Author: Barbara

I am still not convinced that New Yorkers knew what they were doing when they elected Bill de Blasio mayor of their great city by an overwhelming majority.

I know, I know. Many New Yorkers knew exactly what they were doing. They are excited to have as their incoming mayor a leader who is proudly progressive. But there are many other New Yorkers who voted for de Blasio simply because he is not Michael Bloomberg. In fact, he is the anti-Bloomberg. It’s not that New Yorkers especially disliked Bloomberg, and they certainly did not disrespect him. To the contrary: Bloomberg’s record is in many ways exemplary. He never was touchy-feely, never did care much about being witty or charming or making people love him. But he was by nearly every account an outstanding manager – a leader who knew how to manage a major polity, as well as to lead it.

But, New Yorkers have evidently had enough of independent competence. They want something different – a leader with a vision, even if he lacks executive experience. In fact, one of the casualties of Bloomberg’s unanticipated third term in office is that New Yorkers are so very ready for something different that they went almost willfully in the opposite direction. Whether this change in political positioning will ultimately pay off – in particular whether it will make the city more equitable, close at least some the dispiriting, even dismaying gap between the rich and the poor – remains obviously to be seen. I hasten to add that closing this cap will not be enough. It must be closed without incurring significant other expenses such as, to take one of the most obvious, an increase in crime.

This much though is sure even now. Bill de Blasio’s impulse and instinct is completely in line with that of the Occupy movement. Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Everything Else have centered their agendas on improving the lot of the 99 percent at the expense of the one percent. Di Blasio’s “Circle of Power” (to borrow a phrase from the New York Times) attests to the fact that not only he but his closest aides, including notably his wife, Chirlane McCray, nearly all have their roots in organizations and movements identified with politics that we in America consider well to the left. What I am suggesting is that during the next four years New York City will be no less than a testing ground. The city will test the viability of a progressive agenda in the second decade of the 21st century.

Given his own introversion, it’s been President Barack Obama’s good fortune to have as his Vice President, Joe Biden. Biden, full of the charm and good humor that usually eludes Obama, has been his loyal sidekick from day one, drawing on his interpersonal skills and long years of experience in Washington to smooth the president’s path whenever he was freed to do so.

In recent weeks, however, Biden has been as good as invisible. Even during the excruciating government shutdown, when his connections to Congress were so sorely needed, and now during the fiasco that so far is Obamacare, he has been no where in evidence – a Vice President in absentia.

Why might this be? I have a theory. I’m speculating that some time back Obama struck a deal with the Clintons, in which he could count on the support of both Bill and Hillary, in exchange for hiding Biden’s light under a bushel.

The deal paid off for Obama, if only because of Bill’s extraordinary performance at the 2012 Democratic convention, when he sold the incumbent as the incumbent himself was unable to do. The Clintons came out ahead as well. With Joe these days nowhere to be found, Hillary can more easily shine, in the likely event she opts for a presidential run.

So from their point of view, the deal between them was a good one – Obama and the Clintons all came out ahead. But, from our point of view, the deal, if there was one, implicit or explicit, was bad. We, the American people, have been deprived for too long of a first rate public servant, whose political skills would be a blessing under any circumstances, and especially in a time as nasty as this one.

Of course the irony is that in the event Hillary becomes a candidate, she is by no means a shoo-in, even for the presidential nomination, not to speak of the White House. The woman’s got bigger baggage than Biden by far – which means it’s not inconceivable that it’s Joe who some day will have the last laugh.

Impossible for me to resist pointing out that Vladimir Putin has been at it again – squashing the opposition with tactics best described as heavy-handed. To whom is he intent on teaching a lesson this time around? To Greenpeace – a group long and well known for undertaking social action to protest environmental degradation.

At this writing 30 Greenpeace activists are being held behind bars in Russia, each in a separate cell, charged with both piracy and hooliganism, for protesting a Russian oil rig in the fragile Arctic environment. Their boat, a Greenpeace International ship named Arctic Sunrise, was seized by Russian border guards as it sailed in international waters.

For decades Greenpeace has been a nuisance on our collective behalf. It consists of a group of activists (followers) doing everything they reasonably (or unreasonably) can to draw the world’s attention to the price we all pay for “progress.” What they did not count in this particular case was Putin’s readiness, even eagerness to aggressively assert Russian sovereignty in waters potentially rich in natural resources.

I wish I could say we Americans, the American government, is a different animal altogether. But I am beginning to fear it is not. I am beginning to see some unpleasant resemblances between how we respond to so-called enemies of the state, and how do the Russians.

I will not here get into the debate about whether or not the administration of Barack Obama is more aggressive in its prosecution of whistle blowers, or, if you prefer, leakers, than were previous administrations. I will however point out that Bradley Manning was kept in isolation for 9 months; that (now) Chelsea Manning has been sentenced to confinement for 35 years; that Edward Snowden, in fear for his safety and security, has been reduced to hiding in, of all places, Moscow; and that Glenn Greenwald, one of the more courageous and independent journalists of his generation, is reluctant to return home, to the United States of America, because he is afraid of being arrested.

Is this what we have come to? Do Americans really want to smack of Russians? Have we in the wake of 9/11 become so permanently paranoid that speaking truth to power is a punishable offense?

Fallout from Bad Followership

In my most recent book, The End of Leadership, I wrote this about Silvio Berlusconi, who, after Mussolini, was Italy’s second-longest-serving prime minister ever. I first pointed out that followers all across Europe had recently taken to attacking, demeaning, or even rejecting their leaders. And then I went on to add that to every rule there are some exceptions. Here Italy – “a country whose economy lagged well behind the economies of Germany and France, and where the longtime leader [Berlusconi] was as corrupt as he was inept, but whose constituencies were curiously passive, inexplicably tolerant to the inevitable end of his long history of wrongdoing.” (Berlusconi was elected and then reelected. He was prime minister from 1994-1995 – and again from 2001 to 2006, and again from 2008 to 2011.)

I was reminded of this recently when I read Frank Bruni’s loving but ultimately lamenting reflection on Italy today, “Italy Breaks Your Heart” (NYT, 10/27/13). It’s impossible to know what Italy now would be like had the clearly corrupt and manifestly inept Berlusconi not been at the helm for so long. But what we do know now is this: Italy is a pale shadow of what it was just a couple of decades ago – and of what it could have been had history been different. Its public debt is the second highest in the euro zone, trailing only Greece’s. Its G.D.P. is worse than Spain or Portugal’s. And so far at least there has been no meaningful recovery from the economic crisis. Even more disheartening than the numbers is Bruni’s downright depressing description of a country that’s lost its way, and of a people as dispirited as they are derailed.

Bruni writes that “Berlusconi made Italian life seem like an adolescent party…, in which what you achieved mattered less than what you could get away with, the spoils going to the slipperiest.” But in blaming Berlusconi Bruni makes a mistake. He makes the mistake that most of us make – the leader attribution error – which is to blame leaders for bad outcomes.*

However the fault, dear reader, is not in our leaders, but in ourselves, that we ascribe to others, specifically to leaders, blame, or for that matter credit, that rightfully is ours. This is not to suggest that leaders are sideshows, unimportant or even irrelevant. Rather it is to make plain that the Italian people tolerated, even supported Berlusconi for way too long, excruciatingly, unfathomably long. Which is why now they are paying the piper.

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*The phrase – “leader attribution error” – is Richard Hackman’s.

One of the best films I have ever seen is a 2006 German drama titled, “Das Leben der Anderen” – or, in English, “The Lives of Others.”

It’s a spy film, but in every way an unconventional one. Essentially it depicts life in East Germany under Communism, where everyone seemed to be spying on everyone else – especially but not exclusively the Stasi, or East German secret police. It reveals subtly and sensitively how the personal and political, the social and sexual can get inextricably entwined when listening in on the lives of others is the rule, not the exception.

Nearly a quarter century has passed since the fall of the (Berlin) wall, since communism collapsed and East Germany with it. But even today not a single German of a certain age – whether born in East Germany or West – has forgotten what life was like in East Germany when it was a Soviet satellite.

So when German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls President Barack Obama to complain that her cell phone was tapped, her private line, she is not only expressing disgruntlement at the digital invasion. She is bringing to the conversation a lifetime of learning how oppressive is the extreme violation of personal privacy by a political entity.

Merkel was born in East Germany when it was still under Communist rule. So she knows from experience how fine the line between spying as absolutely necessary to state security, and spying as a habit gone haywire.

One month ago a group of Saudi women activists declared that on October 26, 2013 was going to be a protest against the ban on women who drive. This will not be the first such action. In the 23 years that have passed since the original similar Saudi protest have been a number of others, the most recent just two years ago.

So the question is whether this time anything will be different. No doubt that this is the most technologically savvy of the various pro-women driving protests. Campaigners have posted protest information on Twitter and Facebook, and they’ve developed a slick website. Moreover their petition demanding that the government issue them driver’s licenses has gathered well over 17,000 signatures.

But if you think that the government has been cowed, think again. Officials have blocked the activists’ website. Ridiculing them online has become commonplace. Conservative clerics have attacked the “conspiracy of women driving.” Saudi officials have warned even online supporters, saying that cyber-laws banning political dissent would be enforced in this case. (Conviction can bring a prison sentence of up to five years.) And Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry spokesman declared that “All violations will be dealt with – whether demonstrations or women driving. Not just on the 26th – before and after, at all times.”

This is a classic case of authoritarian leaders resisting increasingly restive followers. In such a circumstance the authorities have no choice but to threaten punishment, lest the protest get out of hand. How this particular day of protest will come out remains obviously to be seen. But what we do know now is this. First, it is highly unlikely that in the short term change will be created. Second, it is inconceivable that over the long term Saudi women will be denied a right that women elsewhere in the world take for granted – the ordinary, quotidian right to plant themselves behind the wheel of a car.

I’ve got no time now to blog.

But, if I did have time to blog, this is what I would blog about.

• Edward Snowden’s recent interview, in which he sounds so sensible and so smart it’s hard to imagine him all that odd or, for that matter, criminally culpable. Snowden: “So long as there’s broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program…. However programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that’s a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of ‘government in the dark,’ where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public output.” (New York Times, 10/18/13.)

• Or I would blog about how animal rights activists are upping the ante on minks. In a series of raids on mink farms, they’ve freed, or liberated if you prefer, nearly 8,000 minks, just since last July.

• Or I would blog about how Putin and his cronies clearly concluded that they had better not slap government opposition leader Aleksei Navalny in jail – and thereby risk widespread public protest. Instead, last week, an appellate judge simply suspended Navalny’s five year sentence.

• Or I would blog about how humbling a week it’s been for Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan Chase), and Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs), and Steven A. Cohen (fabulously wealthy owner, putative guru, and driving force behind the hedge fund, SAC Capital). Each of these men has been a hugely high flier. And each of these men has been cut down to size – sort of. Blankfein’s problems have been minor compared to Dimon’s and Cohen’s. Goldman had only to fess up to its worst quarterly result in fixed income since 2008. JPMorgan and SAC, on the other hand, could both be facing criminal charges – in addition to humungous fines.

• Or I would blog about how Anonymous (that nimble network of hacktivists) has once again reared its head, once again in a case of sexual assault, this time in Maryville, MO. The case resembles the one in Steubenville, OH, in which Anonymous played a similarly pivotal role, where two high school football players were ultimately convicted of raping a drunken girl at a party.

• Or I would blog about an Op Ed in yesterday’s Times, about Saudi Arabia. While not predicting imminent change, the piece did suggest that the Saudi royal family is not long for this world. The concluding sentence: “When the Gulf monarchies’ exceptionalism inevitably runs out of steam, and it will, their populations will be well placed to take their part in the bigger, region-wide shift in the political order that is happening at the expense of unaccountable repressive elites and in favor of a more vocal, politically conscious and better-connected youth.” Saudi Arabia’s decision just this week to reject a normally coveted seat on the United Nations Security Council – a decision that reportedly came down directly from the king – seems to confirm a decision making process that’s seriously sclerotic.

• Or I would blog about Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the most successful money managers of all time, and his quixotic, though high-minded and well-intentioned campaign to get the young to take on the old. Druckenmiller has been touring college campuses with a single, simple message aimed at his young and growing audiences: start a movement, demand equity. Demand equity between the young and the old, between your parents’ generation which is benefiting too handsomely from various entitlement programs, and your generation which, at this rate, is doomed to find that when it hits age 65 the government will have run out of money.

• Or I would blog about the recent government shutdown, which clearly, obviously, manifestly, was a crisis not of leadership – but of followership.

If I had the time to blog – which I do not.

I have this theory. I have this theory that the White House is secretly thrilled by the government shutdown and by the looming deadline for debt deal.

Why? Because Americans are being distracted from what otherwise would be their fixation: the disastrous launch of Obamacare. What a mess!

To be sure, the administration has time to fix what’s wrong. Most experts say it will be at least six months before we really begin to know how the Affordable Care Act will shake out. But what’s gone awry so far is head-scratching to the point of being badly embarrassing.

• Time: “Time Running Out for Obamacare Fixes”
• Politico: “”Problems with the Healthcare.gov sign-up site have been so massive that most people who try to enroll can’t get to step one.”
• Forbes: How Obamacare’s Exchanges Turned Into a ‘Third World Experience.’”
• New York Times: “From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal.”

No wonder Americans’ satisfaction with government has just dropped to a new low. No wonder only 18 percent of those polled last week by Gallup say they are satisfied with the way the nation is being governed. No wonder the White House is content at this moment to keep the attention on Congress – rather than on its own miserable management.

What made this government shutdown different from other government shutdowns is that this time – and here I quote the New York Times – “a small but powerful group of outspoken conservative hard-liners is leading its leaders.” Or, in my parlance, in recent weeks history has been made not by leaders, but by followers, by some twenty-five or so hard-core right wing Republicans so strong in their convictions and so tightly organized that they exercised power beyond their numbers.

Think of them as a band of revolutionaries, determined to overthrow the system as most of us understand it. Like real revolutionaries they seemed initially to be out in left field. Like real revolutionaries they think big not small. (No less than revoking a law that already was passed – the Affordable Care Act – was going to suffice.) Like real revolutionaries they threaten those who ostensibly are their allies (in this case John Boehner). Like real revolutionaries they are die hard ideologues. Which is why, like real revolutionaries, they prefer to go down fighting than consider any compromise.

The question then becomes, how is this particular revolutionary movement to be defeated? The answer? Like any other revolutionary movement or, at least, like any other revolutionary movement in a democracy as opposed to an autocracy. In autocracies (see Putin’s Russia) those in positions of power quash (by any means necessary) any individuals or groups that seem to them to be threatening. In democracies, however, such heavy-handed tactics are off the table. Whatever President Obama might think of his political enemies, he will not send them into exile, throw them in jail, or threaten their physical or financial well-being. So what has to happen in a democracy for a revolutionary movement to become irrelevant is for the silent majority to coalesce against it. Put directly, others, other stakeholders, have to care enough to start getting politically involved.

Continue Reading “Business as Usual? Not!”

In spite of its obvious importance, an item in the news this week went nearly unnoticed. It failed to get attention because the American media is consumed by American dysfunction. The government shutdown has sucked the air out of the room.

The fact that two Marine generals were in effect fired for incompetence – Taliban fighters breached a coalition air base under their command in southern Afghanistan, killing two Marines and destroying or damaging more than a dozen aircraft – is a very big deal. It’s a rare example of the U. S. military holding its highest officers to account for their performance on the job. Major General Charles Gurganus and Major General Gregg Sturdevant were relieved of their duties for failing to “take adequate force protection measures,” and for not exercising the “level of judgment expected of general officers.” In making his announcement, the commandant of the Marine Crops, General James Amos, said he had censured Sturdevant for depending too heavily on the British to protect the Americans (the air base was formally under British control). And that he had punished Gurganus because he was the one who “bore final accountability for the lives and equipment under his charge.”

In the wake of the Vietnam War, now widely regarded as lost, the American military was largely ignored or even demeaned. Americans were embarrassed less by it than by their own intervention in a war that was very high in cost and very low in benefit. More recently our attitudes have changed. In spite of widespread doubts about the virtue of American intervention both in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U. S. military has regained its previous position of honor in America’s collective consciousness. Whatever you might feel about the now ubiquitous line from American civilians to members of the Armed Forces – “Thank You for Your Service” – it is an attempt to extend respect.

But the deeper truth is that the American military is just like every other American institution – its leadership cadre is under attack. The most visible (and, some would say, risible) example was its most famous (and, some would say, most pompous) general, David Petraeus, feeling forced to quit his position as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency because of an extramarital affair. Not far behind is General Stanley McChrystal, who was pushed by the president to resign because of injudicious remarks made to a reporter for Rolling Stone. But these personal humiliations are chump change compared to the professional questioning to which America’s military command has recently been subjected.

Three recent books make my case. In “Invisible Armies” military historian Max Boot argues that, “unfortunately, our ignorance of guerrilla war runs deep, even as we find ourselves increasingly entangled in such conflicts” (Wall Street Journal, 1/13). In tellingly titled “Bleeding Talent,” and tellingly subtitled “How the U.S. Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why it’s Time for a Revolution,” military veteran Tim Kane claims that “in terms of attracting and training innovative leaders, the U. S. military is unparalleled. In terms of managing talent, the U. S. military is doing everything wrong.” And in “The Generals,” longtime military reporter Thomas Ricks points out that the way in which “the generals themselves are managed has fundamentally shifted since World War II” – and not for the better. Then they were held accountable. “Firing, like hiring, was simply one of the basic tasks of senior managers.” Now they are not. Now, with some very few exceptions, they are allowed to remain in place. For Ricks this raises several questions: “How and why did we lose the longstanding practice of relieving generals for failure? Why has accountability declined? And is it connected to the decline in the operational competence of American generals?”

There is no reason that military leaders should be exempt from assessment. This is not to suggest that they become targets of public rebuke. Rather it is to point out that the relief of Generals Gurganus and Sturdevant was completely in keeping with the reforms that Ricks properly proposed.