Author: Barbara

Donald Trump is an Outlaw Leader. A leader who will linger forever in American lore precisely because he is an outlaw.

First things first. Trump is among the American leaders who have had the most seismic impact – ever. For eight years now his imprint on America’s national psyche has been so strong, so outsized as to transform the country and leave forever his mark on the time in which he led. Whatever he has said or done, and continues to say or do, always dominates the conversation, and sometimes determines the course of American history.

His impact has been overwhelming and overpowering since he first came on the political scene. It so remained during his first campaign for the White House and during his four years as president. And it remains the same now, in his post-presidency. No other American leader – including the incumbent president – comes close to so effectively grabbing and holding the national spotlight. To being so completely the center of our collective attention. And to suck the air out so totally of our communal room.

Trump leads us to his alter. All of us. Even those among us who insist they detest him cannot resist him. He is irresistible – we are incapable of pushing him away or turning away. He pulls us in, the force of his personality and persona so strong we are drawn as if by a magnet into his orbit.

He dominates America’s news. He impinges on America’s discourse. He plays with America’s politics. He tramples on America’s trust. He leads his followers, and he leads other leaders, leaders who become, who long ago already became, his followers.

Trump is a familiar American archetype – an outlaw. He is an Outlaw Leader. A leader who leads not because he is good but exactly because he is bad. Because he disrupts the status quo. Because he tramples on American norms. Because he leads an outsized life. Because he has an enormous appetite for money and power and food and sex. Because he is a rebel and a risk-taker. Because he defies the establishment. Because he bends rules and breaks them. Because he is as outrageous as rebellious. Because he is Jesse James and Dillinger, Rambo, and Tony Soprano.

Trump is an outlaw because he is, among other things, literally outside the law. He is not law-abiding he is law deriding. Four times over he has been indicted. And four times over his popularity will not decrease but increase. Why? Because he is an outlaw – and proud of it. Trump is America’s id. Trump is America’s bad boy. Trump is America’s poster child for the triumph of impulse over reason.    

Trump’s time will not be forever. But forever this will be the Time of Trump.

As several of my previous posts attest, issues relating to women’s health have near certain implications for why women continue to lag so significantly behind men in leadership roles. See, for example, this.

Women and Leadership – Our Bodies, Ourselves

Earlier I referenced the following factors, each of which pertains:

• Women get pregnant. Men do not.
• Women give birth. Men do not.
• Women breastfeed. Men do not.
• Women are vulnerable to mental and physical disorders associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Men are not.
• Women go through menopause. Men do not.

To this litany one major biological difference between women and men remains to be added. Women menstruate. Men do not.

Why, and how, does menstruation matter? It matters primarily because large numbers of women have dysmenorrhea – menstrual cramps. These cramps usually begin just before women get their period and they subside after a few days. Additionally, are other symptoms sometimes associated with menstruation, such as nausea and fatigue.

Of course, many women have no symptoms at all during their periods. But about 60 percent do: they report having mild cramps just before and during menstruation, and somewhere between 5 and 15 percent report having pain so severe it interferes with their daily activities. (This number is likely however to be much higher. Healthcare providers believe that many women who have menstrual pain do not report it.)

Notwithstanding the 60 percent figure, the number of women who suffer some sort of discomfort associated with menstruation remains unclear. For example, one Dutch study found that fully 85 percent of women who responded to an online study said they experienced painful cramping during their periods. In contrast, though the number is still significant, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports a much lower figure, 50 percent. Specifically, it has found that half of women who menstruate have some pain for 1 to 2 days each month.

Why the variability and uncertainty? Because the subject remains taboo. It is this taboo – and the shyness, embarrassment, and concern associated with it – that is assumed to explain why many women opt not to report menstrual pain.

I cannot prove there is a tie between the biology of a woman’s body and the still astonishingly few women leaders because I have not conducted the relevant research. Moreover, I readily acknowledge that there are many other factors that pertain. It’s also the case that some strides have been made – that there are many more women in positions of leadership than there were even a decade ago.

Still, there is no logic to excluding from the conversation physiological and psychological imperatives. Women have issues that pertain to their well-being that men do not. To hide these differences, or to assume without evidence that they have no impact whatsoever on women aspiring to, and assuming leadership roles, is counterproductive. Women can handle the truth.

As the three posts included in this one attest, I’ve been writing for some time on a subject that up to now has been taboo. How being a woman, specifically being in the body of a woman, pertains to the leadership gap. The persistent gap – despite all that’s been done in the last several decades, at least in the West, to reduce it -between the number of male leaders and the number of female leaders.  

Leadership and Lactation – in the Wake of the Pandemic

Leadership and Lactation – the Evidence Grows

Women and Leadership – Now Menopause

My original focus was on the impact on women’s bodies of being pregnant, giving birth, and breast feeding. And on how the enormous physical and psychological changes that are associated with childbirth and breastfeeding – over long periods of time – almost certainly have an impact not only on women’s capacity to lead, but on their ambition to lead. (I know, I know, even to suggest this is politically incorrect.)

But every few months there’s further evidence that being a woman is not like being a man. And that the differences between them might go further, much further, toward explaining the leadership gap than we have been willing so far to appreciate or admit.

The third of my posts above takes the argument further – to menopause. To the fact that while for some women menopause has little or even no impact on their well-being, for other women it’s different. For many women the effects of menopause are considerable, and they are deleterious. Menopause is often associated with symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings, and brain fog – all in the prime of women’s professional lives. Not helpful if you’re on a leadership track – or for that matter already in a leadership role.

In recent weeks I’ve been reminded of two more health issues that, logically, further explain why women lead less often than men. Both also revolve around pregnancy and childbirth – which a woman typically experiences in her twenties, thirties and now, into her forties.

The first is the relatively high rate of maternal mortality in the United States. While this is especially true of Black women – who have a maternal mortality rate 2.6 times higher than that of white women – it is by no means confined to a certain segment of the population. The U.S. maternal mortality rate is already the highest among all peer nations. And in recent years the numbers have deteriorated still further. As Vernonica Gillispie-Bell put it, writing in the New York Times, “Maternal outcomes in the United States are a public health crisis and they are only getting worse.”

The second health issue that directly pertains to – likely limits – the numbers of women in leadership roles is what used to be called (and often still is) postpartum depression. Now the term is a more general one – “mood and anxiety disorders.” But the point is the same. These disorders impair women, often for months or even years at a time, and they are not uncommon. Researchers estimate that one in five new mothers suffer from such disorders during pregnancy and up to one year after giving birth. We’re talking here about some 800,000 American mothers each year. The impact of such afflictions is not, moreover, always transient. Last year the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said that mental health disorders are the leading cause of maternal deaths, including from suicide or drug overdose.

Why are women everywhere still so underrepresented in leadership roles? Let me count the ways. To the familiar list of explanations and excuses such as implicit bias and the white male leadership model, we must though add another one. We must freely and openly acknowledge that women and men are different and that these physiological and sociobiological differences impact on why women lead less often than men. To do otherwise is to continue to stick our collective head in the proverbial sand.       

I know, I know. People (like me!) who write a lot about a single subject – in my case obviously leaders and followers – sometimes till the same soil. We return to topics that grab our attention not because we’re being repetitive, but precisely because we are not. Because things change, and people change, and the lives of leaders such as Larry Fink don’t end, they continue. They continue chapter after chapter until the leader leaves.

Fink is the chief executive officer of BlackRock. (He has appeared in at least two of my previous posts, to which the links below.) BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with, at the end of last year, some $8.59 trillion under its management.

For years Fink has tried to lead other leaders by being reasonably progressive. By “reasonably progressive” I do not mean to suggest he is a flaming liberal. He is not. But he is someone who has been trying to play a modest role in addressing some of the world’s most pressing, and intractable, problems, above all climate change. Specifically, Fink has been at the forefront of American corporate leaders on E.S.G. – on how environmental, social, and governance goals should be core to how companies do business.  

No good deed goes unpunished. So, for his efforts, Fink has been attacked by the right for betraying capitalism by being too “woke” – too responsive to the prevailing political winds. And he has been attacked by the left for, above all, not ditching BlackRock’s investments in fossil fuels. Just recently the left had a field day with Fink when his company announced it would appoint to its board the head of the Saudi Arabian Oil Group (Aramco), which, oh by the way, is the biggest oil producer in the world.

Fink is, of course, trying to thread the needle, to strike a balance between two conflicting forces. First and foremost, he’s a businessman, a leader whose primary responsibility is make money for his company, as much money as possible. But second, he’s a citizen, a global citizen, an American citizen, a leader who has demonstrated some sense of what it means to be civic minded.

Still, in recent months Fink has been more assertively prioritizing the first and backpedaling somewhat on the second. He has strongly defended BlackRock’s newly close ties to Saudi Arabia. And he has retreated on E.S.G., even telling a group in Aspen in June that he had stopped using the term because it had been “weaponized.”

It’s hard to fault Fink for doing his day job as well as he knows how. But it’s not hard to fault him for retreating on E.S.G. If not Fink, CEO of the largest asset management company in the world, who?

What Should Leaders (NOT) Do? – Part III

Larry Fink – Leader Caught in the Crosshairs

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.