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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.   

I’ve been posting under the headline “Putin Patrol” on and off for over ten years. I’ve come to think of him as the gift that keeps on giving – if, that is, your interest is in leadership, especially bad leadership.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is a prototypical example of a leader who during his tenure – beginning in 2000 – has gone from bad to worse.* Moreover last week he announced that he would run for reelection. This means that failing a black swan event, he will win a fifth term. If he serves it in full his rule will extend to 2030, making him Russia’s longest serving leader since Catherine the Great.

Putin’s War – Russia’s attack on Ukraine – was launched in February 2022. While his leadership during this nearly two-year period has been unethical – even evil – in the last twelve months it has been effective, arguably very effective.

To a liberal Democrat, his badness, his malevolence, is self-evident. But how has Putin been good – how, specifically, has he been effective?

• His popularity at home remains high. This despite levels of domestic repression far greater than a few years ago. And far, far, greater than they were during the early years of Putin’s reign.
• His stature abroad remains high, or at least high enough. He and China’s president Xi Jinping remain best buds. India’s prime minister Narendra Modi tends to his ties to Putin with care. And just last week Putin sauntered around the Middle East, shoring up his relationships with Arab leaders. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did no less than tell Putin he had “lit up Riyadh with his presence.”
• Despite dire early projections, and strenuous efforts on the part of the West, Russia’s wartime economy has remained stable. It has adapted to Western sanctions, kept in harness its key trading partners, and used its oil revenues to keep full the country’s coffers.    
• Russia’s performance on the battlefield has gone from dismal to solid. Putin’s military has shored up its defenses and prevented Ukraine from making its much-anticipated breakthrough. Many in the West now see the war as a stalemate, neither side likely certainly in the near term to achieve a breakthrough. Further, Western support for the war effort is waning.
• Putin has disappeared his archnemesis, Alexi Navalny – so far without a trace. For several days, Navalny has been missing from the wretched prison to which he was confined by Putin, with no one in the West claiming to know where he is.

An hour or so ago Putin’s completed one of his rare press conferences. Not only did he exude self-confidence generally, but he also stuck to his guns on Ukraine specifically. “There will be peace when we achieve our goals,” he stated unequivocally. “They have not changed. I’ll remind you of what we talked about then: the denazification of Ukraine, its demilitarization, its neutral status. As for demilitarization, if they don’t want to come to an agreement, then we are forced to take other measures, including military ones.”   

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown – supposedly. But not so now with Putin. To the contrary. After a post-pandemic rough patch, he’s riding high. Looking good and, to all appearances, feeling fine.

——————————————-

*Barbara Kellerman, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers (Oxford University Press, March 2024).

The Ivy League is a group of eight American colleges and universities – Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale – that are among the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the world. Until the late 20^th century – Judith Rodin was named president of the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 – not one had ever been led by a woman. In recent years however this demographic has changed dramatically. Six of the eight Ivies are currently led by women.

While this percentage is misleading – at the national level by far the most college presidents are still white men – symbolism counts for something. It matters that in the top tier of American higher education women presidents are now the norm not the exception.

Which brings me to the unsettling fiasco of the past week. The fiasco that was the highly contentious congressional hearing on antisemitism. Since the October 7^th attack by Hamas on Israel has been a surge in antisemitic and anti-Arab hate crimes on some American campuses. This explains the appearance on Capitol Hill of the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay; the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill; and the president of M.I.T., Sally Kornbluth. They were there to testify generally about antisemitism on their campuses, and specifically about their responses to recent events.  

What they did, and did not, say ended for them, especially for Gay and Magill, in a political and public relations disaster. Moreover, the acrimony has not only not subsided, but since the hearing on Tuesday it has escalated. The women were attacked by the White House and by lawmakers in both parties. Some of their most generous donors turned away in disappointment and disgust. And, despite their expressions of remorse and regret, all three now face an investigation into antisemitism on their campuses by a Republican-led House committee.

Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth are not, of course, the only leaders in higher education obliged to address similar situations. But for now, they have become, no doubt to their great regret, indicators of what many perceive as a failure adequately to respond to an ancient hatred.   

This raises – for me, I have not seen them raised elsewhere – two questions. First, were their answers to the questions posed during the hearing different because they were women? Would men have responded in the same way?  

Second, has the fallout from their answers – the fierce backlash against them – been different because they were females? Would three male leaders have been attacked, and now continue to be attacked in the same way?

To these questions are of course no satisfactory answers. They are counterfactuals – which means we can never know. Still, we might hazard a few guesses, maybe even educated guesses, based on the literature on women and leadership.

Regarding what Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth said – and how they carried themselves – it’s worth recalling the research that indicates that in general women lead somewhat differently than men. In their important book, Through the Labyrinth, Alice Eagly and Linda Cary wrote that “some sex differences have been detected.” Specifically, women more than men “have a democratic, participative, collaborative [leadership] style.” As important is that other people expect women with power to downplay their power, to be, or at least to appear to be, more collaborative and less authoritative. This puts the burden on women to straddle the line between being sufficiently leader-like, that is, directive, but not so directive that they are perceived to be aggressive.

Does this matter in this instance? Were, for example, Gay’s responses to the questions posed by members of congress shaped at all by who she is – not just by what she believes? Gay is a woman, a black woman. Does it make sense that her being a woman, an African American woman, has no impact whatsoever on her leadership style? Not to me. All three women were taken to task for their extreme caution, for their overly “lawyerly” responses. Famed Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe chided Gay specifically for her “hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers.” I can only speculate that like the other women on the panel Gay’s reluctance to be more forceful, clearer, and more ringing in her responses was shaped by her identity.

And… by the role in which Gay and her colleagues found themselves. The most aggressive by far of their interlocutors was none other than Republican Representative Elise Stefanik – also obviously a woman. Why was it that Stefanik had no trouble whatsoever being dominant, agentic, directive? Recall her role. Her role was effectively that of prosecutor. She was free to be her most aggressive self because she was perfectly playing the part that she was assigned. Unfortunately for them, Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth were in this instance assigned a different part – a part more akin to that of a defendant. Of a follower – not of a leader.

But even here gender might matter. Her part as prosecuter notwithstanding, it’s plausible that had Stefanik been questioning three men not three women she would’ve felt less free “to be her most aggressive self” – lest she come off as a shrew, a harpie.

Which brings us to where we are now. Has the backlash against them been fiercer because they are women? Would three male presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT have been attacked – and would they continue to be attacked – in the same way?

Again, impossible to know. Still, it matters that while they were testifying all three of these ostensibly towering figures seemed curiously small, vulnerable even. That while they were testifying all three of these ostensibly formidable intellects seemed curiously unable to craft smart answers to simple questions. That while they were testifying all three of these ostensibly forceful females seemed curiously stymied by none other than one of their kind.  

What we have then is a bad mix. Stupendously successful people. Stupendously successful people who are women. Stupendously successful people who are women who are leaders. Stupendously successful people who are women who are leaders who tried to strike the right balance between being directive and demure and failed.

In a post of October 14, I quoted David Grossman. He is one of Israel’s most eminent authors who has been, lifelong, a member of Israel’s liberal left. So, his antagonism to Israel’s right-wing governing coalition, especially to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, comes as no surprise. Still, I’m citing his views again because not only do they coincide with my own, but as I noted earlier, the words Grossman uses are the same as those in the title of my forthcoming book.

The book – to be published in March by Oxford University Press – is Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers. Similarly, in an essay that appeared in the Financial Times not long after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, Grossman wrote that, “What is happening now is the concrete price Israel is paying for having been seduced for years by a corrupt leadership which drove it downhill from bad to worse; which eroded its institutions of law and justice, its military, its education systems; which was willing to place it in existential danger in order to keep its prime minister out of prison.” (Italics mine.)

Grossman makes clear that Hamas is entirely to blame for the terrible terrorist attack. Still, he points out that in the months before, Israel was deeply, even agonizingly divided. Repeatedly millions of Israelis took to the streets to protest the government and the man at its head. Meanwhile Netanyahu demeaned and discredited his opponents – depicting them as traitors. Moreover, he boasted throughout about how powerful was the state of Israel, how perfectly fortified it was against any outside threat.

Since Grossman penned his piece, we’ve learned that not only was the leader of Israel deliberately sundering his country, but he was also failing the while to protect it. We now know that the Israeli government, the Israeli military, and the Israeli intelligence establishment ultimately dismissed as insignificant early warnings that Israel was not only not perfectly fortified against threats, but it was vulnerable to an attack by Hamas that was, literally, already being planned.  

I do not want to rehash the past but to question the present. Israel is now conducting a brutal war against Hamas which is having devasting effects on Palestinian civilians. Given these effects are immediately apparent everywhere in the world, the world, including many in the United States, is turning against the Jewish state. Yesterday French President Emannuel Macron warned Israel that “the total destruction of Hamas” would mean ten years of war. As a result, he concluded, efforts to achieve a lasting ceasefire between the warring parties must be stepped up. 

To say it’s not so easy is grossly to understate it. Among the reasons a ceasefire is proving elusive is that Hamas remains hellbent on nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish state.

But it is simultaneously true that the Israelis are in a terrible predicament. Their wartime leader is corrupt and sclerotic, and guilty of malfeasance. He is not only widely acknowledged to be miserably unethical but now also miserably ineffective. The usual admonition not to change horses in midstream – not to change leaders in wartime – does not then apply in this case. It does not apply when your horse is in every way incapable of doing the job. When your horse might be the very thing that brings you down.

Truth is that Netanyahu – and others in Israel’s current government – have a personal and professional interest in continuing the war. For virtually as soon as Israel ceases hostilities their political lives will be over forever. Netanyahu will, moreover,  be in immediate legal peril.

I am not alone in pointing out how calamitous is Netanyahu’s leadership. Israeli political scientist Dani Attlas notes that Israelis have “good reason to believe that Netanyahu isn’t always making decisions based on [their] shared interests.” Bernard Avishai, another Israeli professor and well-known commentator has remarked that his country is “completely underestimating what a liability this government and this prime minister are internationally – especially in America.”

This last point is not only true but critical. Israel needs the United States like it needs its right arm. But there is growing evidence that, for reasons both at home and abroad, President Biden is increasingly leery of giving Israel a blank check – especially as it pertains to the tactics it is using in Gaza.

The Israeli people are on the horns of a leadership dilemma. They remain horribly traumatized and terribly humiliated. And, understandably, they seek revenge. But as the weeks after the attack become months, they seem increasingly to understand that their prime minister and his government are dangerously lacking. The most recent polls show that Netanyahu’s approval ratings have dropped to 27% while those of his most obvious opponent – Benny Gantz, a retired general who since October 12 has agreed to serve in government on an emergency basis – have climbed to 52%.      

Getting rid of Benjamin Netanyahu along with the worst of his cronies would not be easy. But it is not impossible. Nor should any nation suffer a leader who stands himself to benefit from a war that ends later not sooner.

The headline in the Wall Street Journal read, “Departure Plans Surge in Congress.” In the New York Times it read, “Backing Away from Congress by the Dozens.” The point of both pieces was not that members of the House of Representatives were heading for the exits. It was that so many of them were doing so at the same time.

In the month of November twelve lawmakers – six Republicans and six Democrats – announced that they would not continue to serve in the Congress. Nor were the numbers of quitters limited to these twelve alone. They were part of a larger group that now numbered at least three dozen members of Congress who said this year that they would not seek reelection.

Their plans differed, of course. Some were hanging up their hats altogether, others were planning to run for another elective office, and still others were headed for what they thought greener pastures. Their message though was the same: Serving in the House was no longer sufficient or even satisfying. In fact, in many cases it was so unsatisfying as to be downright infuriating. Said one lawmaker who had served six-terms: “The last few years have been among the most difficult and frustrating times in my professional career.”

The temptation is to assume that the wave of retirements is only on account of the dysfunction in Washington. And it’s true. It’s extreme, exemplified vividly by the recent spectacle of Republicans unable for weeks to agree on a House Speaker, but, perhaps more tellingly, by lawmakers’ inability to pass legislation even on which most Americans agee. Taxation is an example. Most Americans want the rich to pay more. But Congress continues to balk. Similarly with gun control. Most Americans want stricter controls over purchasing firearms. But Congress continues to balk.

But the truth is not so simple. The fact is that leaders everywhere are finding that being a leader in the present is less satisfying than it was in the past. The evidence is clear. Leader tenure is shorter and leader turnover is faster.

• It appears that more American CEOs headed for the exits in 2023 than in any year previous.
• It appears that the average tenure of American CEOs is dropping.
• It appears that more American college presidents are quitting at faster rates than in any years previous.
• It appears that the average tenure of American college presidents is dropping.   
• It appears that the attrition rate of public-school principals is higher now than it was five years ago.
• It appears that more than one third of American pastors are considering quitting their posts.

In each case I write “it appears” because the data is short of conclusive. But the trends are unmistakable. The demands on leaders are higher and the satisfactions are lower. As G. David Gearhart, an expert on leadership in higher education, put it, being a college or university president has become “very difficult to do in the right way. There are so many groups out there that a college president has to try to appease, that it’s almost impossible to do.”

I have and will continue to discuss the reasons why the change, especially in the last decade. Suffice it here to say that good governance – especially in democratic systems – requires good leaders. If we continue to beat them up and beat them down it will not serve us well.   

In the first book I ever wrote, All the President’s Kin, I typed Rosalynn Carter an “Alter Ego.”* Alter Egos are one of seven different types of presidential kin that also include, for example, Decorations, Humanizers, and Helpmeets. Each of these – including spouses and siblings, parents, and children – was beginning at the time to emerge from behind the scenes. They were taking on public roles of visible importance. Not all these roles were substantively significant. But in different ways they all were, and are, politically significant.  

Rosalynn Carter was one of two people I typed “Alter Egos.” (The other was Robert Kennedy.) I defined Alter Egos this way:

Alter Egos are those rarest of relatives: people to whom we are so close, on so many levels, that they and we are one. The interaction is in every area. It is constant. I would claim that when a president has an Alter Ego, he or she is the second most powerful political figure in America. And the benefit to a president lucky enough to have one is considerable.

Rosalynn Carter died yesterday at the age of 96. She was, in her own right, a leader. A path breaker in mental health. And a pathbreaker in claiming for the role of First Lady the right to make a political difference. Carter was not, of course, the first First Lady to have a major impact on American politics. Most famously Eleanor Roosevelt preceded her. But Carter can rightly be said to have picked up where Roosevelt left off. And she can similarly be said to have further paved the way for her least retiring successor, Hillary Clinton.   

But it was her relationship to her husband, President Jimmy Carter, that stood out. It was so close and even then, of such long duration, that effectively they were one.  In the book I wrote:

The power that Rosalynn Carter wielded was derived from … the nature of her finely tuned relationship with her husband. She had developed, over the course of a highly successful thirty-four-year marriage, a way of dealing with Jimmy Carter, of influencing him to see things her way, that was unrivaled by anyone else. Indeed, no one else even came close. The thirty-ninth president was a loner. He did not socialize easily, either with old pals from Plains or with new ones from Washington. He was most comfortable with family, and when he was not called on to do otherwise, he shared [himself] mainly with Rosalynn. She was his wife and the mother of his children. But she was also his best friend and closest, most constant counselor. It was through this [most intimate of] connections that she gained exceptional political power.  

All the Presidents Kin was published in 1981. I cannot now paint her picture any better than I did then.

Which leader? Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

First, Nadella now rivals Apple’s CEO Tim Cook in the race for which CEO has proven himself most able brilliantly to succeed a legendary founder. In Cook’s case Steve Jobs. In Nadella’s case Bill Gates.

Second, taking advantage of the seismic shakeup that I wrote about two days ago, Nadella seized the day. He lost not a nanosecond adding to Microsoft already formidable team OpenAI’s cofounders, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman.

To be clear it’s all rather incestuous. Microsoft was one of OpenAI’s original backers and it retains a good chunk of the company. Still, while the two companies are related, they’re not one and the same. Altman and Brockman now owe their primary allegiance not to OpenAI but to Microsoft. Suffice to point out the former’s loss is the latter’s gain.   

There has been no recent event on Planet Leadership as seismic as the sudden, startling sacking of Sam Altman.

Altman was more than the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI – the company at the forefront of artificial intelligence development. Altman personified AI. Altman was the ambassador of AI. Worldwide people – including people in positions of great power – depended on Altman to level with them. To tell them the truth about where in the big picture AI was, and where it was likely, at least in the near term, to go. Altman was King of AI – he embodied the technological development that is as potentially potent as any in our lifetimes.

And now he’s gone. Well, not gone really. Impossible to believe that he won’t resurface. But he was, so far as we know, pushed from his perch from one moment to the next by the board of the company that he appeared absolutely to lead.

What happened is unclear. A post on OpenAI’s website said only that the board “no longer has confidence” in Altman’s leadership because he was “not consistently candid in his communications with the board.” What is clear is that the internal turmoil will have an external effect. Altman was so singular a captain of his domain that inevitably his domain will be impacted by his shocking departure.  

Leaders in America were damned if they did. And they were damned if they didn’t. If they did speak out about the war in the Middle East – made any statement at all – they were bound to be attacked by some or another of their constituents. And if they didn’t speak out about the war in the Middle East they were bound to be attacked by some or another of their constituents.

Let’s review the context:

• Leadership in America has always been difficult. Our history was, after all, revolutionary. The American Revolution birthed a political culture in which resistance to authority was admired, not despised.
• Leadership in America has always been difficult. Our ideology is, after all, in strong support of followers, not leaders. It gives ammunition to ordinary people for whom ideals such as freedom and democracy buttress their claim to have a say.    
• Leadership in America has always been difficult. And, our constitution and our system of government were, after all, deliberately crafted to preclude any single individual or branch of government from accumulating too much power. Hence … “checks and balances.”
• Leadership in America is even more difficult now than it was before. The rights revolutions of the 19^th, 20^th and even into the 21^st centuries expanded our conceptions of who was entitled, legally as well as morally, to have a say.
• Leadership in America is even more difficult now than it was before. Social media give everyone a voice -many ominous and downright dangerous. Leaders are especially vulnerable to followers consumed by hatred and rage.

Let’s review the situation:

• An unprecedented and unanticipated war in the Middle East, between Israel and Hamas, triggered by a bloody attack.
• A war in an area of the world beset by ancient hatreds.
• A war in which the warring parties evoked impassioned responses not only in the region but around the world.
• A war which in the United States is home to people who strongly support both sides.  
• A war with potentially enormous geopolitical consequences – political, economic, and military.

Let’s review the followers – the American people:

• Most don’t care much, if at all, about the war in the Middle East.
• But some care a lot. Some on the right care a lot and so do some on the left, even some in middle. Moreover, some if not most Jews care, and some if not most Muslims do the same.
•  Of those that do care a lot about the war in the Middle East, there is not necessarily agreement. For example, some American Jews strongly support Israel doing whatever it deems necessary to defend itself. Others condemn Israel for putting in harm’s way many civilians.
• Americans who have done something as opposed to nothing have done different things: written letters to editors; vented on social media; spoken out at meetings or other gatherings; put up signs or posters supporting or denigrating one or another side; attended a march, protest or rally; donated money to their cause; or withheld money from an organization or institution they concluded had violated principles in which they deeply believed.
• Americans are divided on the war on the Middle East. But an overwhelming majority – 84% – are either very or somewhat concerned that the United States will be drawn into what at this writing remains still a confined conflict.

Finally let’s review the leaders. Here a sample:

• The President of the United States. You know you have a problem when your most immediate followers are among your most restive. This week more than 500 government officials representing some 40 government agencies signed a letter protesting the Biden administration’s Middle East policy.  Moreover public support for President Biden’s stance on the war is slipping, even among Democrats.   
• Other elected officials. Longtime, generally mild-mannered Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was booed at a vigil in Boston when he had the temerity to call for a “de-escalation of the current violence.”
• Appointed officials. None other than the relentlessly hard-working and publicly mild-mannered Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, faced dissent in his ranks. Some of his State Department underlings used the Department’s internal “dissent channel” to protest Blinken’s policy in the Middle East, which they viewed as too strongly pro-Israel.  He in turn felt the better part of valor was to assure his subordinates that, “we’re listening.”
• Presidents of colleges and universities. They’ve been on the frontlines since day one. Harvard’s newly minted president Claudine Gay is evidence. One of her predecessors, Larrry Summers, stated publicly that he was “sickened” by the university’s “silence.” Major Harvard funders Leslie and Abigail Wexner criticized Gay’s “tiptoeing” and “equivocating” on the war and announced they were cutting all ties to the University. Nor were students exempt – Harvard’s campus was sundered by student groups noisily, sometimes aggressively, attacking those who opposed them.
• CEO’s – if they said anything they usually were careful, very careful. Most statements coming out of corporate headquarters were anodyne – such as Microsoft’s, which condemned the “hatred and brutality;” Intel’s which said the company was taking steps to “safeguard and support” their workers; and JPMorgan’s, which called the war a “terrible tragedy.” There were exceptions – but by and large corporate leaders have become gun shy. For good reason. They know now that if they take a stance on anything that’s remotely political or controversial, they – and the companies they lead – will be vulnerable to attack.

Anyone say that leading in that America was hard?* In the past it was hard. In the present it is hard. And in the future it will be harder still.

Unless of course we elect a president who is a fascist – in which case no problem. Fascists don’t even bother to persuade us to do what they want us to do. They just force us to do it.

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*Barbara Kellerman, Hard Times: Leadership in America (Stanford University Press, 2015).

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