Author: Barbara

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jacqueline Kennedy was a quintessential Decoration.

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

Lynda Bird Johnson was a quintessential Extension.

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

Billy Carter was a quintessential Humanizer.

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

Nancy Reagan was a quintessential Helpmate.

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

Julie Nixon Eisenhower was a quintessential Moral Support.

Type VI: Alter Egos. Alter Egos are those rarest of relatives: people to whom we are so close, on so many levels, that they and we are one. The interaction is in every area. It is constant. I would claim that when a president has an Alter Ego, he or she is the second most powerful political person in America. And the benefit to a president fortunate enough to have one is considerable.

Robert Kennedy was a quintessential Alter Ego.

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

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

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

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

Happy Father’s Day.

Breakthroughs in technology are not new. They are, moreover, predictable. Not what they will consist of. Nor the changes to which they will lead. Instead, what we can predict is that such breakthroughs are inevitable, and that when they occur, being caught flat-footed is ill-advised. What we similarly know is that the leaders we now have – including our political leaders, business leaders, leaders in education and religion, in the military and the media – generally are ill-equipped to deal with the latest technological breakthrough, artificial intelligence, AI.

Previous technological breakthroughs – for example, the printing press and during the industrial and information revolutions –led to upheavals that ultimately were difficult or impossible to control. These upheavals were in every area including ideas and information; politics and economics; modes of production and distribution; arts and culture; power and influence at both the national and international levels.

Now is another breakthrough in technology – AI. While it is not new, the response by experts and laypersons alike to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and released just six months ago, suggests that AI has crossed a threshold. From an early and still obscure technology to one that seems almost overnight to present a personal, professional, and maybe even existential threat. Of course, the level of uncertainty remains extremely high. Not only do we have no idea how many jobs will, for example, be automated by AI. We have no idea what this automation implies. Elimination of tens of millions of jobs? Or transformation of tens of millions of jobs?

Leaders have a bad track record controlling or even managing the technologies that in time tend to outrun them. Though there has been much handwringing about the harm done by, for example, social media, there is no sign that leaders are able or willing to harness the beast they let loose.

Not good – especially if you believe that the risks of AI are best expressed by those who presumably know best. Specifically, by some 350 industry leaders who recently wrote in an open letter that “mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other society-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

However well intended the executives, researchers, and engineers who cooperated to write the letter, there’s not a chance they’ll be able or even willing to stop the train that already left the station. Quite the opposite. They’re all competing to see who can go faster and further. Who can outstrip the competition to raise AI to greater and potentially more dangerous heights. 

If leaders in business and science are unlikely watchdogs, what about leaders in politics? The prospects are not promising. The average age of members of Congress is 65 – itself a major problem. A generational problem. A cohort of political leaders still struggling to manage the information revolution, not to speak of the revolution in artificial intelligence. Most cannot even grasp what they are supposed to control. Moreover, given their track record of helplessness and haplessness particularly as it pertains to tech, how can we possibly be confident that America’s elected officials will better manage breakthrough technologies in the future?

Europe’s leaders have done a better job addressing the problem than their American counterparts. Professor James Heskett credits the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act for achieving the world’s “the most extensive approach” to relevant regulation. But while the Act does exercise a measure of control, this could be a case of the genie already out of the bottle. It remains unclear whether it will be possible to regulate AI in a way that is substantial, that ultimately is meaningful.

What then is to be done? Will, can, anything, anyone, have a positive impact? Some ideas have already been put forth. For instance, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, suggested enacting federal regulations such as requiring licenses ensuring that AI models are thoroughly tested before being made available. But it all seems a bit like putting a finger in a dike, like, to mix metaphors, shutting the barn door after the horse already got out.   

How then to maximize Leader Intelligence in the age of Artificial Intelligence? Given that leaders – all leaders, including political leaders and corporate leaders – cannot possibly conquer or even control technology, the question becomes what is leader intelligence in the age of artificial intelligence? What should leaders be, what should leaders know, when technologies threaten to outrun them at every turn? Threaten to out-know them, to out-pace them, to out-perform them?

Three attributes stand out.

• The first is for leaders to become more human. To become more humane. To return to being generalists as opposed to specialists.
• The second is for leaders to become less national and more international. To become less parochial and more ecumenical.  
• The third is for leaders to become more contextually aware. To become less focused on themselves and more focused on their followers – and on the multiple contexts within which they and their followers are located.

How can these attributes be cultivated, inculcated? How should leaders learn in the age of AI? My book on how leaders should learn – Professionalizing Leadership – was published in 2018, before AI was front and center.* Still, the sequential, three step process that I advocated then is even more relevant now – in the age of AI – than it was then. Step 1: Leaders should be educated. Step 2: Leaders should be trained. And Step 3: Leaders should be developed. The process is not quick; it is slow. It takes years to learn how to lead – a lifetime of learning, a lifetime of accommodating and adapting to change. Change such as AI entering our bloodstream – our mainstream.

I’ll conclude this post by focusing on Step One, on educating leaders. (Subsequent posts will focus on Steps 2 and 3.) How should leaders be educated in the age of AI? How could they become more human? And more humane? And more generalists than specialists? The answer is clear, and it is not arcane. In fact, in a June 10 Wall Street Journal article titled, “Great Books Can Heal Our Divided Campuses,” Professor Andrew Delbanco applied the same logic to a different, though related, problem. How to repair the nation’s fractured colleges and universities?  

Delbanco properly notes that the great moral and historical questions belong to the humanities (history, literature, philosophy, and the arts) and to social sciences such as political science and sociology, and, I would add, psychology.  He writes about the virtues of a core curriculum that represents the best of a “general education that assigns or attracts students to classes explicitly focused on broad human themes, with common reading lists and with peers whose origins, interest and ambitions differ from their own.” Delbanco concludes his piece by arguing that “at our centrifugal moment, we have an opportunity and an obligation to rethink general education” – which is precisely what I am arguing applies equally to leadership education.

If humankind is to have a future it must educate leaders to become humanists, globalists, and ecumenicists. Without exception the greatest dangers to planet earth – pandemics, nuclear wars, climate catastrophes, and the risks posed by artificial intelligence – require deep thinking, broad thinking, and open thinking.

It’s why leaders should be educated before they are trained, and it’s why their education should consist of shared experiences in the humanities and social sciences. These experiences should include reading, analyzing, and discussing a wide range of works by, for example, Confucius and Plato, Shakespeare and Tagore, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Nelson Mandela, Dostoyevsky and Freud. Are thinkers, writers, activists, poets and philosophers such as these relevant to managing artificial intelligence? Yes.

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*Oxford University Press, 2018.  

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the latest example of a leader going from bad to worse – if he or she has not been stopped or at least slowed by being impeded or interrupted. Erdogan just won reelection to another five-year term.  This despite each of the following:

— He has already held one of Turkey’s two highest posts for over twenty years. He was a powerful prime minister from 2003 to 2014. And he has been a nearly all-powerful president from 2014 to the present.  

— He defied the odds. Predictions were that this time around Erdogan might well not win. Reasons why include Turkey’s prolonged and now perilous economic decline; the government’s sluggish, sloppy response to February’s devastating earthquakes; the rampant corruption that was revealed by the earthquakes; and a political opposition that was relatively unified.

— He claimed at the beginning of his political life to be a democrat not an autocrat. During his early years as prime minister he appeared to pride himself on being a centrist, tolerant of nearly all Turks, no matter their differences. At the same time, he took pains to improve the lives of pious Muslim who had long seen themselves, with reason, as second-class citizens. However, as the years passed, Erdogan became hungrier for power – and then hungrier for still more. To the point where he shut up and locked up his opponents; weakened competing institutions including the legislature and the courts; and wielded near total control over Turkey’s media.

— He changed course not only at home but abroad, proving a reluctant and recalcitrant member of NATO, while repeatedly siding with, and sidling up to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – even after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Now, in the wake of this Turkish election, Erdogan is likely not only to move closer to Putin, but increasingly to resemble Putin. To become a mini-Putin. Even more than before Erdogan will almost certainly style himself an Eastern autocrat, not a Western democrat.

Most striking about Erdogan is his trajectory. He began his political life as one sort of leader but over time became another sort of leader. Nor is Erdogan the only leader to have changed, to have become, as the years passed, more extreme in his political opinions and behaviors. A recent article in the Washington Post titled “The Deepening Radicalization of Donald J. Trump,” chronicled how Trump had evolved even in recent years. It left little doubt that a second Trump presidency would enable him to “take revenge on his political opponents and push even further on his most polarizing programs.”   

Things change. People change. When leaders change the likelihood is they will continue to change. How? Past is prologue.

Memorial Day is observed each year on the last Monday in May, to honor those who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Implicitly it also celebrates the ideals for which they fought, especially perhaps democracy. Americans extoll democracy even while they, most of us, do not esteem those who lead our democracy. Nor are we alone in withholding our approval of those who occupy the nation’s highest office. Other leaders of other democracies experience a similar lack of appreciation and support.

As its title suggests, I predicted the trend in my book, The End of Leadership, published in 2012. Still, it’s one thing to make a prediction, it’s another to see it come to pass. It’s another to live in a time in which the American people – and other people in other democracies – are so inordinately reluctant to follow where their leaders lead that it frequently results either in political paralysis or in what seems at least constant bitching and moaning.

Nowhere is this exemplified more vividly than in France. Though President Emmanuel Macron was able ultimately to push through a highly unpopular law mandating the retirement age be pushed from 62 to 64, weeks after the law became a fait accompli, French followers were still hounding and harassing Macron whenever he had the temerity to appear in public. By banging on pots and pans to earsplitting, deafening levels, they effectively said, “You refused to listen to us, now we refuse to listen to you.”

If Macron were alone in experiencing strong resistance to his leadership, it would be one thing. But he is not. As their approval ratings attest, other leaders in other democracies also don’t get much respect not to speak of love. 

• Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has an approval rating of 49%.
• American President Joe Biden has an approval rating of 42%.
• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has an approval rating of 39%.
• Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has an approval rating of 34 %.
• Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has an approval rating of 33%.
• Japan’s Prime Minster Fumio Kishida has an approval rating of 31%.
• Macron brings up the rear with an approval rating of 25%.

Of course, there are in such matters some nuances. For example, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi enjoys an apparently splendid approval rating of 78%. But, while India claims to be a democracy, Freedom House ranks it as only “partly free.” Moreover, Modi has changed in recent years. He is increasingly known for using his country’s religious divisions for his own political gain, and for his increasing intolerance of any political opposition.    

French followers are an especially recalcitrant lot. But the fact is they have company. Followers in democracies everywhere make it difficult for leaders to lead. To a point this is good. To a point it’s the point of democracies – to give people, all people, a voice. But if the changes in culture and technology are so great that they make leaders weak, render them ineffectual or even impotent, that’s no good.

Over 400,000 American lives were lost in World War II – the greatest number of any war not fought on American soil. Still, no one now argues that against Chancellor Adolf Hitler President Franklin Roosevelt should have kept his powder dry. Leadership is not a luxury.      

Turns out that power and even the proximity to power can be intoxicating and, ultimately, addictive. Moreover, turns out that power and even the proximity to power account not only for the behavior of many leaders, but for that of many followers.

Yesterday I posted a piece titled “Leaders Who Dodder.” The point was that some cling to power or at least to positions of power long after they should have had the intelligence and grace to give it up. Though I didn’t name her in the post, the widely revered Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the quintessential example of such a leader. Precisely because she clung to power, her seat on the Supreme Court, too long, her replacement on the Court was named not by her political and judicial ally, President Barack Obama, but by her political and judicial nemesis, President Donald Trump.    

Why did Ginsburg insist on clinging to her position years after it was clear her health was in decline? Why did Senator Dianne Feinstein do the same? Why do others fall into the same trap? Why is it that, as Annie Karni writing in the New York Times put it, “History littered with lawmakers who have stayed around well past their primes?” * Karni’s answer is the attractions of power, and the perks of power are so great they make it very hard to give it up.

What is it about power that makes it so addictive? The feeling that you are important. The feeling that you are making a difference. The feeling that you can get others to do what you want them to do. The feeling that you are part of a group.  The feeling that you are acting on what you believe in. The feeling that your experience makes you smarter and better than any successor. The feeling that your power is your life.

Then there are the perks, the small but significant rewards that add up to a big difference. Recognition and admiration; private planes and good seats at good restaurants; a reserved parking place and speedy service; and a staff to smooth and soothe your way in life, to remove the wrinkles the rest of us are left ourselves to iron out.

What makes this list of incentives for leaders to keep leading especially interesting is that it precisely mirrors the list of incentives for followers to keep following. I am thinking especially of enablers – of followers who continue to follow leaders even when they are manifestly ineffective or unethical or both. When a senator such as the now servile Lindsey Graham follows a leader like Donald Trump – who previously he had denigrated and dismissed – Graham is not doing so because he’s lost his mind. He’s doing so because he has calculated that the benefits of staying close to Trump are greater than the costs. Put differently, the addiction to power is not just about being rewarded – who gets to play golf at Mar-a-Lago – it is also about being punished. About who gets distanced from power. In Graham’s case, though he has already served in the Senate for over twenty years, he is clearly plenty worried about losing his seat. Not only because of the advantages it bestows but because without it, he seems to fear he will be lost.    

Followers, as is common in these matters, are a knottier problem than leaders. What then to do at least about the leadership class? To ensure a leadership class that is not geriatric, to ensure that younger generations get to hold the levers of power alongside older ones. As I suggested in “Leaders Who Dodder” the matter is urgent. Because average life spans have dramatically increased, so will the number of leaders who are ailing or failing. Even now the average age of U.S. Senators is what used to be the age of retirement – 65.

Since power is addictive, we cannot count on leaders themselves to give it up. We must then take matters into our own hands. We must demand and eventually effect term limits. Limit the amount of time any leader – in business, for example, as in government – is permitted to hold a particular post. How long should this time be? How about 12 years? Long enough to have the benefit of experience; short enough to steer clear of getting sclerotic. In the U. S. Congress this would mean two terms for members of the Senate, and six terms for members of the House. You got a problem with that?

*https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/us/politics/dianne-feinstein-older-lawmakers-senate.html

For all the recent changes in demography, California remains America’s most populous state, by far. It is home to some 39 million people. (Next is Texas, with nearly 30 million.) But for all its great size, like the other 49 states it is allotted just two senators to represent it in Congress. Therefore, if only because of the position they hold, each of the state’s two senators is, or ought to be, a leader, someone who, literally, leads. Alex Padilla is one, having served in that role for two years. Dianne Feinstein is the other, having served in that role for over thirty years.

Feinstein is the longest-serving woman senator in American history. She also has a strong record as a legislator, as well as having been a role model for many of the women who followed her and learned from her how to navigate the Senate.

Now, alas, Feinstein has become a different sort of exemplar. An exemplar of a leader who couldn’t quit. Couldn’t quit while there was still time to do so with dignity. Couldn’t quit while there was still time to hand the reins of power to a successor with intelligence and grace. By virtually every account for Feinstein it’s now too late. She is now so frail and befuddled that she is incapable of making a good decision either for herself or her constituents. So, one of these days, in one way or another, the decision to leave the Senate will be made not by her but for her.

Still, at a time when people are living so much longer than they used to, the question of leaders who linger till they dodder is certain to become more pressing. It is not ageist to insist it’s an issue – it’s just common sense. Need I repeat that America’s next presidential race likely will be between an 80-year-old and a 76-year-old? Need I point out that the 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch just concluded what the Financial Times called an especially “calamitous year”? Need I remind that the Supreme Leader of a visibly ailing Iran, Ali Khamenei, is 84 years old and has held his vaulted position for almost 34 years?

Old leaders don’t necessarily die, and they don’t necessarily fade away. Sometimes they just go on, and on, and on.  The same applies to leaders who are not old but who for some reason are ailing or failing. Sometimes leaders of all ages hang in and hang on when the right thing to do would be for them to get out, to let someone replace them who is fit to do the job.

Situations such as these can of course be both delicate and difficult to resolve. During his 2022 senatorial campaign, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman was felled by a severe stroke, one that clearly limited him physically and, it appeared, cognitively. While he won nevertheless, soon after he took office the newly minted senator was hospitalized for six weeks for clinical depression. It’s possible, of course, that Fetterman will serve the remainder of his term in fine health. It’s also possible that questions about his well-being will remain.     

Clearly the issues I raise are sensitive. Moreover, the decisions they require are impossible to prescribe with precision. Still, it does none of us a favor to pretend that the matter of leaders’ health is other than of the utmost importance. And it does none of us a favor to pretend that leaders who dodder should indefinitely be left to chart their own course. Especially when it’s obvious they can no longer serve the followers to whom they promised, or even swore their allegiance.  

I have written repeatedly over the years about how differences between women and men impact the chronic issue of women and leadership. (“Chronic” in that the numbers of leaders who are women remains everywhere far below the number of leaders who are men.) Specifically, I have pointed out how women who are pregnant, and women who breastfeed, often change. They change physiologically and they change psychologically – which means they change in ways that affect them not only at home but at work.

Now there is evidence that these sorts of changes are not confined to women of childbearing age. They apply to women who are older – roughly between the ages of 45 and 60 – as well. A high percentatge suffer symptoms associated with menopause including but not limited to hot flashes, night sweats, and mood swings. As a recent study conducted by the world-class Mayo Clinic concluded, “Menopausal symptoms … occur in more than 75% of women during the transition though menopause. Such symptoms can be frequent, protracted, refractory to management, distressing and incapacitating.”*

As a subject of discussion menopause is generally thought taboo. Women as well as men remain reluctant to attribute any intrusion on their capacity to perform, especially at work, based on changes that could be related to age. Still, the Mayo Clinic study is the largest of its kind – more than 4,000 women participated – ever conducted in the United States. It further found 1) that menopause costs American women an estimated $1.8 billion in lost working time per year; 2) that roughly 15% or respondants reported “adverse work outcomes” related to the affects of menopause; and 3) that women who reported the most severe symptoms were 16 times more likely to report negative consequences than those who reported the least severe symptoms.**

The Mayo Clinic study did not link the impact of symptoms of menopause to women who either do lead or aspire to lead. But it seems reasonable to conclude that who we are and how we feel, physically and mentally, affects not only what we do and how we do it, but what we want to do. I have long maintained that one of the many reasons women lead less often than men is because they are different. Physiologically and psychologically different. The new findings on menopause seem further to support this claim.

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*Karl A. Nath, In the Limelight: May 2023 – Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

**Also see this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/28/well/live/menopause-symptoms-work-women.html