifelong commitment to public service; his personal and political rectitude; and his disdain for the usual trappings of money and power; Carter always was, and so he remained, an outsider. He was never an insider: not even while he was in the White House, and certainly not after.

For better and worse, he was not part of the Washington establishment. For better and worse, he did not curry favor with the American people. And, for better and worse, once he returned to Georgia, which he did immediately after leaving the White House, he remained for the rest of his life at the margin of our collective consciousness. America moved on. But Carter stayed put. Though for many years he travelled widely, he and his wife and partner, Rosalynn, remained anchored in Plains – physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

JImmy Carter was a throwback – which explains the attention to him in death as not in life. A throwback to a time when America is remembered as being simpler. When America is remembered as being better. And when America’s political leaders are remembered as being much more virtuous than they are today. As much more interested then than now in serving the public as opposed to the self.

Impossible to ignore the timing. Jimmy Carter died on the cusp of Donald Trump becoing President of the United States a second time. To say the two men are at opposite ends of the spectrum – of every spectrum – is to say the obvious. Which is why our leader-nostalgia.

Before I turn to this year’s selection for Follower of the Year, two pieces of business. First, how I define “follower.” Then a comment about last year’s selection.

In leadership studies the word “follower” has forever been difficult to define. First, in comparison with “leader” and “leadership,” the words “follower” and “followership” are rarely used. Seems everyone is endlessly interested in leaders – and in being a leader. Seems nearly no one is interested in followers – and nearly no one wants to be one. Followers are seen as being passive and weak, in contrast to leaders who are viewed as active and strong.

Still, in the real world as opposed to the imagined one, there is no leader without at least one follower. And, in the real world as opposed to the imagined one, it’s impossible to be a leader for any length of time and ignore your followers.

I define followers by their rank – not by their behavior. Followers are subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than their superiors and who therefore usually, but not inevitably, fall into line. Simply put, in my lexicon followers usually follow, but not always.

Last year my Follower of the Year was Alexei Navalny. In February he died, of unexplained causes, while incarcerated in a remote Russian prison by his nemesis, Vladimir Putin. My post, which appeared a year ago today, concluded as follows:

Some of the world’s greatest leaders were once followers in that they spent time behind bars – Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, to name a few. But each was eventually released – even Mandela who was locked up for more than 27 years. Whether Navalny will ever again be a free man is, at best, uncertain. Meantime he can take solace from his mission which has already been accomplished. The near successful attempt on his life, his relentless tribulations and repeated trials, and now his apparently unending captivity are charges against his captor that will stand forever.

This year the Follower of the Year is the Democratic Electorate. This year the Follower of the Year is not, then, a single individual, but a group. A loose group of ordinary people, most of whom have little or no power, authority, or influence, but who are nevertheless resisting those with vastly more. The Democratic Electorate is generating “a crisis of democracy” precisely because, though they are expected to go along with the leaders they selected, large numbers are refusing to do so. They have, moreover, become relentlessly carping and critical. Drawing on changes in culture, and in technology, followers are far quicker than they used to be to diminish, demean, and deride their leaders – those more highly placed than they.

Evidence of resistance and rebellion is everywhere. A majority of voters across seven Western countries including the United States believe their democracy is in worse shape now even than five years ago. And in nearly every democracy at least half of all voters say they are “dissatisfied” with the way the system works. Further, majorities agree the system is “rigged” in favor of the rich and powerful – and that “radical change” is needed.

Freedom House found that in 2023 “global freedom declined for the 18^th consecutive year.” Why? Because “global freedom” is not giving the people – the Democratic Electorate – what they think and feel they need and want.

In Europe the evidence is everywhere. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently lost a vote of confidence in parliament and is likely to be defeated in the next elections. French President Emmanual Macron has repeatedly suffered stinging defeats; now there is speculation that he will resign before the end of his term (in 2027). In Britian, the track record for prime ministers is even worse. Recent residents of 10 Downing Street – Teresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – have been unable to hold on to power for long. (Truss lasted just six weeks.) And the present prime minister, Kier Starmer, is, after five scant months in office, more unpopular than any UK prime minister has been in forty years.

Who has benefited from the widespread dissatisfaction? The far right. Large swaths of the Democratic Electorate now support leaders who previously were outsiders, such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Georgia Meloni in Italy. Same in France and, notably, in Germany. Because of its Nazi legacy, for 75 years right wing parties in Germany were essentially verboten. Now the stridently far right Alternative for Germany (AfD), is the second most popular party in the country.

Nor are non-European democracies an exception to the general rule. In Canada the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has morphed over the last decade from golden boy to laughingstock. (According to a poll taken this month, 73 percent of Canadians think he should resign, now.) In Japan the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority for the first time since 2009. And in South Korea the president, who was so foolish as to discount his followers, was recently impeached.

Evidence the Democratic Electorate is fed up is nowhere as strong as in the United States. Donald Trump’s reelection as president for a second term – despite who he is, what he has done, and what he has not done – underscores the point. For now, at least America’s Democratic Electorate is profoundly anti-establishment, anti-elite. It is composed of followers who are furious – furious at their leaders – so they resist and rebel against those who traditionally have held power and authority.

Explanations for why this is happening abound. They include extreme and still expanding income inequity; divides between urban and rural, and between white people and brown people; the transitions from an industrial economy to an information economy and now, to an AI economy; wokeness that became as enervating as exhausting; dated and broken systems and institutions; immigration, globalization, polarization, alienation, and atomization; and, perhaps most importantly, the vanishing if not vanished American dream.

Obviously much if not most of the Democratic Electorate does not feel that democracy – and its al-important conjoined twin, capitalism – is working for them. And so, they, we, lash out. It’s impossible to lash out at an abstraction, such as an institution. But it’s not impossible to lash out at something concrete, such as an individual. So, the Democratic Electorate, followers, is taking out its anger at the Democratic Establishment, leaders. Which is precisely why a man who presents himself as, and literally is, an outlaw, and as anti-establishment, will soon be inaugurated president of the United States, again.

Two weeks ago, Time magazine selected Donald Trump as its 2024 “Person of the Year.” A week later, the Financial Times did the same, bestowing on Trump the identical title, “Person of the Year.” Time pointed out that Trump’s “rebirth” was “unparalleled in American history.”The Financial Times cited a longtime Trump acolyte, Roger Stone, who proclaimed, “We are living in the age of Trump.”

But their selection is silly! Trump Person of the Year in 2024?! Give me a break. All the man managed to do in the last twelve months was to get reelected president of the United States. OK, I’ll grant it was not a small success. But what he’ll do when he moves back into the White House, not to mention what he’ll be able to accomplish, remains uncertain. Besides, that’s next year, not this one.

My selection as Leader of the Year 2024 is obvious. So glaringly, blindly, obvious, that I’m sure you’ve guessed it. Elon Musk.

Some of you might remember from previous years that my selection for Leader of the Year is based on only one criterion – impact. No matter if the impact is positive or negative, good or bad, the single question that pertains is which leader was most impactful during the twelve months preceding.

Musk is an exceedingly rare bird – a leader who leads in more than one lane. He is so singular a leader that not only does he lead in more than one lane, he does so simultaneously.

Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in business – and in politics. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in the United States – and around the world. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is (by far) the richest man in the world – and because he has one of the world’s biggest megaphones. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in technology – and in industry. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change on earth – and in space. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in human intelligence – and in artificial intelligence. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is exceedingly ambitious – and because he is exceedingly aggressive. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is a genius – and an activist.

In 2024 Elon Musk decided to make the reelection of Donald Trump a pet project. I do not claim that Musk is single handedly responsible for Trump’s triumph. I do claim that Musk’s support was important, very important. He poured over a quarter of a billion dollars into Republican campaign coffers which made Musk the single largest underwriter of a political campaign ever. Moreover, he used his name, and his fame, and X, which he owns, regularly and relentlessly to make Trump’s case. Finally, like Trump, Musk’s relationship to the truth is, shall we say, fluid. This came in handy as Musk regularly repeated whatever Trump’s lies, first and foremost that he, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election.      

As Musk greased Trump’s palm so Trump greased Musk’s. For weeks after the election Musk effectively took up residence at Mar-a-Lago, the president elect’s palace in Palm Beach. For weeks after the election Musk served as one of Trump’s closest advisers. For weeks after the election decisions were made about how officially to embed Musk in the machinery of government. And for weeks after the election Musk felt increasingly entitled to intrude not just on the workings of the executive branch but on those of the legislative one.

But does Musk need Trump to leave his stamp? Not at all. It helps that Musk now has an official role in Washington. That he, along with Vivek Ramasamy, has been anointed co-leader of the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency.” Still, it’s impossible to tell how that will go. Anyway, my point is, no matter. Musk’s fingerprints are already all over the federal government.

The New York Times describes his influence – his influence now, before Trump becomes president again – as “extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative.” An example: Musk’s rocket company, Space X, “effectively dictates” NASA’s rocket launch schedule. Another example: Musk’s companies have already been promised some $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 different federal agencies.   

There is much about Musk that is not admirable. He has had 12 children with three different women and seems largely absent as both partner and father. He is known in recent years to have used drugs including LSD, cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy and mushrooms. He and Space X have reportedly repeatedly failed to comply with protocols aimed at protecting state secrets. He has a reputation as an erratic, excessively demanding and sometimes bullying employer. And now he is inserting himself, regularly and sometimes outrageously, into politics both at home and abroad. At home he posted over 150 times on X to demand that congressional Republicans reject a bipartisan spending deal crafted to avoid a government shutdown. And abroad he strongly aligned himself with Germany’s far-right party, the AfD, which has ties to neo-Nazis and has been classified by the German government as “confirmed extremist.” Notwithstanding, Musk posted to X, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

Impossible to say for how long Musk’s now knee-deep involvement in domestic and foreign politics will last. But if it does not, no worries. He’s got plenty to keep him busy. His companies include but are not limited to 1) Tesla; 2) Space X; 3) X; 4) The Boring Company; 5) Neuralink; and 6) xAI.

You might not love or even like him. You might not admire or even respect him. But no matter. In 2024 no leader had as great an impact on the planet we inhabit than Elon Musk.

Who knows why the mainstream media failed to level with the American people? Failed to tell us the truth about how frail and feeble Joe Biden was during the entirety of his presidency.

Ideally, we would anyway have known. Ideally leading Democrats, among which I include members of the House and Senate, should have said, publicly, that under no circumstances should Biden run again in 2024. For neither his physical nor mental health was up to being chief executive of the United States of America for another four years.    

Thanks to outstanding investigative journalism by four Wall Street Journal reporters – their recent piece was based on some 50 interviews – we are finally getting a sense of how, from day one of his presidency, Biden was protected from prying eyes by family and close aides. But we the people were not protected. We were not informed and so remained ignorant of Biden’s failing health until we saw for ourselves, in his “debate” last June with Donald Trump.   

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was the wife of President Woodrow Wilson. After he was felled by a stroke, she thought to protect him by concealing from nearly everyone his true condition. But that was then – in the early 20^th century when veils of secrecy and silence still shielded the high and mighty. Now though such niceties are supposed no longer to exist. Now the American public is supposed to be told if the president is failing.

Here is some of what we did not know in 2021, or in 2022, or in 2023, or for most of 2024.

• That during the 2020 presidential campaign it was suggested to Jill Biden she limit her activities, so her husband would not seem sluggish in comparison.
• That visitors to the Biden White House were instructed to keep their meetings short and focused.
• That even the most important members of the president’s cabinet – for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin- saw him only infrequently, or very infrequently, especially during his second two years in the White House.
• That Biden often depended on top aides to serve as stand-ins.
• That these same aides shielded the president from negative press coverage.
• That even as the 2024 campaign ramped up, Biden was not in touch with his own pollsters.
• That limits were set on to whom Biden spoke, on what he was told, and on what information he was given.  
• That Biden had good days and bad days. That on his bad days he could not remember key lines or simple instructions, such as where to enter and exit a stage. Similarly, on some bad days meetings were simply canceled. 
• That during his four years in office Biden held only nine full cabinet meetings. (This year was only one.) This in comparison with, for example, his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, who held 25.
• That Biden engaged in far fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of his seven predecessors. President Barack Obama had 570 in total – this in contrast to, as of last summer, Biden’s 164.
• That Biden was kept at a distance not only from the press but from Congress – and from some of his own aides.

It can be argued and often is that during his one term Biden chalked up an impressive list of accomplishments. But the Democrats were unable to capitalize on them in the election. And now Biden has essentially exited the national stage while his successor is already front and center. The incumbent president has evolved into an exaggerated version of what he has been all along: not so much a lame duck as a missing duck.

People need a leader. People want a leader. The American people are no exception. We need a president. We want a president. But even during his four years in the Oval Office Joe Biden was more spectral than palpable – while Trump was and is the opposite. Trump was never an absence – even in exile he was a presence. Now as throughout he looms.  

I like the idea of a “leadership class.” It’s not a phrase I coined, but rather columnist and commentator David Brooks. I first noticed he used it several years ago – it reappears big time in a piece he wrote for this month’s Atlantic. The article is titled, “How the Ivy League Broke America: The Meritocracy isn’t Working. We Need Something New.”

When Brooks uses the term “leadership class” he refers to the “meritocracy” that’s in the title of his piece. Or he alludes to the “elite,” another word he uses interchangeably both with “leadership class” and “meritocracy.” At one point in the article he asks, “Did we get a better elite?” At another he lists the “six sins of the meritocracy.” And at still another he concludes, “It’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites.” In short, Brooks uses “leadership class,” and “meritocracy,” and “elite” synonymously.

My intention is not to criticize Brooks’s writing. Instead I am asking if those who constitute America’s “leadership class” are different from – or should be considered different from – those who constitute America’s “meritocracies” and its “elites.”

My question is about definition. Not so much the definition of a meritocracy, or of an elite, as of a “leader.”  As anyone who has been – as I have – around the leadership block for years knows, the words “leader” and “leadership” are plagued by literally hundreds of different definitions. Usually though by no means always the word “leader” refers to someone who is in a leadership role. And usually though by no means always the word “leadership” refers to someone in a leadership role who is controlling or directing their followers.

But not every member of either a meritocracy or of an elite is in a leadership role or is exercising leadership. To be at the top of a meritocracy means you have clambered up the ladder due to your intelligence, skill, or ability. It does not mean that you necessarily are controlling or directing anyone. Similarly, an elite. You are in the top tier of some group or organization because of some attribute or asset you have, not because you are in any way, necessarily, engaging with others.

Let’s be clear. Leadership is a relationship. You cannot be a leader without at least one follower. The same does not however apply either to those who are members of meritocracies or of elites. In neither of these cases is any relationship necessary or implied.

Let’s not, though, throw out the baby with the bathwater. The idea of a “leadership class” is valuable – as is the term. So, let’s confine members of the leadership class to those who are in a leadership role and, or, who get others to follow where they lead. In most cases leaders get their followers to follow because they, the former, rank higher than the latter. But in some cases, leaders get their followers to follow without the privileges and advantages of rank, of title. So long as Cindy can get Sam to go along, she is a leader, and he is a follower. But once Sam balks, once he refuses to do her bidding, it’s over. She has dropped out of the leadership class.

In recent days some of us have had the excruciating if vicarious experience of bearing witness to evil. Specifically, evil ordered by Syria’s ousted leader, Bashar al-Assad. The most infamous example is film taken at Sednaya Prison, not far from Damascus, where Assad’s government detained tens of thousands, torturing and killing them as the New York Times reported, “on an industrial scale.”

What happened in Sednaya is without exception described as crimes of which Assad was guilty. Which he was.

But let’s be clear. He did not – he did not literally – commit these crimes. So far as we know Assad kept his distance – he did not personally torture or kill anyone. Instead, the pain and suffering were inflicted by his followers. By people who in other circumstances might have been perfectly normal, but who in this circumstance committed crimes of obedience.

There is a considerable literature on obedience to authority when authority is bad. Some of the best-known works are based on social science experiments conducted in the 1960s and ‘70s by, most famously, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo.

But for all the knowledge that’s been accumulated since then about followers as agents of atrocity, it remains easier for us, much easier, psychologically, to attribute evil to a single individual. To the leader. Why? First, because it simplifies a process that is exceedingly complex. Second, more importantly, because it lets us, people like you and me, off the hook.

We prefer to think that good people would never, could never, turn evil. But the evidence suggests that what we prefer to think is wrong.

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Note: The phrase “agents of atrocity” is the title of a book by Neil Mitchell.