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It was just over a month ago that the Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, mounted an attack, or attempted a coup, or maybe a mutiny, against Russian President Vladimir Putin. While the rebellion was short lived, virtually every Western expert agrees that it was, and remains a threat to Putin’s authority.

I wrote at the time that Putin had good reason to fear Prigozhin – see links to two earlier, related, posts below. But I did not imagine that so soon after the rebellion I would see on the front page of the Financial Times what I saw on the front page of today’s Financial Times.

It was a photograph of Prigozhin – looking very well, thank you – taken this week in St. Petersburg. The picture – which has been proven to be authentic – was occasioned by the Russia Africa summit. Prigozhin is seen shaking hands gregariously and, apparently, relaxedly, with Freddy Mapouka, a delegate from the Central African Republic.

It is an astonishing photo because 1) It reveals how radically Putin has differed from what previous Russian/Soviet tyrants would have done with anyone who did what Prigozhin did. They would have locked up or worse anyone who threatened their power. 2) It departs radically from what Putin himself has done with other prominent Russian activists and oppositionists. Which is to say that especially in recent years he has imprisoned them, or poisoned them, or murdered them. 3) It departs radically from past patterns because Putin has allowed or been obliged to allow his leniency with Prigozhin to be so publicly apparent.

No one knows if Prigozhin will indefinitely be granted what seems to be his freedom. Moreover, the whole episode remains – as Winston Churchill famously said about Russia – a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Still, the photograph says a lot… even if we cannot yet divine exactly what.

Leadership in Russia – Be Careful What You Wish For

Leadership in Russia – Even Paranoids Have Real Enemies

Can there be such a thing? A leader who has no followers – or only followers who are too few or too weak to have an impact?

The answer to this question depends of course on how the word “leader” is being defined. Here I will avoid the definitional wrangle. I will simply assert that by virtue of the position he holds, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Portuguese politician and diplomat, Antonio Guterres, is a leader.  

As much as any other world leader, Guterres has warned for years about the dangers of climate change. In 2022, for example, he claimed that humanity was becoming a “weapon of mass extinction.” And that people were “treating nature like a toilet.”

This week – just as we learned that never before has there been a July as hot as the this one – Guterres did it again. He again warned, loudly, clearly, even eloquently, that people were burning the planet. That global warming had ended, and that “global boiling” had started. That the air was “unbreathable.” That the heat was “unbearable.” And that both fossil fuel profits and climate inaction were “unacceptable.”

Guterres called on the world’s leaders – primarily presumably leaders in government – to act and to act fast. “There is simply no more time” to wait, he warned.

Trouble is that the United Nations is largely without power. Trouble is that the Secretary General of the United Nations is largely without power. Trouble is that the post he holds – and therefore he himself – does not even carry much influence.   

Too bad. Because United Nations’ Secretary Generals are so systemically and structurally enfeebled, Guterres’s warnings remain largely unheard and unheeded. He is a leader who lacks the power, authority, and influence to lead. He is a leader who, effectively, lacks followers. Which is one of the countless reasons why global boiling goes on. And on.

There is no university in the United States more prestigious than Stanford University. There is no position in American higher education more prestigious than the presidency of Stanford University. There is no lowlier creature on the campus of Stanford University than a first semester freshman. In the parlance of my field, then, the president of Stanford is, ordinarily, a powerful leader, and a first semester freshman is, ordinarily, a powerless follower.

But, as I have many times remarked, not every follower follows, at least not all the time. Sometimes, despite their lack of power, and authority, and influence, followers not only do not follow their leaders they take them on. Moreover, on rare occasions a lowly follower knocks a high and mighty leader straight off their perch.

Which is precisely what happened one week ago when the president of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, resigned. He felt obliged to quit his post when it was revealed that some of his scientific work, going back decades, contained significant flaws.

Which raises the question of why, given that some of his questionable research was conducted and the results published years ago did the whole truth surface only now. The answer: because a lowly freshman, Theo Baker, a freshly minted journalist for the Stanford Daily News, did some old-fashioned investigative reporting. He spent countless hours chasing down earlier allegations that had long lain fallow, only to unearth some deeply embarrassing truths. After an extended and extensive review, an outside panel of scientists (assembled by Stanford’s board) concluded that the president of the University indeed was guilty of, or at least responsible for, one or more studies that “fell below customary standards of scientific rigor.”

Baker, it should be noted, was not left to go about his work in peace. Quite the contrary. Several aggressive letters were sent by Stephen Neal, Tessier-Lavigne’s attorney, to the Stanford Daily, either requesting retractions of what had already been published, or seeking to block more articles along similar lines. But Baker was on a mission – a mission that a week ago he accomplished. At a minimum his spadework revealed that Tessier-Lavigne was less than fully rigorous about his scientific work, and less than fully honest. This as president of a university that boasts of being among the most prestigious research universities in the world.

It’s exceedingly rare for a follower so ostensibly weak to take down a leader so ostensibly strong. It’s rarer still when that follower is just 18 years old – and the leader is among the most eminent members of the American establishment.

            Schadenfreude was originally a German word indicating satisfaction, pleasure, or even glee at someone else’s misfortune. It is not an especially attractive sentiment, but it is a deeply human one. Which is precisely why the word has wormed its way into the English language.

            I do not know Bob Chapek, former CEO of The Walt Disney Company. But if he’s not experienced schadenfreude in recent months, he’s a saint. For Chapek was manhandled by Disney’s current CEO, Bob Iger, before, during, and after Chapek became his successor. Iger, in other words, not only preceded Chapek as Lion King of Disney but after Chapek was unceremoniously pushed out, succeeded him. And now it’s Iger’s turn. It’s Iger who’s now in trouble.

Iger had served as Disney’s CEO for a decade and a half when, in 2020, he finally retired. Chapek got the nod as Iger’s successor, but the nod was half-hearted and so was the board’s endorsement. Iger moreover made plain during the interregnum that he did not think highly of Chapek either personally or professionally. Through no fault of his own Chapek’s timing was also bad. Among the unanticipated stumbling blocks was Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, who made life miserable for Chapek during his tenure at the top by launching against Florida-based Disney World a series of attacks that ended ultimately in a culture war.

When it became clear that Chapek was not up to the task, doomed no matter what he did or didn’t do, to remain in the shadow of his vaunted predecessor, Chapek was escorted out and Iger was ushered back in. Hopes for Iger’s resumption of the role of Lion King were sky high. He had previously proven so exceptionally skilled in his role as Disney’s leader, it was automatically assumed he could repeat his past performance.  

But the successes of leaders depend not only on them but on their followers – and on the contexts within which they and their followers are situated. As Iger has come to understand all too well, during the couple of years that he was out and Chapek was in, things changed. People changed and the circumstances within which Disney was operating changed. While Iger-the-leader was the same, the challenges he faced on reclaiming his top slot were far greater than just a few years earlier.

Last week Bob Iger was interviewed by CNBC’s David Faber. Iger seemed to have aged ten years in two. He looked much older and acted and reacted like a leader under stress. Which he is. “Bob Iger Isn’t Having Much Fun” ran a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal. The article described him as being under pressure, as straining to put out “fire after fire” including streaming losses, an aggressive activist investor, TV woes, and a stock price that was, at best, stuck. Moreover, the piece made clear whatever was going wrong could not just be blamed on Iger’s predecessor, on Chapek.  “Some of Disney’s biggest challenges,” the article argued, “are rooted in decisions Iger made during his first stint in the top job,” including, for example, his choice to “enter into an arms race over streaming.”

Nor was the Journal alone in its assessment.  The Financial Times featured a similar piece titled, “Iger Feels Heat Over Disney’s Performance,” and an article in the New York Times noted that questions were mounting about the “company’s vaunted movie studios and theme parks.”

Can you imagine Disney in trouble?! Can you imagine Disney in trouble with the leader who would be savior at the helm?!

Given what happened to Bob Chapek during his short tenure at the top – he was publicly humiliated and then given the boot – it would be impossible to blame him if he were watching Bob Iger’s declining fortunes with a smirk or even a smile. This is not to say that Iger’s second bite of the apple is doomed to failure. Rather it is to underscore that in the short term at least his halo has been visibly, and badly, tarnished. It’s why Chapek’s Schadenfreude would be, if it is, an understandable response. Very understandable.

Leadership is like everything else. It changes. It’s vulnerable to the vagaries of fashion.

When Machiavelli penned The Prince power and authority were presumed the privilege of a single person, the man who was the monarch. When Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense power and authority were resources which, if harbored to excess, were to be snatched from leaders by their followers, by force if necessary. When Betty Friedan and Martin Luther King wrote, respectively, both in 1963, The Feminine Mystique and Letter from Birmingham Jail, power and authority were rights to be claimed by, finally, women and African Americans.

More recently much of the focus on leadership has been on power and authority in business. Two issues have been at the forefront. The first is the tension between leadership structures that are traditional, that is, hierarchical; and leadership structures that are more modern, that are deliberately and presumably demonstrably flatter.

The second issue was brought to the fore by the pandemic. Whether leaders – or if you prefer, managers – can work from home at least part of the time. Or whether, in contrast, they should be in the office full time, five days a week.*

Though it’s too early to say for sure, it appears the passage of time is resolving both issues. They both seem more settled now than they did even in the recent past.

While many modern companies experimented with or even embraced the idea that they would perform better if layers of management were removed, and if more people participated in decision making, and if more felt personally and professionally empowered, it now seems clear that high degrees of autonomy are not the wave of the corporate future. They appear either not to work at all, or at least not to work better than the traditional models, certainly not in organizations of any size.   

This is not to say that leadership and management now are what they were fifty years ago, when “command and control” was the only way to go. They are not. But it is to say that while leadership and management change, some things remain fundamentally the same. More specifically, the “iron law of oligarchy,” which maintains that over time all organizations, especially large ones, will develop oligarchic, or hierarchic tendencies, still prevails. **

It could be too early to conclude that post-pandemic leaders and managers will again be expected to work in the office most days if not every day of the week. But this appears to be the trend. Again, this is not to say that Covid has had no impact. It did – hybrid work is here to stay.

But is it here to stay for those in the middle or high up the corporate ladder? Not clear. Even more to the point, it is clearly not here to stay for those who are ambitious, especially for those in their twenties and thirties who have come to understand that if they want to get ahead with reasonable rapidity, they’d better show their face. They’d better not work or hardly work remotely.

Leave it to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to spell out his position in no uncertain terms. In a recent memo he wrote he expected his managing directors to be “visible on the floor, they must meet with clients, they need to teach and advise, and they should always be [available] …. We need them to lead by example, which is why we’re asking all managing directors to be in the office five days a week.” It’s a position he reiterated this week when he told The Economist, “I don’t know how you can be a leader and not be accessible to your people.”

The more things change the more they stay the same. Leadership does change. And leadership does stay the same.

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*The words “leadership” and “management” are often assumed synonymous; they are often used interchangeably.  

**The concept of an “iron law of oligarchy” was developed in the early 20^th century by the German-born sociologist, Robert Michels.

David Brooks is an estimable columnist who can regularly be read in the New York Times. A few days ago, he penned a piece titled, “Why Biden Isn’t Getting the Credit He Deserves.” Brooks pointed out that by most measures the American economy is thriving and that the policies of President Joe Biden deserve much if not most of the credit. But, while “Americans should be celebrating,” Brooks wrote, most are not. Instead of acknowlednig the country’s successes 74 percent of the American people say it’s on the wrong track. And instead of acknowledging the president’s sucssesses his approval ratings have been stuck for a year at a “perilously low” 43 percent.

Brooks asks why this is. Why the American people are so reluctant to take pleasure in their good fortune and to give credit where credit is due. Partly, he writes, it’s because of inflation – a few key prices are obviously higher than they were three years ago. And partly it’s the media – now in the habit of stoking anger and fear. But in the main, Brooks writes, the problem is our “national psychology.” He concludes that during “the Trump era we have suffered a collective moral injury and a collective loss of confidence, a loss of faith in ourselves as a nation.”

Far be it from me to argue that since Donald Trump entered politics in 2015, our discourse has been increasingly debased and our disposition increasingly depressed. But to blame a single individual for what’s gone wrong is both antihistorical and devoid of contextual consciousness. 

The Trajectory of History 

That followers in liberal democracies should criticize and even condemn their leaders is entirely in keeping with what has been, at least since the Enlightenment, the historical trend. Patterns of dominance and deference change over time: in the West they have in the last several centuries, and even in the last several decades, resulted in leaders who are weaker and followers who are stronger.

While this trend ebbs and flows in fits and starts, overall, it’s unmistakable. As I wrote in The End of Leadership, “there is less respect for authority across the board [than there used to be] – in government and business, in the academy and in the professions, even in religion. Power and influence have continued to devolve from the top down – those at the top having less power and influence; those in the middle and at the bottom having more. For their part, followers, ordinary people, have an [ever] expanding sense of entitlement – demanding more and giving less.”*

There are two primary reasons for this shift. The first are changes in technology, beginning at least with the printing press and ending (for the moment) with social media. The second are changes in culture, in which those without authority have increasingly less compunction about taking on those with.

The Consequence of Context

Brooks ignores an inconvenient truth: that what’s happening in the United States is not unique to the United States. Other liberal democracies are suffering the same crisis of faith – faith that their democratic system of government can deliver what it seems on the surface to promise. Not only the pursuit of happiness but happiness itself.

France has been riven with strife off and on for years, most dramatically this year. First, for months on end the country was racked with large and deeply disruptive protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s determination to push through pension reform. Now, in the last week, have been riots in the streets, looting and burning in cities and suburbs in response to the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old of Algerian descent. At this writing have been six nights of extreme unrest, to which some 45,000 police and gendarmes have been summoned to respond.

A week ago, in Germany, was the first ever electoral victory at the district level of a member of the far-right populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Now, seven days later, was the first ever electoral victory of the AfD at the mayoral level. No one is suggesting the AfD poses a serious threat to the centrist government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Still, the 10-year-old party has been polling up to 20% in recent surveys. Additionally, the AfD is now considered a durable force in German politics, reflecting widespread divisiveness over, especially though not exclusively, the issue of immigration.      

Rishi Sunak is the latest in an impressive series of British Prime Ministers – remember Liz Truss? – whose brief tenures have been riven with division and disapproval.  Dissatisfaction with the government continues to increase – it’s now at record levels with approximately 80% of Britons registering chronic dissatisfaction. Additionally, the British electorate is suffering from a severe and so far, incurable case of buyer’s remorse. They deeply regret their monumental decision to opt for Brexit, to quit the European Union, with four out of five Britons now saying they want closer ties to Europe.

Then there is Israel, touted for over a half century as the only democracy in the Middle East and as America’s only reliable ally in the region. Now where is it? Now Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial, defending himself against charges including fraud, bribery, and breach of trust. Now Israel is being sundered by Netanyahu’s attempt massively to overhaul the country’s judicial system. And now there is a serious split in Israeli’s right-wing government over how hard, if at all, to crack down on Jewish extremists, especially settlers who attack Palestinian villages. The long-touted so-called two-state solution seems dead as the proverbial doornail – an impression reinforced again today, when Israel launched its biggest airstrike on an area in the West Bank in two decades. This leaves the one-state solution which is, so far as anyone can now tell, no solution at all.

On this July 4^th weekend then the United States is by no means alone. Whatever it is that ails the American people is not a disease for which any single individual is responsible. Rather it reflects the temper of the times in which democracy itself gives us not only permission to want more – but to demand more than what we already have.  

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*HarperCollins, 2012, pp. xviii-xix.

Dictators are paranoid. They must be, they have no choice. For them to survive, for them to remain at the center of the action and above everyone and everything, they must see around every corner. They must presume enemies everywhere lurking and be ready at a moment’s notice to take them out. To eliminate or even dispose of them, permanently.  How else to continue indefinitely to reign supreme?

Consider the case of the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan is not a dictator; he is an autocrat. Still, he has been leader of Turkey for two decades, was recently reelected, and has evolved over the years into an unrepentant Strongman. It is precisely because he developed a paranoid streak that he tightened his by now nearly ironclad grip on every lever of power.

When Erdogan was attacked, he attacked right back. On July 15, 2016, a faction of the Turkish military attempted a coup against him and his government. The attempt was bloody and deadly: several hundred people were killed, over 2,000 people were injured, and government buildings were bombed.

But in no time flat it was evident the coup had failed. Moreover, in no time flat Erdogan was hunting down those he perceived as his enemies. Five days after the failed coup Erdogan was punishing mutinous soldiers and purging whoever else he deemed a traitor or danger, including judges, governors, civil servants, teachers, and every university dean in the country.

Which brings us to the situation in Russia: what if any are the similarities and what are the differences? The most obvious similarity is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is like Erdogan though worse – Putin is inarguably a dictator and he is inarguably paranoid. This means that he has been hellbent – especially in recent years – on destroying or even eliminating his enemies. His track record in this regard is indisputable. He threatens those who dare to dissent or disagree; or he punishes them, sometimes severely; or he kills them.

Why then didn’t Putin squash Yevgeny Prigozhin like the proverbial bug? Prigozhin had after all been attacking him viciously, albeit vicariously for months. Attacking the president of Russia not directly, but indirectly, specifically by accusing the Russian military of, effectively, professional malpractice. Moreover, Prigozhin was not only increasingly publicly critical, even finally of the war in Ukraine, but he was also building his own power base. The Wagner Group, that sizable band of hardcore mercenaries who were doing much of the hardest, heaviest lifting in Ukraine, was loyal not to Putin, but to Prigozhin. It was the latter who was their leader, not the former.

This in turn yields the difference. The difference between Putin and other autocrats, dictators, and tyrants who had no compunctions about eliminating the competition. Putin needed Prigozhin. He needed Prigozhin’s help. He needed Prigozhin’s men. He needed Prigozhin’s Wagner group to help fight Putin’s War in Ukraine.

Again, dictators and even autocrats are paranoid for good reason. Their paranoia serves them well. It protects them against their antagonists and adversaries, against their challengers and competitors. Their paranoia is, literally, functional and when it fails them, they are at risk. To wit the events in Russia of the last day and a half. To wit the odd bargain struck by Putin and Prigozhin – especially given the first had only hours earlier accused the second of being a “traitor.”

Putin’s War is why Putin’s paranoia ebbed when it should have flowed. Putin’s War is why his paranoia failed to protect him against his most obvious, dangerous internal enemy. Putin’s War made Putin needy – which is why in this instance his paranoia did not do its dirty work.

Yesterday’s rhetorical attack by Yevgeny Prigozhin on Russian President Vladimir Putin was only the apex of what had been going on for months. It was the culmination of a series of escalating charges hurled by Prigozhin not only at Russia’s government but at Russia’s military. No great surprise then that one day later Prigozhin’s assault went from the merely verbal to the full-on physical.

Prigozhin has status and by now a reputation that precedes him. As head of a hardened group of mercenaries, or private military company called the Wagner Group, he is known as a hell of a tough guy, far tougher even than Putin. While Putin’s War, Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, has famously gone badly, or at least was far from the cakewalk originally anticipated, the Wagner Group has chalked up battlefield victories while Prigozhin increasingly took on the Russian establishment.

Now he has mounted a direct charge against the man who used to be his champion and is now his arch enemy – Putin. The Wagner Group has taken over one of Russia’s major cities, Rostov-on-the-Don, and threatened to go further. Putin meanwhle called what happened an act of “betrayal” and promised to inflict on everyone involved “inevitable punishment.”

It’s tempting for leaders in the West, including Ukraine’s President Volodymir Zelensky, to take some pleasure in the chaos that now engulfs Russia’s president. But we’d better be careful what we wish for. Prigozhin is at best unpredictable and at worst worse – more malevolent, more aggressive, more dangerous than his putative superior, Putin. Moreover, if Putin prevails in this stand-off he will not let up. In fact, he will double down on his enemies, real and perceived.    

What, then, is the best the West can hope for? That Prigozhin’s rebellion will lead to a period of instability that eventually will result in a Russia less malevolent and belligerent, and more amenable to a peaceable Europe.  

The word “leader” is bandied about with abandon. So much it’s become almost meaningless. Everyone either already is a leader – or wants to be one. Nobody wants to be a follower – or, more precisely, nobody wants to be perceived as being a follower. As a result, the word, “leader,” has been degraded by inflation. It’s used so often and so loosely its value has been diminished to being almost worthless.

But every now and then an individual comes along who is an exception to the rule. Who is so obviously the real deal, a leader in the authentic sense of this word, the word regains its meaning.

What is the real deal – a leader in the “authentic sense of this word”? Of course, “leader” and “leadership” have been defined by experts in hundreds of different ways. Here I’ll apply just two criteria: 1) a leader has followers; 2) a leader is an agent of change.  According to these criteria, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is a leader.    

Altman reminds me of no one so much as Bill Gates. Like Gates, Altman was seized by computers at a young age; started college but quickly dropped out; was an early entrepreneur, innovator, developer, founder, leader, and manager in cutting edge technologies and companies; has a serious and significant philanthropic bent; and a reach that extends far beyond his own domain.

No single individual has been more responsible for the recent mania over artificial intelligence than Sam Altman. Altman has been instrumental in developing artificial intelligence. He has been instrumental in creating the organizational infrastructure necessary to support artificial intelligence. He has been instrumental in obtaining for his company the requisite financial backing. (For example, in 2019 Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI.) He has been instrumental in warning about the risks of artificial intelligence. And he has been instrumental as an ambassador from the world of artificial intelligence to the world that is the rest of us.

Altman is a true believer who is a true leader. He can convert his followers – us – to believe in what he does. And in what he says. Specifically, to believe that “mitigating the risk of extinction from A.A. should be a global priority.” Of course, it’s one thing to get us to take seriously his almost apocalyptic admonitions, it’s another to get us to act on them. As I have suggested in this space before, our leaders, especially our political leaders, are miserably ill-equipped to cope with the latest technologies they fail even to comprehend. While Altman’s talking about artificial intelligence, America’s elected officials are still struggling to cope with social media.

But our incapacity is not for Altman’s lack of trying. Perhaps never has a tech guru worked as hard to get Washington to come to grips with what it can scarcely grasp. In recent weeks Altman has traveled to the nation’s capital to discuss his rapidly changing technology with at least 100 members of congress, with Vice President Kamala Harris, and with people in the President’s cabinet. Unlike other members of Silicon Valley’s elite, most of whom, to all appearances, detest having to make nice in Washington, Altman initiated meetings, jumped at the chance to testify in the Senate, and repeatedly invited lawmakers to impose rules to hold companies such as his to account.

Nor has Altman been satisfied to stay at home. He has taken his show on the road, to Europe and Asia, to Africa and South America. In a political climate in which hostility to China is shared by Democrats and Republicans alike, Altman has even traveled to Hong Kong where he dialed in to a large audience in Beijing. Members cheered as he preached collaboration between researchers in America and China.  

Sam Altman’s followers already number in the tens if not hundreds of millions. Sam Altman’s innovations have already changed what we think and how we live. Sam Altman’s the real deal – a leader. Sam Altman’s 38 years old.

All the President’s Kin is the title of my first book. It was published in 1980, by the now vanished but then esteemed Free Press. My basic argument was simple. That family members of presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan were no longer bit players. That with changing cultures and technologies, especially with the advent of television, they had come to be major political actors.

I identified six different types of spouses and siblings, parents, and children, each of whom had a positive impact. Some were more important than others, but they all had significant political parts to play.

Type I: Decorations. Decorations make the president more attractive. They enhance the man, make him and his administration at the most more glamorous and at the least more appealing. They add nothing to the substance of the presidency but a great deal to the style. They lend an intangible aura of pleasure to the grit of day-to-day politics; their presence alone lends grace. At their best, Decorations are in fact quite removed from politics. In what would appear, but only at first glance, to be a paradox, it is this distance that allows their charm to have a political impact.  

Jacqueline Kennedy was a quintessential Decoration.

Type II: Extensions. Extensions are the president when the president cannot be there. They have little identity of their own. Indeed, their value as Extensions is derived not from who they are but from what they are: close relatives of the president. What they say is only minimally important. Recognizing this, they usually say very little. When it is anything more than a pleasantry, we know it is the president speaking through a trusted mouthpiece. Extensions allow presidents to win friends and influence people without really trying, often without even being there. The very best extensions bear a physical resemblance to the president, for they are, in effect, his stand-in.   

Lynda Bird Johnson was a quintessential Extension.

Type III: Humanizers. Humanizers bridge the gap between the president and the people. They are particularly useful to presidents who hold themselves apart from the people, who keep their distance. Humanizers lend credence to the belief that if the president has a relative who is that much like the rest of us, he cannot be all knight, king, or saint. They have an air or wit or color about them. They are fun. They are idiosyncratic. They are apolitical. The bestow upon the president some of their own lively grace, and at their best they amuse as well as reassure.   

Billy Carter was a quintessential Humanizer.

Type IV: Helpmates.  Helpmates derive their political impact from a good working relationship with the president. Although they are (here) either a spouse or a blood tie, the primary interaction is based on business. They become, in effect, trusted and respected junior partners sharing the challenges which the enterprise of presidential politics presents. Their proficiency is respected and their willingness to help with the presidential burden is mutually understood.

Nancy Reagan was a quintessential Helpmate.

Type V: Moral Supports. Moral Supports have a special place in the heart of the president. They are politically relevant because they lend an essential support to the presidential ego, and because they extract, in turn, an intense emotional commitment. A young child cannot qualify as a Moral Support. To be one it is necessary to be sufficiently intellectually mature to understand what the president is doing and given that, to lend heartfelt backing and encouragement.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower was a quintessential Moral Support.

Type VI: Alter Egos. 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 person in America. And the benefit to a president fortunate enough to have one is considerable.

Robert Kennedy was a quintessential Alter Ego.

I return to All the President’s Kin today, on this Father’s Day weekend, because I am struck by how even here Donald Trump deviates from the norm. Not only does he not have any close friends, during his recent humiliations and tribulations members of his family, even close family, were nowhere to be seen.

Quite the contrary. While Melania Trump and son Barron have never been much in evidence, for years, most obviously 2015 to 2021, other family members were fully front and center. Especially his grown children Trump with his first wife, Ivana: Donald Jr, Ivanka – along with her husband Jared Kushner – and Eric. (Tiffany Trump, her father’s daughter with his second wife, Marla Maples, was also around, occasionally. )

Now though not so much – in fact, now not at all. Former First Lady Melania continues to be virtually invisible, as if her marriage was a sham and her husband a phantom. Ivanka and Jared have publicly distanced themselves, as if her father were toxic. And Donald Jr and Eric, usually relatively reliable stalwarts, have been hunkering down in hiding, leaving their father to twist in the wind – entirely alone. To be twice arraigned and indicted – entirely alone.

During Trump’s four years in the White House, some of his kin were constantly in and out of the Oval Office, especially Kushner. And others of his kin were constantly cheerleading, especially Donald Jr. But those days are over. For now at least Trump’s kin have receded into the background, leaving him in the foreground – entirely alone.

Happy Father’s Day.