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There are more women leaders and upper-level managers in the United States now than fifty or even twenty years ago. But over a half century after the start of the modern women’s movement, progress toward equity at or even near the top of the professional ladder remains slow.  

Only about ten percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women. Women constitute slightly under a quarter of equity law partners, about a quarter of U. S. Governors and Senators, and just over a quarter of members of the House of Representatives. Never has a woman been president of the United States. Moreover, in the last two decades the gender pay gap has scarcely budged. Women still earn only 82 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Of course, in many parts of the word the professional plight of women is far worse. In China for example is only one woman among the 25-member Politburo, the leadership body of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the CCP’s standing committee has no women on it at all. Similarly, because women in South Korea usually feel they must choose either between family or career, the country has the lowest fertility rate in the world.

But the United States is not China, nor is it South Korea. In America have been considerable changes to promote and accommodate women – in the law; in public policies; in workplace accommodations; in teachings and trainings promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion; and in attitudes and behaviors considered professionally acceptable. Which raises the question of why, after many years of considerable, perceptible, change, has the number of women leaders and managers remained stubbornly low?

To this question is one answer that remains largely undiscussed and therefore unaddressed. It’s that men and women are different. There are enormous physical and psychological differences between being a woman and being a man.

We pretend that the distinctions between the genders either do not exist or do not pertain. But they do. Women’s minds, and their bodies impact what they, we, want to do and can do, our entire professional lives.

To be clear, not all of us are the same. Not every woman has menstrual cramps; or gets pregnant; or is exhausted or nauseous while pregnant; or chooses to breast-feed her baby; or feels more responsible for her child than her partner; or has symptoms of menopause. But many or even most women do. To pretend, then, that being in the body of a woman has nothing whatsoever to do with being in the world of work –with both the level of our ambition and, yes, sometimes with our capacity to perform – is to be in denial.

We women openly discuss how having to care for our children affects our work. We do not, however, openly discuss, certainly not with our leaders and managers, the effects on us of dysmenorrhea and hormonal changes; of baby blues and postpartum depression; of swollen breasts and nipple discharges; of night sweats, weight gains, and mood swings.

Menstruation is an illustration. The average woman menstruates about once a month, for about five days, for about forty years. Over ninety percent of women report they have some premenstrual symptoms such as headaches or bloating. More than half of women have menstrual cramps; and some of the time monthly bleeding is heavy and unpredictable. Additionally, somewhere between five to fifteen percent of women report having menstrual pain so intense it interferes with their daily activities.

Does it make sense then to assume that menstruation has no impact at all on women at work or on women’s promotion to positions of leadership and management? Similarly with menopause, a transition that can last between four and ten years and that begins on average at age 47. About 80 percent of women report having symptoms associated with menopause, which is experienced in the prime of their professional lives. Is our physical and psychological well-being entirely irrelevant to our professional status and performance?

Given the gender differences, hybrid work seems on the surface a boon to women. But is it an asset to women ambitious to lead or manage? Not necessarily. Some are reluctant to work from home for fear of being branded a slacker. Others want to set an example – “Do as I do, come into the office.” Still others feel they cannot lead or manage from home as well as from the office.

There are reasons why women as well as men choose even now to ignore the enormous gender differences. They relate to religion and tradition; to feelings of embarrassment and shame; to perceptions of delicacy, fragility, and weakness; and now, to concerns about political correctness. It’s why women usually decide it’s best for professional purposes to pretend they never have a menstrual camp. To pretend they are not drained and depressed by in vitro fertilization. To pretend they do not vomit while they are pregnant. To pretend pumping is fine even when their breasts hurt, and they are obliged to pump in a small room set aside for this purpose. To pretend they do not have menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats; headaches and sleeplessness; anxiety and palpitations.

Granted times are changing. Lactation, menopause, and even menstruation is slowly being destigmatized. Moreover, some companies are trying to accommodate what women particularly want and need. But the changes fall far short. So long as any aspect of women’s health and well-being remains a subject that’s taboo, so long will it impact negatively especially on their rising through the ranks.

The curtain of decorum does not excuse anyone’s silence – including our own – on this obvious but still obviously discomfiting issue. High time then we claim our bodies, ourselves. Given we are physically and psychologically radically different from men we must speak openly, honestly, and yes, loudly about what we need and want when we need and want it.

I get that women who are forthright are at personal and professional risk. At risk of being labeled pushy or demanding, or, heaven forefend, aggressive. But if we don’t speak truth to power, who will?

There’s a new film out, “The Teachers’ Lounge.” For anyone with an interest in leadership and followership I strongly recommend it.

The film is German and on the surface it’s about a teacher who loses control not just of her classroom, but of most of her sixth-grade students. A series of events turns traditional conceptions of power and authority on their head, essentially leaving inmates running the asylum. At one point the teacher, Carla Nowak, runs literally as well as metaphorically away from her students.

It matters that the film is German because until after the Second World War, no Western country was more closely identified with authoritarian leadership, with leaders (including teachers) who ruled with an iron fist than Germany. Obviously, those days are long gone. Still, it’s weird for a person of a certain age – in this case me! – to see a German classroom become bedlam. Whatever Ms. Nowak’s good intentions, whatever her efforts to teach, later to tame her students, there came a point in the film when all hell broke loose.

It’s no stretch to suggest that “The Teachers’ Lounge” is not just about keeping a modicum of order in the classroom. It’s a metaphor for keeping a modicum of order in society more generally, especially in societies that are liberal democracies.

Good democratic governance is hard to affect these days precisely because there’s a resemblance between the students in the film and the public at large – all of whom ostensibly are followers expected to follow those who ostensibly are leaders. This applies whether these leaders are teachers, ministers or managers, presidents, prime ministers, or chancellors.

But instead of following, of going along, we resist. We resist in the United States, and we resist in Germany. Too many of us lean too far right; vent our testiness and nastiness online; carp and complain even amidst abundance; resist and resent contributing to the commonweal; knowingly spread misinformation and disinformation; and remain seemingly deliberately uninterested and willfully uninformed.

Democracy is always good in theory and sometimes good in practice. But when communitarianism is sacrificed at the altar of individualism it leads straight to The Teachers’ Lounge.

Mitch McConnell was on his way to becoming not only the longest serving Senate Republican Leader in American history – a record he can still claim – but one of the most successful. In an alternate universe he would’ve announced his retirement this week with mixed pleasure but immense pride.

Instead, this once enormously powerful legislative leader veritably slunk off the political stage (though formally not until November), admitting that the ground had shifted under his feet. That the Republican Party “at this particular moment in time” not only had changed nearly beyond his recognition but was inhospitable to someone of his moderate temperament.

To be clear, McConnell was a right-wing politician who did what he could to shape American politics in his image. For example, he is credited with shaping the Supreme Court in a way that will drive the left and most of the center crazy for years if not decades. But in his temperament, he is and always was moderate. Soft spoken, tending to taciturn and courtly in his manner; willing, sometimes, to compromise, to work across the aisle; and an internationalist; he was always far, very far, from being a right-wing nut job.

One measure of McConnell’s moderate temper was his well-concealed loathing of the man who finally swallowed him whole, Donald Trump. But notwithstanding how McConnell felt about Trump in private, for reasons of his own the senator did what he could to enable the president. First to escort Trump into the White House, and then to keep him there. Until the January 6^th insurrection, McConnell was so supportive of Trump that he was labeled by Jane Mayer, in an April 2020 article in The New Yorker, “Enabler in Chief.”

McConnell – whose wife, Elaine Chao, was, not incidentally, a member of Trump’s cabinet – plays a similarly important part in my 2021 book, The Enablers. In the book I wrote that McConnell “personally and politically protected Trump during the first impeachment trial.” It was McConnell then who “made it possible for the president to finish his term without the proceedings upending or even significantly impairing him.” Further, as Mayer pointed out, McConnell stayed “largely silent about the president’s lies and inflammatory remarks,” and propped up the administration with legislative and judicial victories.

McConnell though had a fatal flaw – that led to a fatal error. He was so hungry for power he could not see straight. He could not see that Trump would stop at nothing and no one to get his way and save his skin. Which meant that unless something or someone stopped him, Trump would inevitably, inexorably, go from bad to worse.  

And so it came to pass that the monster swallowed his creator.

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It’s well known that being president of the United States has quickly and visibly aged virtually all men – Ronald Reagan is an exception – who have occupied the Oval Office. This includes Joe Biden who looks and sounds perceptively older and frailer now than he did three years ago, when he was inaugurated.

But my point is not that being an American president is inordinately taxing. It’s that being any American leader of any enterprise of any size is the same. Being a leader in 2024 is, by every account and every measure, more demanding and draining than it was a generation ago.

• In 2023 more CEOs – nearly 2,000 – exited their posts than ever before.
• In a recent survey 37% of C-suite executives reported that avoiding professional burnout is a consistent, significant challenge.
• Nineteen chief executives died in office last year, the most in more than a decade.
• 65% of leaders experience symptoms of wear and tear such as stress and anxiety.
• According to a 2023 study conducted by Deloitte, 33% of leaders regularly have “feelings of being overwhelmed, lonely, or depressed.”

All of which raises the question of why. Why is being a leader evidently more difficult in the present than it was in the past?

Here four important reasons:

• Followers in the present are far more demanding now than they used to be. By “followers” I don’t just mean subordinates, such as employees. I mean stakeholders of every sort, all of whom leaders must keep in tow to get their work done. For example, presidents of universities have multiple followers, or stakeholders, or constituents – call them what you will – including students, faculty, staff, boards, parents, donors, the press, and the public. Each is more demanding, more clamorous, and contrary than they were in decades, even in years past.
• Leading, literally leading, is harder to do than it used to be. In the old days leaders could count on command-and-control. Superiors simply told their subordinates what they wanted them to do, and their subordinates did it – lest they be punished. Now it’s not so simple. Now most leaders are expected to use not their power or even their authority – such as it now is. Instead, they are expected to use their influence. To persuade others of what they want them to do rather than to order them, or even simply to tell them to do it.    
• Technology has reached the point of intimidating leaders. It makes them – for good reason – fearful of being caught on a smart phone behaving in a way that’s somehow untoward. It makes them – for good reason – fearful of being subjected to a viral attack. It makes them – for good reason – fearful that it, technology, will get ahead of them. That it – AI is the obvious example – will be cleverer than they and faster than they, and that it will evolve in ways that they cannot even begin to understand. That tech will control them rather than the other way around.
• Politics lurks – much as they might like to, even leaders other than political ones can no longer avoid at least sometimes weighing in. In the old days, only political leaders were expected to get embroiled in domestic or foreign politics, or in domestic or foreign policies. Leaders of other institutions or organizations could easily skirt controversy. They could even stick their heads in the sand, act as if differences among Americans either did not exist or did not pertain. Now pretending that politics is irrelevant is impossible. Leaders of different stripes are being pushed to weigh in on everything from identity politics to the culture wars, from sanctions to vaccines, from taxes to tariffs, from to Argentina to China. Worse, when they do, they usually end in a no-win situation because of how fragmented and fractious the American people.

None of this is of course to say that leaders are not well rewarded. They are. In the private sector especially, compensation has never been higher – those at the top of American business and finance are generally rich as Croesus. Moreover, leaders have levels of autonomy and control that the rest of us are usually denied.

Still, there are tradeoffs. Leading is more difficult than it used to be, less fun than it used to be, and more punishing than it used to be. Don’t believe me? Just ask Claudine Gay. Or Bob Iger. Or Mark Milley. Or Kevin McCarthy. Or for that matter Joe Biden.       

We’re so caught up by Nikki Haley sticking her finger in Donald Trump’s eye that we’re losing sight of the big picture. We’re so caught up by Nikki Haley declaring she’s not afraid of Trump’s “retribution” that we’re losing sight of the big picture.  

What is the big picture? Trump is a man. And, by far his most durable and formidable challenger for the Republican nomination for president has turned out not another man – not Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, or Vivek Ramaswamy – but a woman!

When Hillary Clinton ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign the fact that she was a woman in a man’s world – presidential politics – was a large if not dominant part of the story. Clinton herself wrote with pain and anger – especially in her subsequent book, What Happened – about the discrimination she faced for being female. She felt obliged to spend “what added up to a month of time on the 2016 campaign trail having her hair and makeup done; if she showed up without having those things done, she got slammed. She even hired a linguistics expert so could learn to rev up a crowd by shouting while not sounding too high pitched.”*

Eight years later the female angle has disappeared from coverage of the campaign nearly entirely. It seems part of our past, not our present. For this sea change credit where credit is due: Haley herself has contributed significantly to what has been not a revolution but an evolution.

Haley looks entirely feminine without being cloying or too girlie-girlie. She sounds tough but not intimidating. She has come to attack Trump in a way that she did not earlier in her campaign – but she might have benefited from her gradualist approach. Had she taken him on too strongly and stridently at the outset she could easily have been seen as too assertive, too aggressive. Instead, she is relaxing into her role. She now appears both likable and competent, impressive but not so formidable as to be off-putting.

Whatever Nikki Haley accomplishes in 2024 she is positioning herself for the future. She is also playing a pivotal role in advancing women in leadership at the highest level of American politics.

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*Time, September 14, 2017.   

During the entirety of Vladimir Putin’s presidency women have been some of his most vocal and visible critics. And even now – when repression in Russia, and Putin’s zeal for control beyond his borders are far more toxic than a decade ago – women remain prominent, and painful thorns in his side.

In the past was, for example, Pussy Riot, a “Russian feminist protest and performance art group” known about a decade ago for its political and musical deviance – deviance that included strident, overt opposition to Putin and his policies. For their troubles three members of the group were convicted of “hooliganism” and sentenced to two years in prison.  

In the past was also the groundbreaking and muckraking Russian journalist and activist, Anna Politkovskaya. For her relentless insistence on truth telling, especially from Chechnya during the Second Chechen War in the early 2000s, she was harassed, arrested, and poisoned. Withal, Politkovskaya refused to shut up and behave like a lady, a crime for which she was ultimately (in 2006) shot to death in the elevator of her apartment. 

And, in the present are mothers, wives, girlfriends – Russian women whose sons, husbands, and lovers were sent well over a year ago to fight in Ukraine and are, if not dead or injured, still in the field of battle with no end in sight. Some of these women have dared to question, even to protest the Russian regime for effectively nabbing their kin not since to be seen. They do not of course pose a threat to Putin or to his regime. The fear factor is far too great to expect anything resembling a broad political movement. Still, it’s worth noting that especially in the wake of the death of Alexei Navalny are still some souls in Russia who dare, if gingerly, to speak their minds.   

In the present is also the widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, in her own right a force to be reckoned with. In the immediate wake of her husband’s death she made an emotional appearance before Western leaders at the Security Conference in Munich. And in a subsequent video she vowed to hunt down those responsible for her husband’s death and to keep fighting the good fight for truth, freedom, and justice. “By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul. But I still have the other half and it tells me that I have no right to give up. I will continue Alexei Navalny’s cause.”

Navalnaya will haunt Putin to the death – either his, or hers.

In the present is also Estonia’s formidable Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas. No leader is clearer than she that the West must, with force, if necessary, stand up to Putin.

Kallas has the dubious distinction of being the first political leader to appear on a Russian “wanted” list. She is being persecuted by Russia’s interior ministry for being consistently critical of Russia’s war against Ukraine. For presiding over Estonia’s symbolically important removal of Soviet-era war monuments. And for repeatedly insisting that the time is now to seize Russia’s large cache of frozen financial assets – and to use the funds to rebuild Ukraine. While other leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olof Scholz continue to dither on this – they worry that Moscow will retaliate legally and financially, if not also militarily – Kallas remains unbowed and uncowed. She argues that “This is economic pressure we can place on the Russian economy to hasten the breaking point of this war.”  

Kallas appears fearless. She says that Russia’s move against her was “nothing surprising,” and makes clear that she will not be deterred. “This is yet more proof that I am doing the right thing.”

When Adolf Hitler threatened all Europe by, among his other blatant aggressions, annexing Austria in March 1938, there were no women in positions of power who dared to tell him no. No, Germany could not swallow Austria whole without fear of immediate and meaningful reprisal. Mercifully are now a handful of women with, if not power then authority, or influence, who might stiffen the spines of some men.   

At the end of December, I posted a piece about my choice for “Leader of the Year – 2023.” And I posted a piece about my choice for “Follower of the Year – 2023.” The latter was Alexei Navalny who, according to Russian sources, just died in a Siberian prison. His age was 47.

As indicated in the earlier piece – the link for “Follower of the Year – 2023” is below – I have been writing about Navalny for over a decade. No need to reiterate what was in my previous posts, except to point out that it has long been obvious he was exceptional. Even early in his career as an impossible, ultimately intolerable thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side he stood out for being clever and handsome, daring, defiant, and original. Navalny was also much bolder and braver than ordinary mortals. Over time he became in fact so bold and brave it was to the point of being, arguably, reckless. To the point where he seemed to be courting a martyr’s death at the hands of the despot, Putin. If this was his goal, he achieved it.        

In life, Navalny was, for various reasons, not much of a leader. First, Putin wouldn’t permit him to lead, nor would he permit Russians to follow anyone but himself. Navalny was then more of an episodic activist than he was an effective resister. He was not – while he was alive – able to effect change.

But in death it will be different. This is not to predict that Navalny’s dying will cause Putin tomorrow to topple. Not hardly. But it is to point out that because the former died on the orders of the latter, the name Alexei Navalny will endure.

He will not be like others of his ilk, such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and Czechoslovakia’s Vaclav Havel, both of whom were dissidents and similarly spent years in prison. Navalny cannot now emerge from his cell to take a place in politics. He will, however, live forever in the hearts and minds of people everywhere who fervently believe in politics that are clean not corrupt. And in lives lived in liberty not chains.

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Follower of the Year – 2023

On October 23rd of last year, I posted a piece that was largely about President Joe Biden’s age. How it was becoming a serious political liability. I wrote that it was not that Biden was old, it was how he was old. I observed that many Americans who are 80 or older present “hale and hearty, fully able to take on what life throws at them.” But, I added, that Biden was not among them.

I commented that he “looks old, old. Frail, feeble, and fragile; pale and gray; wispy, and thin; [taking] small steps haltingly on what seem spindly, wobbly legs. His eyes are small slits in a curiously unlined but nevertheless wizened face.”

Further I noted that he sounds old. “His voice is ancient – scrawny and raspy, croaky, and scratchy; weak and wan. It seems to emanate not from deep down, in ringing – dare I say masculine? – tones. But rather from up top…in sounds that are not exactly high-pitched, but lack the cadence of power and persuasion, of a leader in anything resembling full command.”

Finally, I remarked that he speaks old, old. “Never an orator, the passing years have not been kind to his capacity to communicate, to convince us that he’s a smart, strong leader who knows exactly what he’s doing when. Biden nearly never speaks extemporaneously. He does not trust himself, nor apparently do his aides, presume he can do so without risking an awful gaffe.”

That was then. In October I suggested he was an accident waiting to happen. Well, this week was not exactly an accident, but it did happen. What happened was that, inevitably, the Biden-age issue went from simmering on the back burner to boiling on the front.

There is nothing to be done about how Biden looks, walks, or sounds. But when he says things that are just plain wrong, or make no sense, the press understandably pounces, and the public is justifiably perturbed. Even last fall, more than 70 percent of voters in battleground states said they did not think that Biden had “the mental sharpness to be an effective president.”

For Joe Biden’s memory lapses and rhetorical screw-ups, we get three excuses. First, that his likely political opponent in the presidential race, Donald Trump, is as bad or worse. Second, that these sorts of mistakes are nothing new for Biden. That he’s always been known, during his long political career, for making verbal gaffes and for oratorial meanderings and malapropisms. And third, that whatever his deficits, his mind is generally intact and that his performance as president proves it.

All true. This time around Trump presents much more poorly than he did in 2016 or even 2020. And yes, Biden has long been known for his convoluted speech. And yes, by many measures Biden’s presidency has been successful.

And yet. And yet this past week has been a nightmare for Biden’s supporters – especially members of his team who want nothing so much as to brush away doubts triggered by his obviously advancing age. This is not about Biden’s being 86 when he ends a second term. It is about his being 82 when he begins a second term. And it is about his being 81 now – 81 and appearing neither notably hale nor hearty.

In fact, he is so not hale or hearty that he and his aides are even more fearful now than they were before of his being in public. His appearances are limited in number, in length, in spontaneity, and in his willingness to interact with interlocutors.  We do get Biden reading woodenly from a podium. We do get Biden answering quick questions from reporters craving for even a few words from his lips. We do get the very occasional flash of unrehearsed humor. And we do get Biden-the Master-Empathizer. What we do not get, viirtually never get, is evidence of a strong leader in full charge of his full faculties. The White House is so extremely risk-averse, so extremely concerned that the president will embarrass himself, that it turned down the opportunity to have him participate in the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview. In other words, Biden blew the chance to strut his stuff tomorrow before some 100 million Americans.

In just the last week Biden’s missteps included:

• Confusing the deceased former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl with the very much alive former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
• Confusing the deceased former French President Francois Mitterand with the very much alive current French President Emmanuel Macron.
• Referring to the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as the president of Mexico.
• Claiming that all the classified records found in his home were in “lockable filing cabinets” when they were not.
• Claiming that none of the documents were “highly classified,” even though some were top secret.

          Most politically damaging of all was, of course, special counsel Robert Hur’s report of his investigation into the secret documents that then Vice President Biden took, illegally, from his offices in Washinton to his home in Delaware. Gratuitous or not, it was impossible to set aside Hur’s conclusion that one of the reasons no criminal charges were warranted was because a jury was unlikely to convict “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur also detailed several of Biden’s serious memory lapses, including the precise years of his vice-presidency and when exactly his son Beau died. Of course, when the president heard about Hur’s report he was visibly and publicly outraged, especially at even being asked about the death of his son. Biden insisted moreover that he would never step aside for anyone else because “I’m the most qualified person in this country to be president of the United States and finish the job I started.”

          Biden is of course surrounded by people who have told him all along – and who continue to tell him – that he’s doing the right thing by hanging in. By running for a second term. High on the list is the First Lady, Jill Biden, who by all accounts has been a strong supporter of his decision to run for a second term. Also high on the list is Vice President Kamala Harris, who predictably was visibly outraged at the special counsel’s comments, calling them “inaccurate and inappropriate” and “politically motivated.” And then there’s Biden’s team, including his aides and his lawyers who, for example, insisted that Biden’s “inability to recall dates or details of events that happened years ago is neither surprising nor unusual.”

          The trouble is that whatever the huffing and puffing, Biden’s age issue will not only not go away it will get worse. Unless he seals himself away from the public altogether, or is stage-managed in the extreme, he will inevitably make mistakes, which from here on in, fairly or unfairly, will be attributed to his age. Additionally, is the Harris problem. As of a few weeks ago, more than 50 percent of registered voters have a negative view of Biden’s vice president. Moreover, over her time in office her approval ratings have tended down not up.   

          As anyone who reads my posts knows, I fear and loathe the prospect of Donald Trump being reelected. It’s precisely why I wish that months ago Biden would have gracefully stepped aside for someone other and younger to head the Democratic ticket. But he did not – we are where we are. If he loses in November his age will be largely responsible. And if he wins in November his age will impinge on the quality of his presidency. Would he despite this be better than Trump as president? Yes. Did he, however, mar his generally exceptional record of public service by running for a second term? Yes.    

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just suffered a significant political blow at the hands of the man he long enabled, former President Donald Trump. Last week McConnell came out in support of the all-important so-called border bill – only to have Trump subsequently bury it. The result: McConnell’s influence over his Republican colleagues has been further weakened, an indicator he is finally reaping what he sowed. Unlikely Trump would’ve been reborn without McConnell’s enduring enablement – both during Trump’s presidency and after.  

Peter Navarro is another Trump Enabler, previously described as “a trade advisor” to the former president. Navarro stayed loyal to the last – doing what he could to keep Trump in office long after it became clear that he had lost the 2020 election. But like McConnell, Navarro has been summoned to pay the piper. He has just been sentenced to four months in prison for defying a House subpoena relating to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.  

Enablers are followers – but of a particular sort. In my book, The Enablers: How Team Trump Flunked the Pandemic and Failed America, I define them as “followers who allow or even encourage their leaders to engage in, and then to persist in behaviors that are destructive.”* I write that given the enabled are leaders, their destructions have implications not only for them but, crucially, additionally, for others, sometimes for many, even millions of others.

McConnell is a character in the book, described as an Enabler who was key to Trump’s political survival. “There was a moment at which the senator’s support for the president was pivotal. McConnell personally and politically protected Trump during the first impeachment trial, which made it possible for the president to finish his term without the proceedings upending or even significantly impairing him.”

Navarro is also in the book, described as a Trump toady, always obligingly and obsequiously saying only what the president wanted to hear. Why? Because Navarro needed, desperately needed, to be a player. To be part of the action. To have proximity to power.      

Since Trump left the White House, different Enablers have taken different paths. Some, like McConnell, have continued, whatever they privately think, publicly to support the former present. Others made different choices. Others chose to speak out against the man they once served.

In a perfect world these recovered Enablers would have spoken out earlier, would frequently say their piece, and would do so forcefully. But, in this imperfect world, I’ll take what I can get. Speaking truth to power and about power – especially power that persists – is better than staying silent.

Examples:

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, Mark Milley: “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.” (September 2023)
• Attorney General under Trump, William Barr: “The fact of the matter is he is a consummate narcissist, and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk.” (June 2023)
• White House Chief of Staff under Trump, John Kelly: “A person who has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” (October 2023)
• U.N. Ambassador under Trump – and later his opponent for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley: “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t ever let that happen again.” (January 2021)
• White House national security advisor, John Bolton: “By the time I left the White House I was convinced he was not fit to be president… I think it is a danger for the United States if he gets a second term.” (June 2023).

   Bad leadership is impossible without bad followership. Bad leaders are impossible without bad followers. Like bad leaders, bad followers are accountable, responsible for their actions. But when bad followers have second thoughts and, as a result, break publicly away from the bad leaders they once faithfully followed … well, it can’t hurt.

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*Cambridge University Press, 2021.

The Europeans just proved they learned their lesson. They learned from experience that Russian President Vladimir Putin is like all bad leaders – unless they are stopped they get worse. Without fail.

It’s what, predictably, he has done in the past – both at home and abroad. And it’s what, predictably, he will do in the future – both at home and abroad. Putin is a far worse leader now – much more oppressive at home, and much more aggressive abroad – than he was twenty or even ten years ago.

It’s why members of the European Union got their act together. First, with one exception they reached an agreement on what they would do because they concluded they must. Second, they took turns bullying and cajoling the sole holdout -– he was of course Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – until he finally caved.* Third, as of a day ago they are prepared to provide Ukraine with a significant aid package over a four year period, of some $54 billion dollars.

Similarly, precisely because most in the West have learned their lesson, members of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance to which the United States of course belongs, is doing a much better job than it did in the past of preparing for further Russan aggression. Europe, especially the countries of East Europe, is obviously much closer to the action than is the U.S. It’s why after Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland and Sweden made the historic decision to become NATO members. And it’s why countries such as Estonia fear nothing so much as another Trump presidency. Another Trump presidency during which virtually assuredly NATO would be, at best, derided and short-changed, and at worst starved and even scuttled.   

While the U.S. Congress dithers over continuing to provide Ukraine with the support it needs to keep Putin at bay, he is doing everything he can to expand his war machine and keep it humming. In the past year Russia’s economy has been militarized, and its army has had huge infusions of capital to provide it with new and better weapons. (Including, significantly, from Iran.)

Americans should make no mistake. If we lay claim to “Ukraine fatigue” we will, in time, pay dearly.  Unless, of course, Putin is not a man but a leopard. A leopard who changes his  spots.  

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*For more on Orban see my piece posted on December 20: Little Leader with a Big Stick – Barbara Kellerman