Blog

The earth struggles to rotate on its axis and I’ve fallen silent! What’s going on?!

Here’s the deal. My book – the one that I’m close to finishing, Professionalizing Leadership – is for the moment my mantra and master (mistress?). So, I can do nothing other than give it my full attention. Ergo, no blogs.

I know, I know. If only I were blogging all would be right with the world. Hang on, hang in, I’ll be back!

In March.

Over the top. Really, it’s over the top. Never in recent memory has an American been so relentlessly, so ridiculously, iconized as Michelle Obama.
Even if you think she’s nothing short of splendid, and even if you think she’s been nothing short of splendid as first lady, don’t you find it a tad odd that most of the mainstream media have her walking on water?

Here, for example, is Amy Davidson, a normally sober contributor to The New Yorker: “Her cool seems effortless, though her control of it is precise. Her iconoclasm gains strength from its fusion with irreproachability…. No one should doubt that Michelle Obama’s courage has left an indelible mark. Her time as First Lady changed this country and clarified its vision. And she has been one of the revelations.”

Excuse me? Her “courage has left an indelible mark”? She “changed this country and clarified its vision”?

Jodi Kantor, writing in The New York Times, took a somewhat different approach, maintaining that the real Michelle, the private Michelle, was even more fabulous than the masked Michelle, the public Michelle. The authentic Michelle has “true depth and originality.” The authentic Michelle is “an incisive social critic, a lawyer who can drive home an argument, a source of fresh observations and pointed commentary.” The authentic Michele is “observant” and “original” – in addition to being “wildly popular.”

Excuse me? Though her approach to her role “worked brilliantly, protecting and elevating her,” in fact Michelle’s public posturing “did not capture” her “true depth and originality”?

It was Vanessa Friedman, though, who drove me to distraction. In a very long article, with pride of place and a huge photo montage to boot, Friedman, also writing in The New York Times, made the curious, though arguably accurate argument that the eight-year obsession with Michelle Obama was because of her relationship to fashion. “No first lady understood the role of fashion, and the potential uses of it,” Friedman wrote, “better than Michelle Obama.” Friedman continued: “There is simply no ignoring the fact that during these two terms, clothing played a role unlike any it had ever played before in a presidential administration.”

Excuse me? Is this supposed to be an attribute? Are we supposed to admire the fact that Ms. Obama was so focused, so fixated on fashion that “she saw it as a way to frame her own independence and points of difference, add to her portfolio and amplify her husband’s agenda”?

When Nancy Reagan dressed to the nines she was derided for her frivolity. Along similar lines, though in contrast, when Barbara Bush embellished her simple attire over and over again with the same, familiar string of pearls, she was praised for being sensible. So what gives with Michelle Obama? Why is she so immensely popular with the American people? And why are so many sophisticates so effusive, so excessive, so extravagant in their praise for this first lady particularly?

The answer does not lie in a long list of accomplishments. Truth be told she hasn’t done very much “outside the home,” as they say, during her eight years in the White House. Even Kantor had to acknowledge that she took on issues that “were vital but hard to disagree with: She was pro-veteran, anti-childhood obesity.” So, we need to look elsewhere to explain her as singular sensation.
• Michelle Obama has filled the role of first lady exceedingly well – if you define the role totally traditionally. She has looked impeccable. She has behaved impeccably. And during most of her husband’s time in office she uttered not a word that could conceivably create controversy.
• Michelle Obama satisfies our craving for family values. She has been, so far as anyone can tell, a supremely devoted wife. And a supremely devoted mother. Even a supremely devoted daughter, who brought her widowed mother to live in the White House.
• Michelle Obama exemplifies nothing so much as an American success story. A black woman who came from a family of modest means, she propelled herself both academically and professionally first to considerable achievement and, later, to fame, to money, and, should she choose to exercise it, to power.
• Michelle Obama has been a cipher, a vessel, into which many Americans, especially but not exclusively women, can pour their aspirations. Women who look great but say little or nothing can do that – they can become the repository of our fantasies.
• Michelle Obama is the most readily visible and easily accessible of quasi political distractions. At a moment in time when the United States of America is so badly fractured, and when it is so precariously positioned, and when the president elect is of such uncertain character and uneven temperament, having a first lady who fits the bill as role model is nothing so much as a great relief.

I did not retreat! I have returned!

Absence of blog for about one month due to technology not personality. Presence of blog going forward due to triumph of personality over technology.

However my next book – Professionalizing Leadership – is in its final throes. Therefore, between now and when it goes to press all posts will be short and pointed.

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There is no question that America did change – its traditions and institutions less robust than even a decade ago. There is no question that America will change – its president-elect is a man of dubious character and uncertain temperament. There is, however, one thing that has not changed. America is endowed with occasional leaders who bestow on the present the best of the past. General James Mattis, who will be the next Secretary of Defense, is such a man. Try this experience-experiment. Watch five minutes of Donald Trump’s first news conference in six months, held yesterday. Then watch five minutes of James Mattis’s confirmation hearing, held today – after which no more need be said.

I recently read a heartening piece about women and leadership. “Paradigm for Parity” is the name of a new group dedicated to achieving gender equality in the top tier of American business by 2030.

2030 seems a long way off, but it’s not really. Not when you think of how miserably sluggish has been progress along these lines even in the last decade, supposedly a time of enlightenment. Not when you think how resistant has been the system to change that is other than incremental – at the margins.

Groups like Paradigm for Parity are no panacea. But they’re a small sign that people are starting to organize, not just women but men. And, it’s a small sign that Big Business at least will be expected to set targets for women at every level, including at the top.

Trouble is I recently read another article, that suggests something quite different. This article supports my politically incorrect position that the overriding reason women have made so little headway in recent years, especially at the highest levels, has less to do with the system, and less to do with the biases of men, than it does with women themselves. This article confirms that males and females are different, not only obviously when it comes to bearing children, but also when it comes to rearing them.

Turns out that chimpanzee kiddies learn much more from their mothers than from their fathers which – guess what! – pertains to you and me. Susan Pinker writes, “Human mothers also have a uniquely powerful effect on their children’s behavior. As mammals and primates, they take time to coach their young ones, who then copy what they do.” Pinker is quick to add that she’s “not discounting the importance of fathers, but that it looks like we belong to a large evolutionary family that learns enduring lessons at our mothers’ feet.”*

Oh dear. Wonder what the Paradigm for Parity will have to say about that. This is not to dismiss any such efforts. To the contrary, I mean it when I say I applaud them. But, for heaven’s sake, let’s stop kidding ourselves! Let’s stop denying that there are differences between women and men, particularly as they pertain to parenting, that necessarily similarly pertain to who wants desperately to lead and who wants somewhat less desperately to lead.

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*”Lessons from Chimp Mothers Last a Lifetime,” Wall Street Journal, December 10/11, 2016.

A former head of the CIA, the sane and steady four-star Air Force General Michael Hayden, recently went on record as predicting that in less than four years North Korea will have the means to destroy Seattle. “I really do think,” he said, “it is very likely that by the end of Mr. Trump’s first term, the North Koreans will be able to reach Settle with a nuclear weapon on board an indigenously produced intercontinental ballistic missile.”

Hayden’s grim view of North Korea’s ambitious, relentless march to being a nuclear power is in keeping with that of other experts. While Graham Allison, director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, is somewhat less worried that North Korea will launch a nuclear-tipped missile at a major American city, he is somewhat more worried that it will sell a nuclear warhead (or nuclear material) to a group capable of smuggling a bomb into the U.S. The point is that many if not most foreign policy experts consider North Korea the single greatest threat to America’s national security.

How to stop North Korea from presenting such a clear and present danger? By virtually every account, there is only one way that falls short of military action. By getting China to help us. By getting China to exert diplomatic, economic, even military pressure on North Korea to cease and desist from posing an extreme, even existential threat to the American homeland.

There’s just one small problem. President Obama has failed to move the needle even a whisker on this one. And president-elect Trump seems determined to engage China in what many of our most sober observers consider dangerous provocations. Maybe Trump will succeed where Obama failed. Maybe China will react to Trump’s tough guy approach in a way that works in America’s favor. Maybe Trump’s talk with the leader of Taiwan will prove not a foolish gaffe but a fresh start. Maybe.

The risks in any case are high. Trump focuses and even fixates on economic competition with China – on what he claims is currency manipulation, unfair competition, and excessive taxing of U.S. imports. But the far, far greater challenge for the U.S.-China relationship is reaching an understanding on what to do about North Korea.

The situation will soon become untenable. No American leader – not civilian or military – can permit North Korea to get to the point of being able to launch a nuclear attack on American soil. But few American leaders – civilian or military – are willing to say out loud how dire and direct the threat. Which is precisely why, if leaders don’t get it sooner rather than later, if they don’t act to mitigate the threat, including leaders at the state and local levels, followers, ordinary people, will have to start beating the drum. Beating the drum slowly but steadily – and increasingly loudly.

Let me put it this way. If I lived in Seattle, I would take General Hayden’s warning seriously – very, very seriously. Failing visible progress on this issue in, say, six months, I would buy me a drum.

Yahya Jammeh, who ruled Gambia for 22 years, has agreed to step down after being defeated in yesterday’s presidential election. The winner of the election was Adama Barrow. He is a property developer who has never before held political office in his life.

Sound familiar?

Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister of Italy, said today that he would resign after voters rejected his proposed constitutional changes. Renzi’s most vocal opponent in the national referendum was Beppe Grillo, leader of the anti-establishment, populist Five Star Movement. Before he became a political activist, Grillo was a comedic actor turned popular blogger.

Sound familiar?

Nancy Pelosi is the highest ranking and most consistently successful female politician in American history. Trouble is that she, like so many of her male counterparts, does not know when to let go. Or does know when to let go but can’t stand to let go. Power being not so much, as Henry Kissinger famously said, the ultimate aphrodisiac, as the ultimate addiction. Once you taste it you crave it.

During her long, illustrious career, Pelosi has been Speaker of the House of Representatives and Minority Leader. But, recently, in her capacity as Minority Leader she presided over an electoral debacle. Come January the Republicans will control not only the presidency, but both the House and the Senate, and two out of every three governorships. Bad – bad leadership.

Which is precisely why most everyone who has had a leadership role in the Democratic Party should resign – for they have failed. Under their leadership the party has suffered a string of stinging losses, from which it will take years to recover. For Pelosi this should be a no-brainer. She has clung to her leadership role for well over a decade, she is long past retirement age, and though once she was excellent, now she is not. Now she is unable creatively, dynamically, effectively, to lead.

Too many people hang on for too long. If Pelosi wants to leave with her reputation intact instead of in tatters, she must get out sooner not later.