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It’s the question with which I introduced my volume consisting of classics of leadership literature.* It’s also the question that, framed more broadly, has been top of educators’ mind for at least the last decade. What should anyone learn?  

Our institutions of higher education have drifted away from teaching the liberal arts in favor of the hard sciences and the professions. Hence the constant concerns about depriving American students of what once was thought the heart of a first-rate undergraduate education.    

Yesterday’s column by David Brooks in the New York Times was typical. He wrote that the way to save a “sad, lonely, angry and mean” America was to “to rediscover the humanist code.” To return to the idea that great books, poems, paintings, and pieces of music will nurture the better angels of our nature. Will nudge us toward clarity, empathy, decency and, yes, “wisdom.”

For years I have argued somewhat similarly. I have argued that the way leaders ought to learn is first to get a good education; then to be properly trained; and finally to be developed lifelong – to engage in continuous learning.**

What might a good leadership education consist of? Ideally, it would require at least a year steeped in the humanities – in, for example, history, philosophy, and literature. But… here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be a year. It can be a month or even a week. For a leadership learner having some exposure to the humanities is much, much better than having none! Every single leadership course and curriculum, no matter how short or long, no matter how general or specific, should have some exposure to what Brooks calls “the humanist code.”  

How’s this to start?

• Short readings from Confucious, Machiavelli, and Arendt.
• Short viewings of David’s “Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ and Picasso’s “Guernica.”  
• Short discussions about Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments,” King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and Mandela’s “I Am Prepared to Die.”
• Short hearings of “Le Marseillaise” and “We Shall Overcome.”

How’s that to start? Great!

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*Barbara Kellerman, ed., Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence, McGraw-Hill, 2010.

** Barbara Kellerman, Professionalizing Leadership, Oxford University Press, 2018.

In her 2017 autobiographical book, What Happened, Hillary Clinton writes at length about the price of being a woman in American politics. Especially though not exclusively during the 2016 presidential campaign, which she lost to her opponent, a political newbie by the name of Donald J. Trump.  

Repeatedly Clinton describes how difficult it was to be a woman in public life, from the early days during which she was wife of the governor of Arkansas (beginning in 1979), all the way through to 2016 when she was the odds-on favorite to win the White House. Clinton was regularly and relentlessly slammed for a range of sins from being too aggressive to being too uptight. She writes, her hurt and anger hardly concealed, about the ways in which “her face, her body, her voice, her demeanor” were always being scrutinized and about how her “stature” was always being “diminished.”

Fast forward to Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, where she just finished campaigning against the self-same Trump, now for the Republican Party presidential nomination. Haley lost the primary to Trump by 11 points. But she did not lose because she was a woman. In fact, arguably the most striking thing about the entirety of Haley’s campaign so far is that her gender has essentially been a non-issue. Sure, last night, during his ostensible victory speech, Trump commented, derogatorily, on her what she was wearing. “When I watched her in the fancy dress, that probably wasn’t so fancy,” he couldn’t help but snipe.  But in the main, whatever the gripes against Haley during this primary season they have not been grounded in her womanhood.

Credit Haley for striking an excellent balance between looking feminine and looking professional. And for striking an excellent balance between being proactive and being aggressive. Anti-Trumpers have been railing against her for not taking on Trump more fulsomely and forcefully. But it could well be that she’s the “last woman” standing precisely because she did not. Could be that had she done so early on, gone on the warpath against Trump months ago, she would’ve long been gone.

Similarly, credit the American people for making progress – for putting gender to the side. This could of course still change. Trump is not done. But if he takes her on for being a lady, he’d better watch out.

In what will be a series of posts on Donald Trump’s followers I have certain points I plan to make. But there’s no virtue in adhering to a particular order, so when something happens that derails my originally intended sequence, no problem. I’ll comment as the occasion arises.

In recent days has been such an occasion. It centers on a man about whom I’ve written several times before: Jamie Dimon, since 2005 chair and chief executive officer of JPMorgan, the largest bank in the world. (For some of my previous posts on Dimon see the link below.)

In the piece that I posted on April 22, 2022, titled “Leader Tenure Redux – the Case of Jamie Dimon,” I raised questions about the length of his tenure, which even a couple of years ago I deemed too long. Now I’m persuaded that I was right. For all that Dimon has accomplished on behalf of the financial colossus of which he’s been at the helm for nearly two decades, it’s past time for him to get out.

Why do I write this now with an even greater degree of certitude? Because of remarks he made last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Remarks that put him squarely in the column of Trump’s followers. Dimon would deny this, he would say he did no such thing. But, by normalizing Trump, which he did, he sent a signal to Wall Street, and to corporate leaders around the world, that Trump was not nearly so bad as some were suggesting.

Let me be as clear as I can. I consider Trump to be a bad leader – a leader who is both incompetent and unethical. Therefore, to normalize a leader like Trump is not only to be a follower, but also to be a bad follower.   

What exactly did Dimon say that was so bad? “Take a step back, be honest” he told an interviewer on CNBC. Trump “was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”

I will not here challenge each of these points, for they are not the point of this piece. Rather it is that by approving Trump’s positions and policies on each of these critical issues Dimon is giving him a pass. He is giving Trump a pass on who he is, on what he says, on what he has done in the past, on what he is doing in the present, and on what he says he will do in the future. Which is, among other terrible things – terrible if you happen to prefer democracy to autocracy – to be “a dictator on day one” and to call for “termination of the Constitution.”

A few months ago, Dimon suggested that his preferred 2024 presidential candidate was not Trump but Nikki Haley. I have no reason to think that Dimon changed his mind, which makes his talking points about Trump that much more offensive. And dangerous. For it appears his remarks about the former president are purely transactional. Dimon seems to have concluded that Trump could well be reelected. So, what Dimon is doing is protecting his neck or, more directly, covering his ass.  

Let me be as clear as I can. As the rise of autocrats and dictators always and everywhere testifies, the only thing necessary for the triumph of bad leaders is bad followers. Therefore, if Donald J. Trump ever becomes president again, it will not be because he is so big and bold but because others, Dimon among them, are so small and sniveling.    

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Barbara Kellerman on Jamie Dimon

For the better part of a decade nothing in American politics has been more difficult to fathom than the dedication of Trump’s followers. A dedication and often even a passion that has endured against what would seem all odds. Donald J. Trump’s attractions are not, obviously, difficult for everyone to understand, but they are for most. For most Democrats certainly, and for many Republicans.

In theory, Trump should have been dropped from political contention years ago. It’s not even apparent what made him a viable political candidate in the first place. For the American presidency no less. In 2015, when he first declared that he was running for the White House, he seemed to come out of nowhere. Trump had never held any political office. Trump had never had any government experience. And Trump had never served in the military. What he was instead was a New York City real estate developer, a television reality star, and a self-promoting gadabout who liked nothing so much as boasting about his billions and hanging out with the young and beautiful, the rich and famous.

But from the start candidate Trump was an astonishment. His showmanship and bombast were not only not off-putting, but they were immensely appealing. As reporter Tim Alberta wrote at the time, “He was a larger-than-life character, someone with whom Americans of all ages had become familiar…. He was universally recognized and increasingly on the right, seen as a kindred spirit, his rants against political correctness resonating more with each passing day.” Trump was, let’s face it. a political star from the start. When he shouted at the crowd, “We Can Make this Country Great Again,” they hooted and hollered in response, their boisterous support for the man and his message rang through the room.

What has changed since then, since Trump’s earliest days in the political ring? Not much. Just further evidence that despite who he was and is, despite what he did and did not do, large numbers of his followers remain as devoted as dedicated. They remain so notwithstanding that during his four years in office the Republicans lost control of the presidency, the Senate and the House; that he failed to deliver on what he promised would be a string of Republican victories in the 2022 midterms; and that in the last year he was charged with fully 91 felonies in four different criminal cases. Still, if his followers judge him, they forgive him. Either they genuinely adore him, or they go along to get along.

This distinction is key. While we tend think of every Trump supporter as motivated by the same things in the same way, they are not. Those who follow Trump because they love him are an entirely different type from those who follow him because they assess it is in their interest to do so. It’s often said about Trump that his followers constitute a cult. Arguably, some do. But by no means all. Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy who decried Trump in the immediate aftermath of the January 6^th insurrection, and then in short order flew to Florida to kiss his ring, did an about face not because he changed his mind about the man but because he thought the better of making the man his enemy.

This is the first in a series of posts about Trump’s followers – who I divide into two categories. The first is Trump’s tribe. The second is Trump’s team. Trump’s tribe is comprised of those who make up his base. Ordinary people who continue to see Trump as their tribune – and to see in him them. Trump’s team consists of other key supporters such as elected officials; political appointees; hirelings and underlings; media stalwarts; right-wing idealogues; and deep-pocketed Republican Party funders.

As is well known by now, a good many members of Trump’s team regard him with disdain and even disgust, they see him as stupid as well as crude. But here’s the thing: so long as his base continues so ardently and abjectly to be in Trump’s thrall, so will they. In this sense Trump’s political magic act is so remarkable not because it works with the Republican elite but because it works, brilliantly, with the Republican base. On the surface, then, Trump’s base consists of his most impassioned followers. But the truth is that they are the leaders. If Trump’s repeat candidacy for the presidency has brought American democracy to the precipice, it is they who have led us there.

I tend to tilt at windmills – to engage in professional quests that turn out fruitless.  One such is my failed attempt to change how we use the words “leader” and “leadership.”

Nearly invariably it is presumed that both are preceded by the adjective “good.” We assume without question that to learn how to be a leader is to learn how to be a good leader. Similarly, we assume without question that leadership classes and programs and centers and books and tapes and videos are dedicated to promoting leadership that is good.

All of which would be fine… if we did not also assume that the adjective “good” was entirely unnecessary because there was no such thing as “bad.” That bad leadership either did not exist or it did not pertain. And that therefore paying attention to bad leaders and, or to bad leadership was merely a theoretical exercise, one of no practical value. Sort of like saying that medicine ought to concentrate entirely on promoting good health – never mind about repairing or at least improving bad health.  

What to me is a serious problem that continues to plague leadership education, training, and development came to mind again this week when I was reading the “president’s letter” from Peter Salovey, president of Yale University. This one appeared in the most recent issue of Yale Alumni Magazine – it was about “learning to lead in times of crisis.”

Salovey made the usual mistake: he equated leading with good leading. When he wrote, for example, about how others “modeled” for him the “qualities of a leader,” he obviously meant though felt no need to so specify the qualities of a good leader. Similarly, when he wrote about teaching Yale students “vital skills for leadership,” it was taken as a given that these skills would be employed only by leaders who were good.

Where is this written in stone? Why do we wear rose colored glasses? Why does Salovey ignore the real possibility that a Yale undergraduate who learns how to lead will end a bad leader – not a good one. Bad as in ineffective. Or bad as in unethical. Or bad as in both.

I don’t get it. But then, I never did. Which likely means I never will.   

Barack Obama is a leader. During the eight years he was president of the United States he had obvious power, authority, and influence. Since then he has chosen largely to retire from public life – which does not, however, mean that he has none of what he had. While he no longer has power – he is, for example, not now commander in chief – he still does have the authority associated with having been a two-term president and he still does have influence. When he speaks people listen.   

Michelle Obama is different – though she is no less relevant to the point I make. As the wife of the president, she did not of course have any formal power. She did though, as First Lady of the United States, have some authority. And she did, due mainly to her immense personal popularity, have influence. Moreover, her influence continues. She has some 57 million followers on Instagram; when she writes a book it’s a guaranteed best seller; when she wears a red dress red dresses become instantly stylish; and when she speaks, her legions of ardent admirers hang on to her every word. Four years after she left the White House, she was still voted the most admired woman in America and even now there’ s data to suggest that if she ran for president, she would in a heartbeat catapult to the front of the Democratic line. So, when she spoke publicly yesterday about the upcoming presidential election – on an interview show she said she was “terrified” at the thought of what might happen – it was, or it should have been, a big story.  

Both Barack and Michelle Obama seem strongly to prefer no longer being in the public eye or, at least, no longer being directly involved in politics. Though they are still relatively young, by and large they appear content to write books and make films, to earn large sums of money and enjoy the later fruits of their earlier labors.

All well and good if it were not widely feared – both at home and abroad – that the state of our democracy is in peril. That Donald Trump’s base will hold fast no matter what. That the previously centrist Republican Party has metamorphosed into a cult of MAGA loyalists. And that Trump will therefore win a second term.

Michelle Obama is right to be scared silly about what would happen if Trump won a second term. It is widely believed – and supported by the evidence in my soon to be published book, Leadership from Bad to Worse – he would without doubt be more erratic and extreme in the White House during his second term than he was during his first.

While in the last week Joe Biden seems finally to be going on offense, his approval ratings remain weak and his personal appearances less than inspiring. Moreover, the same applies to his running mate, Kamala Harris, who is performing no better than is he. What this means is that while it’s still early in the year, the outlook for never-Trumpers is, at least, worrisome. This upcoming presidential election is by no means in the bag for either of the top two candidates.

For Democrats and others concerned about the possibility of another Trump presidency this means they must step up. Leaders especially – and I don’t just mean political leaders – have a responsibility to make their voices heard, to reach out actively and even aggressively to the American people, to make sure that earlier this year they get the message and that later this year they get out and vote.

Barack and Michelle Obama are quintessential examples of leaders who have an obligation to lead. Not to stay on the sidelines but to enter the fray. The Obamas are, if you will, victims of their own success. Precisely because they are still stars – maybe she even more than he – they owe it to themselves, to their two daughters, and to the American people to shine their light on our political plight.  

Initial stipulations:

First, while there are no bad leaders without bad followers this post will focus on the former.

Second, I am not expert on the Israeli military. For my information I relied on remarkable reporting in the New York Times.

Third, this piece is about the military but for years Israel’s public leaders have been bad – as in ineffectual and in some cases unethical – across the board. Now its political leaders, intelligence leaders, and military leaders bear joint responsibility for a series of failures of previously unimaginable magnitude. Assigning direct blame for this or that gone wrong is therefore impossible – for instance distinguishing mistakes made by the Israeli military from those made by Israeli intelligence. Or distinguising the mistakes of the Israeli military from those of political elites who have contributed mightily to what became deep cleavages in Israeli society. But complexities notwithstanding, each of these institutions is responsible for making its own decisions and for their implementations.       

Fourth, the mistakes that culminated in Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, which are the focus of this piece, were wide ranging and far reaching. We now know, to take a single example, that for years the Israeli government failed diligently and intelligently to follow the money.  Money that was flowing to Hamas and ultimately made it possible for the organization to fund a major military operation.    

Finally, while all nations who experience a significant surprise attack are traumatized, Hamas’s assault on Israel triggered a trauma greater even than most. For Israel it signified not just a threat but an existential one. And it destroyed Israeli’s self-image. For decades they had seen themselves, and been seen by others, as singularly well prepared to defend themselves against any military threat. Their intelligence apparatus and their fighting forces were widely perceived as among the best in the world – until now.

The failures of the Israeli military leading up to October 7^th fall into two groups: those that occurred before and those that occurred during.

Failures Before

Above all this was a failure of imagination so great it boggles the mind. By every account (the Times is just one), the Israeli military had, literally, dismissed the possibility that its sworn enemy, Hamas, would attack, could attack, from Gaza. To reiterate, this was a failure on two counts: not believing that Hamas would attack; and not believing that Hamas could attack, certainly not in a way that would instantly rain down murder and mayhem. This failure, this failure of the imagination, was the most important – impossible to plan for an attack if you are persuaded there will be no attack. The terrifying truth nevertheless is this: Israel’s military had come to believe that “Hamas was neither interested in or capable of launching a massive invasion.”  This despite the Israeli’s having obtained plans indicating this was precisely what Hamas intended to do. In other words, this failure was not a matter of poor intelligence. It was a failure to believe or at least seriously to consider the intelligence that was in hand.

Every other failure that preceded the attack was a consequence of this first one. Why prepare for an armed invasion if you think it inconceivable that an armed invasion will occur? Why even have a battle plan? And, if you did somehow have a battle plan why bother deciding how to execute it when the need to do so will never arise?

Why for that matter waste time collecting information about something that will never happen? Might as well do what Israel’s military did – it cut back eavesdropping on Hamas radio traffic. As a former national security advisor to the prime minister put it, “The army does not prepare itself for things it thinks are impossible.”

Failures During

Precisely because the Israeli military did not prepare itself for what it considered impossible it could not defend its citizens when the impossible came to pass. It is this that explains why hundreds of Israeli hostages were taken and why more Jews died on October 7^th than on any other single day since the Holocaust.

It took over an hour to elicit any Israeli military response at all to the Hamas attack which was both sudden and substantial. Initially it consisted of rockets raining down while thousands of Hamas fighters broke through what obviously were wholly inadaquate barriers and stormed into Israel. Israeli reservists, meantime, were initially as hapless as helpless: on the assumption they would be warned well in advance of any attack they had never been trained rapidly to mobilize and deploy. Moreover, Israel’s military failed for a time fully to grasp what had just happened – Hamas had breached the border fence in more than 30 locations! In those early hours Hamas even had an enormous advantage in firepower. The unwitting and unprepared Israelis went into battle equipped with pistols and rifles while Hamas had “heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and landmines and more.” Compounding the situation was the fact that just two days before the attack Israel’s military had moved two commando companies away from the Gaza border to the West Bank. And… because October 7 was a Jewish holiday, and, again, because an attack by Hamas was simply not on anyone’s radar, not literally or figuratively, about half the 1500 soldiers normally stationed along Israel’s border with Gaza were away. They had gone home for the holiday.   

The failures of the Israeli military leading up to October 7^th were so all-encompassing and deeply mortifying they will for the indefinite future stain the state. So… now what? Not good enough for the government to say, as it repeatedly does, that there will be investigations but only when the war is over. Not good enough at all. It should not be good enough for Israelis. Nor should it be good enough for Americans who are Israel’s most important allies by far.

Israel’s top political leaders, its top intelligence leaders, and its top miliary leaders should be held directly and promptly responsible for the incalculable catastrophe that befell their people – and now the Palestinian people as well. I know, easy for me to say. But, if we have learned nothing over the course of human history, bad leaders should, they must, be stopped sooner not later by those who refuse any longer to put up with them.  I’m not saying that pushing people from their perch is easy. I am saying it’s better, far better, than that putting up with the alternative. Than letting bad linger and finally fester.   

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

My Follower of the Year 2023 is Alexei Navalny. No single individual is so strikingly lacking in power, authority, and influence as is Navalny – and is nevertheless leaving such a significant imprint. Navalny’s years-long resistance to Russia’s dictator president, Vladimir Putin, is destined forever to linger.

I’ve been writing about Navalny on and off for years. I pointed out in my 2012 book, The End of Leadership, that Navalny was Putin’s most prominent and politically dangerous opponent.  In 2017, in a post titled “Alexei Navalny – The Real Deal,” I observed that Navalny remained at the forefront of Russian dissent, that he had been repeatedly denounced and arrested by the Russian regime, and that those who dared to follow his lead were themselves vulnerable to Putin’s corrosive corruption and overweening power.

Since then, Navalny’s situation has gone from bad to worse. In August 2020 he was poisoned – government agents were implicated in the near successful attempt to murder him – and flown for treatment to Berlin. After his recovery several months later, Navalny voluntarily returned to Russia where he was immediately arrested. Since then, he has not been a free man. His prison terms get ever longer – this year he was sentenced on charges of extremism to 19 years in prison, these in addition to the 9 previously assigned – and harsher. And just this month he disappeared for three weeks, his whereabout unknown, only to resurface in a different penal institution, this one remote from Moscow, deep in the Artic.

When Navalny reappeared two days ago, he used X to announce that he was “relieved” that his journey to the gulag was over, and that he was in a good mood. This raises two questions: First, why is Putin not silencing him once and for all? Second why did Navalny choose to return to Russia from Germany when his fate, permanent imprisonment under harsh conditions, was almost certainly sealed?

My responses are obviously speculative. Still, as to why Putin hasn’t done him in – especially since other of Putin’s diehard opponents are long since six feet under – recall that he did try. Putin did try at least once to have Navalny done away with, an occasion on which he came close. But given Navalny survived the attempt to poison him, and given the attempt received worldwide attention, it has become difficult for Putin to murder him without looking like, well, a murderer. In this case not of a blatant bad guy, such as Yevgeny Prigozhin, but of a world-famous good guy, Navalny. (Prigozhin, a notorious thug and ultimately an enemy of Putin’s, died recently in a plane crash, widely understood to have been engineered by the Russian president.)  For now, at least, Putin seems to have concluded better to lock Navalny up and throw away the key, than to kill him and make him a martyr.

As to Navalny’s choice to deny himself a good life – his freedom, family, and friends, his health and welfare – clearly it was deliberate. Made with full forethought, with the near certain knowledge of what was to come. When in the wake of the Russian government’s attempt to assassinate him by poisoning him, he returned from Germany to Russia he knew it might well mean his martyrdom.

Alexei Navalny has no power, no authority, and nearly no influence. Over the years some Russians followed his lead, publicly dissented as did he, but not many. Navalny is therefore a follower who however has refused to follow – which means he remains entirely at Putin’s mercy. Mercy is not, however, Putin’s strong suit. Just yesterday a court in Siberia sentenced an ally of Alexei Navalny’s – her name is Ksenia Fadeyeva – to nine years in a penal colony for running an “extremist organization.” After the verdict was announced one of her lawyers said it would be appealed. Fat chance the appeal will succeed.  

Some of the world’s greatest leaders once were followers in that they spent time behind bars – Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King to name some. But each of these was eventually released – even Mandela who was locked up for more than 27 years. Whether Navalny will ever again be 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.

What are my criteria for “Leader of the Year – 2023”? Same as those for “Leader of the Year – 2022.” Which means I have only one. My single criterion for this designation is impact. Which leader had the greatest impact during the preceding twelve months?

Given my Leader of the Year last year was Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, it’s evident that my selection does not imply a value judgment. In this race to the top there is no good or bad – or, more precisely, it does not pertain. Rather my decision is based on which leader had the greatest effect in any given year – for better or worse.

This year were several candidates, all men and most though not all Americans. For example, I considered naming as my Leader of the Year, Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve. He managed to bring down the rate of inflation while engineering a soft landing and, simultaneously, to grow the American economy. I also thought of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who, despite a recent leadership fiasco, remains the face most closely associated with Artificial Intelligence. Shawn Fain also came to mind. He is the president of the United Auto Workers who this year steered his union to a major victory – likely a harbinger of similar union activity in 2024.

Among non-Americans my choice would’ve been to name two to the top slot: Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both leaders have made and are continuing to make decisions that are wreaking havoc on Israelis as well as Palestinians, with implications that are regional, and global.

But, instead of naming one or two of the above I decided to choose none of the above. This year I am making a different point entirely. One triggered by Eric Schmidt, who earlier in his career was CEO and executive chairman of Google, and who in recent years was a co-author and close friend of Henry Kissinger’s. After Kissinger died last month, Schmidt wrote an appreciation of the former Secretary of State and Nationial Security Advisor that was published in the Wall Street Journal. Schmidt wrote that Kissinger believed that “the world sorely lacks great leadership.” We simply have too few people, Kissinger thought, “with the vision we need.”  He suggested that “we compare our leaders today with, for instance, the Roosevelts to understand what we are missing.”

Kissinger was preoccupied with great men lifelong, specifically political leaders. He was a Jewish boy growing up in Germany when Hitler came to power. As a student and then as an academic he was clearly fascinated by legendary leaders and statesmen such as Bismark and Metternich. And during his long career as a public servant, he mostly had a front row seat, allowing him to see world leaders up close and personal, from Nixon to Mao, from Brezhnev to Putin. In his last book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, he focused on six exceptional examples including Charles de Gaulle and Anwar Sadat. So, when Kissinger opined at the end of his long life that the world in which we now live “sorely lacks great leadership,” we can safely say that he knew whereof he spoke.

My choice then for “Leader of the Year – 2023”? None – I refuse to choose for the simple reason that he, or she, is missing in action. He, or she, has gone MIA. This year no leader can claim the title of “great” – this year having diminished even autocrats such as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, China’s President Xi Jinping, and, yes, Putin. And this year leaving still open the question of whether Sinwar and Netanyahu will in the end drag the world into their war.

Which raises the question that Kissinger implicitly posed, “Where have all the leaders gone?” He of course was referring to leaders who are exceptionally good. So… why is it that we, we Americans, look back longingly at the Founders, at the Roosevelts, at Martin Luther King and Betty Friedan, and yes, at Ronald Reagan who now looms as large as he does genial and decent, and wonder why the 21^st century is so bereft of leaders who can lay claim to being singular.  

Even corporate chieftains and titans have recently been diminished. Bob Iger’s highly anticipated comeback has not turned out especially well; Bill Gates has been outed for being human; Elon Musk has made a mockery of himself; Jamie Dimon has not moved on despite getting long in the tooth; and Mary Barra has been obliged to eat crow.

And how about the presidents of some of our most vaunted institutions of higher education – Harvard, Penn, and MIT? At a recent congressional hearing each badly embarrassed themselves and the institutions they presumed to represent. Since then one has been canned, and another is under constant fire. Only the third, the leader of MIT, seems for the moment safe in her slot.

Whatever your views on Joe Biden or Donald Trump, stunning that the system is so stuck we’re stuck with this choice. Stunning that the Speaker of the House is a right-wing extremist. Stunning that the median age of members of the Senate is over 65. Stunning that the mayor of New York City is widely perceived unethical as well as incompetent. Stunning that the percent of U.S. Governors who are women is still less than 20%. Stunning that the Supreme Court is tarnished by allegations of corruption and at least one decision so archaic it reversed a right long since secured. Stunning that only about 15% of Americans trust the government in Washington to do what is right “most of the time.”

How did we get here? A partial list:

• Trajectory of history. For hundreds of years leaders in liberal democracies have gotten weaker and followers stronger.
• Changes in culture. Leaders in liberal democracies are no longer protected by a mantle of authority. Praising them is out; debasing them is in. Moreover, we feel emboldened and even entitled to peer not only into their public lives but into their private ones. Nothing now is off limits.
• Death of civics – and civility. Civics is no longer taught or, at least, not taught nearly as extensively as it used to be. And civility is positively old-fashioned. It’s clear our national discourse has been badly coarsened.  
• Color of money. The money made by top leaders in the private sector now far, far, far outstrips that made by leaders in the public sector. It always did – but the chasm between them has become humongous.
• Ubiquity of social media. This has meant among other things: the spread of misinformation and disinformation; increased threats of violence as a tool of political power; attention spans shrinking to the point of near vanishing; and constant preaching, or yelling and screaming, though only to the choir.  
• Diminishment of the liberal arts. Why study history or philosophy? Or literature or art or music? It’s become a cliché to say that in important ways our schools are failing us. But they are – in ways that explain the lack of leaders who have “the vision we need.”        
• Absence of shared values. The single best example of this is truth telling. Most of us continue to teach our children, at home and at school, not to lie. We tell them that lying is bad and when they lie sometimes certainly, they are punished. But when it comes to leaders, large numbers of us routinely accept lying as a matter of course – no punitive action taken.  

Leaders change. Followers change. And the contexts within which leaders and followers are located change. Which is precisely why our leaders are regularly diminished and demeaned. And why our faith in our institutions, in America’s institutions including government, business, schools, religion, media, even the military, is now alarmingly low.  

Of course nothing is impermeable. We are not destined to repeat history.  Still, to change the course we’re on would require heavy lifting. Do we have it in us? Maybe. Meantime, Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023 was, atypically, not a leader as this word is generally understood. It was Taylor Swift.

Hungary is a little country of about 10 million people. While in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it, along with Austria, was at the center of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire, those days are long gone. Instead, notwithstanding some of the glories of their lingering legacies, Budapest and Vienna are enormously diminished, capitols of Central European countries that are small in their land mass, small in the size of their populations, and small in their impact on global politics.

To this last line there is, however, one exception. The exception is the leader of Hungary – the Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, who for years has punched above his weight. Not because he is in any way exceptionally smart or gifted. Rather because he has a sixth sense for how to be exceptionally disruptive.  It is this that bestows on him a big stick. That makes it possible for him to have an impact that extends well beyond his otherwise ordinary persona, and his otherwise unimpressive political perch.

Such influence as Orban has in the United States is solely because of his connection to Donald Trump. Whatever the impression Americans have of Orban, if any, it is through the lens of Trump. Trump greatly admires Orban and repeatedly, pointedly, praises him. Trump sees in Orban – who over the years has become increasingly autocratic – the strongman that Trump himself wants badly to be. Orban, in turn, strokes Trump, feeds his bottomless pit of an ego, all the while playing footsies with another Trump fave, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.  In a speech delivered a few days ago in New Hampshire, Trump approvingly quoted the autocrat Putin, and described the autocrat Orban as “highly respected.” Trump welcomed his description of him as “the man who can save the Western World.”

But, if Orban’s impact on American politics is for now at least tangential, not so in Europe. In Europe he is having a direct impact on the governance of the European Union. For years he has been an EU obstructionist, a thorn in its side. But this week he wielded his big stick in a new way, a way so exceedingly disruptive it has for now at least blocked the EU’s ability to provide Ukraine with aid it desperately needs – especially since the US is currently blocked by Congress from helping one of its most important allies.  

A few days ago Orban managed single-handedly to torpedo the proposed EU-to- Ukraine aid package – which is strongly supported by much larger EU countries including Germany, France, and Poland – by invoking the veto. He skillfully seized on a weakness in the EU’s governance structure, which currently requires unanimity on all key decisions relating to foreign policy and to spending.     

Orban has led Hungary for 17 of the last 25 years. He has proved himself a survivor at home – and a striver abroad. For years he has made clear his intention not necessarily to play nicely with his colleagues in the EU. And now he is making clear his intention to try at least to bend them to his will. As he recently put it to members of the Hungarian media, “Our plan is not to leave Brussels but to take it over.”

So far Orban has been, as the title of this post suggests, a little leader with a big stick. Whether he and, or his stick will grow in 2024 remains of course to be seen. What is clear is that his future depends less on his own preternaturally strong sixth sense and more on outside events. Such as, for example, the Ukrainian war and, oh yes, the American election.