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Most Americans have spent most of Donald Trump’s time in public life thinking him, treating him, as if he were normal. From when he first descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, formally to announce his candidacy for the presidency to the present moment, when we feverishly debate the legalities of his having stashed top-secret documents at his home in Palm Beach, we discuss who he is and what he did as if he were ordinary. Just another man, just another president, just another leader. We do not think about him, talk about him, as if he were that which he decidedly is – abnormal, aberrational.

In part we do this because Trump has many fervent followers. Many American voters eager to follow where he leads. Many Republican elites eager to be in his good graces. If Trump were widely described as mentally ill what would that say about his tribe and his team? Surely the chattering classes have been inhibited from describing Donald Trump as “crazy” or “mad” because to say that about him would call into question his legions of ardent supporters.     

So, we remain obsessed with the former president while continuing to compare him, as if he were normal, to his predecessors, especially Richard Nixon. But Donald Trump is so unnormal, so strange, so odd, so peculiar, that the comparison is as mistaken as misguided. We must think of him differently. We must think of Donald Trump as mentally unfit.

His addiction to lying, his inability to separate fact from fiction, and his extreme paranoia are not just oddities. They are symptoms of a sickness. But so long as we continue to treat him as just another leader gone rogue his followers will remain faithful. To say that Trump is somewhat corrupt will not pry his followers loose. To say that he is somewhat sick might.

There is a small literature on leadership and mental illness. In the 1970s was a subfield called psychohistory in which a few historians, political scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists fused history and psychoanalytic analysis to study political leaders. Since then, since psychoanalysis was marginalized, has been what professor of psychiatry, Nassir Ghaemi, describes as a “perspective on mental illness that is scientifically and medically sound.” This psychiatry, he argues, can be “an extremely useful tool for historians.”*

Ghaemi’s perspective is confirmed by the introduction in recent years of a variety of terms, all of which describe leaders who are in some way outside the range of what is considered psychologically normal. These terms include mental illness, mental disease, or mentally abnormal; abnormal personalities or abnormal temperaments; and political paranoia. Of course, what matters even in those cases to which any of these terms apply, is not the disease itself. What matters is how it effects the leader’s capacity to lead. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill both suffered from depression. It does not, then, suffice to say that a leader is mentally abnormal. The question is, what is the effect of their abnormality?

In the late 1990s a psychiatrist and political scientist coauthored a book titled, Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred. ** Though the book appeared long before Trump ever imagined becoming president, how it describes “individuals with a paranoid personality disorder” applies to many of Trump’s most distinguishing traits and behaviors. Such individuals:

• Believe that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving them – they perceive themselves as victims.
• Are preoccupied with the loyalty or trustworthiness of associates and friends.
• Read hidden demeaning or threatening messages into benign remarks or events.
• Persistently bear grudges – they are unforgiving of perceived insults, injuries, or slights.
• Perceive attacks on their character or reputation that are not apparent to others – and they are quick to react angrily and to counterattack.

Do these signs and symptoms sound familiar?

In 2017 another book came out, this one focused only on Trump, to which 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts contributed chapters.*** In retrospect it constitutes a clear and present warning. This is not to argue that everything in the book was right. Rather it is to say that its overarching argument was prescient. “We need to avoid uncritical acceptance of this new version of malignant normality.”

Of course, hardly anyone paid attention. In large part this is because psychiatry is still regarded with suspicion, as not quite a science. And it’s because psychiatrists themselves are leery about speaking out, worried they will be seen as professionally suspect or politically biased. It’s also because we ourselves prefer to remain in denial. We don’t want to hear that our leader is an unbridled hedonist; or a pathological narcissist; or delusional; or cognitively impaired; or abusive or dangerous; or bad or mad, or maybe both. Not only is the information disturbing it is disabling. Even if it’s true it doesn’t seem like there’s much if anything we can do about it.

But is that true? Is there anything to be done? Well, we could start by calling it out.

Let’s assume that psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals are not all quacks. This could mean that when an American president breaks all norms, threatens the very democracy on which the system is based, and denies reality, he (she) would be identified by experts such as these as being so out of the range of normal that he (she) is mentally ill. Such a judgement would of course still be contentious and even fractious. But at least it would give license to those professionally educated and equipped to name an illness when they see it. Rather than being sidelined, they would be mainstreamed.

Donald Trump is not well. Since November 2020 he has been politically unwilling and, or, psychologically unable to acknowledge his electoral defeat. He has instigated a violent attack on the United States Capitol. And he has stolen top secret documents from the United States government. He is not just morally and ethically impaired. He is mentally and psychologically impaired. Time to stop skirting this truth. Time to bring physical and mental health out into the open and to ask how we protect the presidency from ever again being victimized by someone who is in either way unfit. The mechanisms currently in place manifestly are not up to the task.

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* A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness (Penguin, 2011), p. 5.    

** Robert Robins and Jerrold Post (Yale University Press, 1997).

 *** Bandy Lee, ed., The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (St. Martin’s Press, 2017).

King Charles III

I posted twice on Queen Elizabeth II. The first appeared in September 2015 – it was titled, “The Queen of Quiet.”

The Queen of Quiet

The second appeared in June of this year – it was titled, “The Queen – Is She a Leader?”

The Queen – Is She a Leader?

Now though it’s the dawn of King Charles.

“Poor Charles,” has long been the lament. He was always somewhat geeky and gawky. He was always putting his foot wrong. (Anyone other than me remember “Tampongate”?) He was always odd in his private pursuits. (He worried about climate change before the rest of us had heard of it.) He was always beset by family issues. (His cold, distant parents; his disastrous first marriage; his wretchedly wayward brother, Andrew; his errant son and daughter in law, Harry, and Meghan.) He was always the man in waiting – waiting for his mother to die before he could take a full-time job.

Charles though has been underestimated. At age 73 he is neither stupid nor foolish. He is well and happily married and has a good relationship with the man who will be king, his son, William. His interests – including climate change, now at the top of the global agenda – are thoroughly contemporary. And he has every intention of streamlining the monarchy better to suit it to the 21^st century.

Moreover, Charles III will be replacing Elizabeth II when the context is favorable. He can never replace his mother – or for that matter his former wife, the peerless, ageless Diana – in the hearts of the British people. But he is becoming king when Great Britain badly needs a younger royal to succeed the ancient one just passed.

Prime Minister Liz Truss has not been in office a week. She is inexperienced and untested. This at a moment when Britain’s economy is seriously straightened – sky high inflation, labor unrest, the uncertain impact of Brexit, and a war in Europe fueling an energy crisis that, among its many costs, includes a cold winter ahead.

This is not, then, a good moment for the British people. But if he has a feel for what his people need at this time in their history, it could be a good one for the king.

The transition from Elizabeth to Charles is not likely a crisis for the monarchy. It is more likely an opportunity for the new leader of the House of Windsor.

Sometimes people lead inadvertently – they lead when they have not the slightest intention of doing so. Such is the case with Salman Rushdie, the novelist and literary figure who twice over in his life did not bargain for his words carrying such weight.

The first time was in 1988, in the wake of the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. Surely in his book he intended satire and irreverence. Just as surely, he did not imagine the price he would pay for his provocation – forevermore a target on his back.  So enraged, so offended by what Rushdie had written was Iran’s leader at the time, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that he issued a fatwa, a call for Rushdie’s death. This fatwa, now three and a half decades old, was never lifted. Which, so far as we know, explains why Rushdie was attacked last week, stabbed multiple times by a man who rushed onto the stage during what up to that moment had been the most peaceable of arts festivals.

Because he famously has been hunted beginning in 1988, Rushdie has long been a leader of the campaign for free speech. Specifically, he has fought for the right of writers to write what they see fit. But, in the wake of the near-fatal attack on him last week, his status as a leader was, again inadvertently, enhanced and advanced. It was further buttressed by the times in which we live. Times during which speech has become cheaper and easier, uglier and more outrageous, more incendiary and more violent.  

Once Rushdie emerges from his recovery he will be anointed one of the most important leaders in the free world.  The excellent British-American public intellectual, Simon Schama, his already pitted him against the might of authoritarians.  “For all their suffocating triumphalism,” Schama wrote, “the enemies of the liberated word rightly fear that however many they incarcerate, torture, or kill, none of these brutalities can permanently entomb critical thought. Almost always, the achievements of artists outlive the squalid cruelty of tyrants.”   

I have argued for many years that no weapons of leadership are more powerful than words. So, Salman Rushdie leading the charge against the dark is fine with me. Despite his never having campaigned for the honor – or bargained for how dearly it would cost him.

In all the ink that’s been spilled over the political blows recently landed on Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney – from being booted out of her House Republican leadership post to suffering an ignominious defeat in this week’s GOP primary – few references have been made to her gender.

One might argue this is progress. Who cares any more about gender? It’s become irrelevant.

Guess what. It has not. Fact is that Cheney’s being a woman matters. This is not to say that had this same virulent anti-Trump crusader been a man the outcome would have been entirely different. Rather it is to argue it would have been somewhat different. Her two defeats less complete.

Like all leaders, Liz Cheney must be put in context. Which is to say she must be put in the context of being a Republican woman from the state of Wyoming who is a member of the U. S. House of Representatives.

The components of context that most obviously pertain are:

• A significant, persistent, partisan gap. In the 117^th U. S. Congress there are 39 women out of a total of 212 Republicans, compared to 105 women out of a total of 224 Democrats. Put differently, of Republicans in the House less than one-fifth are women; of Democrats in the House almost half are women.
• A significant, persistent, gender gap. When it comes to women in politics at the level of the state, Wyoming ranks near the bottom. Less than 20% of the state’s elected officials are women.

Another way of looking at these numbers is in the context of what is considered a critical mass. Studies of when the presence of women begins to have an impact abound. Across the board anything less than 20% has been found too small for women’s voices effectively to be heard. It takes fully 30% of women for them to feel equal to men and, therefore, to act as, and be treated as, equals.

Bottom line is that in her home state of Wyoming, and in the U.S. House of Representatives, Elizabeth Cheney has been disadvantaged by being a woman. People, including pundits, have been reluctant to say this out loud. But the facts speak for themselves.

U. S. Representative Elizabeth Cheney is a deeply committed Republican from a deeply Republican state. Moreover, her mother, Lynne Cheney, and her father, Dick Cheney, were themselves stars of Wyoming’s Republican Party, both extremely prominent and successful political figures for decades.

But that was then. Last night’s great surprise was not that Liz Cheney paid for her fierce opposition to former President Donald Trump by losing the Republican primary for her House seat. Rather the surprise was the magnitude of her loss. Liz Cheney was defeated by Trump-backed Harriet Hageman by nearly 40 points. Ouch!

Cheney acknowledged her loss by delivering a prepared statement in which she signaled her career in American politics was not over. She referenced great political and military comebacks, notably those of President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. Additionally, anti-Trump Republicans and, of course, Democrats are spending this morning lionizing Cheney, and deciphering what they seem certain will be her splendid political future.   

Trouble is that for years to come Liz Cheney will be unable use Wyoming as her base. Her parents are relics, and she is now without a political home. If Cheney is serious, therefore, if she really does decide her future lies in American electoral politics, the first thing she should do is get out. Pack her bags, leave Wyoming, and establish her primary residence in a state that will be reasonably hospitable – or at least not virulently antipathetic – to a Republican renegade such as she. If losing an election by almost 40 points does not signal you’re not wanted, I don’t know what does.

Last month I posted a two-part piece on leadership and climate change. To remind or inform you, the links are below.

In the second of the two posts I mentioned the name of Larry Fink. He is the CEO of BlackRock, which is the world’s largest asset management company. (It controls some $10 trillion.) Because Fink had gone on record several times in recent years as an advocate of tackling the problem of climate change, and because he spoke not as a private person but in his capacity as the leader of one of the world’s most powerful companies, I thought it possible that he, perhaps more than any other prominent executive, might lead the charge against a climate crisis of growing proportions.    

Silly me. The ink was, so to speak, hardly dry on my post when there was this headline in the Financial Times, “BlackRock cuts back support for climate and social proposals.” I almost screamed but did not, “Say it isn’t so, Larry!”

Fink, it turned out, had not only not led on climate change, he followed. BlackRock’s support for US shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues fell this year by nearly half!

Why? Because Fink had come under special criticism from Republicans who charged that BlackRock was pushing a “woke capitalism.” Because some states were threatening to boycott financial services groups that “discriminated” against fossil fuels. You get the picture. As Harvard Business School professor Lucien Bebchuk put it, big asset managers want to appear “responsible stewards.” But they also seek to “accommodate corporate managers and avoid adversarial relationships with them… and to reduce the odds of a political and public backlash against their power.”   

On one level I get it. Someone like Fink considers that he has a responsibility to the public – but that he has a much greater responsibility to his stakeholders. Still, it’s damn disappointing to see a leader like him cave so quickly and completely on an issue of such great urgency.

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What Should Leaders Do? – Part I – Barbara Kellerman

What Should Leaders Do – Part II – Barbara Kellerman

A few days ago I posted a piece about how Henry Kissinger recently wrote.* This is a post about what Henry Kissinger recently wrote. Specifically in his just published book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. 

Why should we care about what Kissinger says – about leadership specifically? Because though he is controversial, he is one of the leading American statesmen of the second half of the 20^th century. Because he came to know many of the world’s great leaders personally as he crossed paths with them professionally. And because in very old age Kissinger remains an astute observer of the human condition.

Leadership is as its subtitle suggests: a collection of six chapters about six leaders, all of whom Kissinger met and with whom he dealt. The six about whom he chose to write are: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher.

While each chapter contains nuggets about leadership, for students of the subject it is the book’s brief introduction and conclusion that are the most interesting. For it is at the beginning and end of his book that Kissinger distils what he has learned about leadership and wants to pass on.

Here are four highlights – just some of Henry Kissinger’s most trenchant observations and conclusions, about leadership.     

• “Leaders think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead.”  
• “Good leaders elicit in their people a wish to walk alongside them. They must also inspire an immediate entourage to translate their thinking so that it bears upon the practical issues of the day.”
• “The vital attributes of a leader in these tasks, and the bridge between the past and the future, are courage and character.”
• “It is the combination of character and circumstance which creates history.”

Finally, for the purpose of this post I quote a section from page 408 of Kissinger’s book at some length because it is so entirely in keeping with my own views about how leadership should be learned. In many of my writings – for example in my book, Professionalizing Leadership – I argue for a far, far more rigorous, and broadly-based process by which leaders should be educated, trained, and developed. Here then Kissinger on the same subject. He starts by referencing the six leaders about whom he has written.

As we have seen, leaders with world-historical impact have benefited from a rigorous and humanistic education. Such an education begins in a formal setting and continues for a lifetime through reading and discussion with others. That initial step is rarely taken today – few universities offer an education in statecraft either explicitly or implicitly – and the lifelong effort is made more difficult as changes in technology erode literacy. Thus, for meritocracy to be reinvigorated, humanistic education would need to regain its significance, embracing such subjects as philosophy, politics, human geography, modern languages, history, economic thought, literature and even, perhaps, classical antiquity, the study of which was long the nursery of statesmen.

How quaint is Kissinger – and how right. We get the leaders we deserve because we do not raise them right. Until we raise them – educate them, train them, and develop them – as we do our doctors and lawyers and teachers and engineers, we will be stuck with far too many leaders who are second and third rate or, heaven forefend, worse. Sad – first rate leaders should not be by accident, they should be by design.

*Henry Kissinger Author – “Leadership” – Barbara Kellerman  

Maybe the debate over whether leaders make a difference, or whether instead they are just pawns on a chessboard is as old as human history. Or maybe it goes back just a couple of hundred years. What’s true in any case is that on this issue U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney and Russian President Vladimir Putin are on the same side. They each believe that heroes, leaders, can change history. And they each believe this is a role they personally are destined to play.

Since January 6, 2021, Cheney has taken the position that personal agency matters.  She told one interviewer that we all have a duty to “recognize that we can influence events.” She told another that “elected officials have to make a decision about whether we are bystanders or leaders,” calling it “irresponsible” to act as “though our institutions are self-sustaining, because they are not; it takes us, it takes people, to do that.”  

That Cheney has talked publicly and emphatically about the importance of individual responsibility is in keeping with her behavior. Almost alone among Republicans she has chosen to stand against former President Donald Trump. And almost alone among Republicans she has played a prominent if not dominant role on the January 6^th committee. The woman is putting her money where her mouth is.

Putin is doing the same. Agreed: the consequences of what he is doing to prove his point and the consequences of what she is doing to prove hers are at opposite ends of the moral spectrum. Cheney is trying to save democracy while Putin is trying to destroy it.

Still, the same underlying leadership principle is undergirding what both are choosing to do. Cheney talks about the importance of the individual. Putin compares himself to his hero, Peter the Great, who was nothing if not a supremely powerful leader who bent history to his will, largely by expanding the Russian empire and transforming it into a major European power.

Inevitably, the war in Ukraine has become, somewhat, normalized. Most days the story does not any longer, at least in the United States, lead the news. Americans have gotten used to the death and destruction in far-away Ukraine, they, we, have gotten used to the millions of Ukrainian lives demolished and disrupted. Important however to remember this is called “Putin’s War” for good reason. It is his war. It was he who decided to invade, and it is he who is continuing relentlessly to batter Ukrainian towns and cities while he sits far away, presumably comfortably, in the Kremlin.

Both Liz Cheney and Vladimir Putin will go down in the history books. Though their legacies will be diametrically opposed, each will forever be remembered for acting on what they believed to be true. That human agency matters and that they alone could make a big difference.  

At the age of 99 Henry Kissinger has just come out with another book, this one right in my wheelhouse. It’s titled: Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. I will have more to say about the book in a later post. For today all I will do is contrast Kissinger the writer in his late 90s with Kissinger the writer in his mid-50s.

These are excerpts from random paragraphs, both about Richard Nixon, from two of Kissinger’s books. This first is from the book just published, Leadership.

Richard Nixon was one of the most controversial presidents in American history and the only president obliged to resign from office. He also had a seminal impact on the foreign policy of his period and its aftermath, as a president who reshaped a failing world order at the height of the Cold War. After five and a half years in office, Nixon had ended American involvement in Vietnam; established the United States as the dominant external power in the Middle East; and imposed a triangular dynamic on the previously bipolar Cold War through the opening to China, ultimately putting the Soviet Union at a decisive disadvantage.

The second excerpt is from another book Kissinger wrote, this one published in 1979. It is titled, White House Years. Here is how he then described the president with whom he so closely collaborated.  

There was another fanfare and President-elect Richard Nixon appeared at the top of the Capitol stairs. He was dressed in a morning coat, his pant legs as always a trifle short. His jaw jutted defiantly and yet he seemed uncertain, as if unsure that he was really there. He exuded at once relief and disbelief. He had arrived at last after the most improbable of careers and one of the most extraordinary feats of self-discipline in American political history. He seemed exultant, as if he could hardly wait for the [inauguration] ceremony to be over so that he could begin to implement the dream of a lifetime. Yet he also appeared somehow spent, even fragile, like a marathon runner who has exhausted himself in a great race.

Do you see what I see? Two paragraphs that could hardly be more different, even though they were written by same man about the same man. The second paragraph, the one written by Kissinger in middle age, sings. The first paragraph, written by Kissinger in old age, does not. It does not sing. The prose is pedestrian, almost leaden.

None of this is to say that Leadership is bad. Not at all. Nor is it even to say the writing is bad. It is not. It is ordinary, no better, no worse. This though is in stark contrast to Kissinger’s White House Years, which is wonderfully well observed and wonderfully well written. Truth is that Kissinger was one of the greatest writers of all American statesmen – in his prime.  

In Part I of “What Should Leaders Do?” I pointed out that we expect leaders to do something as opposed to doing nothing – especially on problems of major importance. I further pointed out that generally we expect leaders to address problems for which they are directly responsible. We do not expect the CEO of General Motors to fix what’s broke at Harvard University or even, for that matter, at Volkswagen.  Finally, I pointed out that though we expected our political leaders to address the problem of climate change with deliberation and determination, they consistently have failed to do so. Moreover, there is not the slightest evidence this will change.

Given that followers are not equipped to step into the breach; given that technology cannot reach far enough or come fast enough; and given that allowing climate change further to fester dooms us to disaster, the question is, are all leaders part of the problem? Or is it possible that some leaders might be part of the solution? Are there leaders other than political leaders who could take the problem in hand?

Because political leaders seem repeatedly to disappoint, some of us have been looking elsewhere. Some of us have been looking to other leaders to tackle what on the surface is not their problem. Specifically, some of us are looking to business leaders to cure what ails us, even if what ails us is not in their bailiwick.

Writing in the Financial Times, journalist Gillian Tett wrote that “business leaders must speak up for democracy.”  She went on to name some things they should do such as encouraging their employees to get out and vote by, for example, giving them paid time off to go to the polls; and providing proper transparency around political donations and lobbying. Tett concluded her piece: “Let us fervently hope that the 96 percent of companies who say that democracy is good for the economy are actually ready to defend it.”

Somewhat similarly, prominent business executive Maurice Greenberg wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal lamenting the “deteriorating state of affairs between the U. S. and China.” It is in our national interest, he continued, to “do all we can to improve U.S.- China relations.” How though might this be done? Greenberg does not think political leaders are ready and willing to take the problem on, so he turns to business leaders to pick up the slack. As the Journal headline put it, given that U.S.- China relations are too important to leave in the hands of political leaders, who have proved ineffectual, it is business leaders to whom we must turn. It is they can who “help restore trust.”

A third recent example of someone drawing attention to the broader role that business leaders might play on complex social and political issues, is Professor Molly Worthen who, writing in the New York Times, described the (somewhat) changing role of business schools. Rather than clinging to traditional metrics such as profits, they are increasingly being encouraged, including by their students, to be more expansive. Worthen writes it’s time for business schools to admit that “measuring and modeling are not the same as understanding,” and that attending to, for example, the environment, is not “politically fashionable hand-waving but a call to center the M.B.A. on big hard questions.”     

Climate change is not usually thought of as a problem for which corporate leaders are responsible. Up to now we have assumed that political leaders would take the matter in hand. But given the assumption was misplaced, now what? Now leaders other than political leaders must step up to the plate – a challenge that corporate leaders are best placed to meet.  

Not all corporate leaders, of course, but some, a few.

• Those who are deeply informed about and genuinely interested in the problem.
• Those who lead large, global companies.
• Those who have extensive personal and professional multinational connections.
• Those who are as comfortable with, and as familiar with, political leaders as business leaders.
• Those who have a track record on environmental sustainability.
• Those who are good at networking and have demonstrable interpersonal skills such organizing and persuading.
• Those who are willing to put their money where their mouths are.
• Those who are prepared to commit significant amounts of their personal and professional capital to a problem for which they are not directly responsible.
• Those who have already made their mark in business and are hungry to do more.
• Those who are so hungry to do more on the problem of climate change they will not rest until they do. And then they will try to do more.

The World Economic Forum (Davos) points out that C-suite executives worldwide recognize the need for business to take climate action. It further states that one-fifth of companies are already taking steps on sustainability. It touts these facts proudly – not, apparently, recognizing they are no more than the proverbial, pathetic, drops in the bucket.

If business leaders are to lead on climate change, they will have to have ambitions that are global, not parochial. They will have to be from all corners of the globe and commit to work together to save the planet. They will have to do what they have never done before. First, envision collaborations that transcend the usual boundaries. Second, envision implementations that transcend the usual boundaries.  

The Democratic Republic of Congo just announced that it would auction off vast tracts of land – land that is precious, environmentally sensitive, old-growth rainforest – for drilling oil and gas. While this will lead to what one expert called a “global climate catastrophe,” the president of Congo is undeterred. Our priority, he said, is to support the people of Congo. “It is not to save the planet.”

Some American business leaders have already, in one or another way, made fighting climate change a priority. They include Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), and Larry Fink (BlackRock). But they have done so as individuals, not as members of an organized group with a global vision and limitless ambition. Another leader who could play a role such as the one I describe is Bill Gates. His first act was technology.  His second act was philanthropy. Is he done? Or does he have a third all-important act?

Heaven knows planet earth needs a secular savior. Several secular saviors.