Author: Barbara

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place to control itself.

                                                                James Madison, #51 in The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were written and published in 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Their purpose was to urge New Yorkers to ratify the proposed U.S. Constitution. They are considered one of the great political treatises of all time, men trying to wrestle theory into practice, trying to establish a government free from tyranny but nevertheless functional, able to “control the governed.”

If The Federalist Papers have a single line that defines them – that summarizes the fundamental assumption on which they are based – it is this one. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” For it lays bare in the starkest possible terms that Hamilton, Jay, and Madison did not think men angels, did not they could be trusted, did not think they could be counted on to be good leaders, or followers, without checks and balances and the rule of law to control them. Without checks and balances to minimize the likelihood that too much power would be in the hands of one man, or one branch of government. And without the law to threaten punishment lest the checks and balances fail.

This phrase alone – “if men were angels” – is the most powerful possible evidence that how we think about leadership and followership is, or it should be, dictated by how we think about the nature of man, of humankind. If we believe that humans are fundamentally good, this would suggest either that no government of any kind is necessary, or that government can be loose to the point of being largely laissez-faire. If, conversely, we believe that most people cannot be trusted, are not angels, this would suggest something else entirely. It would suggest that constraints and controls of some sort must be established lest the disarray end in despotism. In The Prince Machiavelli made plain he thought men by nature were “ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly and covetous.” No wonder he advised the prince it was better to be feared than loved!   

If men and now women are not angels, leaders are not angels. Not leaders in government, nor leaders in business, nor leaders anywhere else. This is not to say that leaders necessarily are bad. Rather it is to say that we cannot count on them to be good.

This returns us to the question of what do we do with what we know. I raised it in an earlier post on bad leadership (January 31), in which I compared it to climate change. That is, we know it exists, we know that bad leadership, like climate change, is real. But we seem unable to do anything much about it. Which does not make the questions about bad leadership any the less urgent. Above all these two: If we cannot count on leaders to be good, how do we stop them from getting to the point of being bad? And, if they are already at the point of being bad, how do we stop them from getting worse?

I will return to these questions in a later post. Here I will simply say that task one is to come to grips with, to begin to understand, just what it is we’re talking about when we say, “bad leadership.” Setting aside the semantic arguments about words like “leader” and “leadership,” there are the differences in how “bad” is defined. In many cases you and I are likely to agree that a leader is bad; in many other cases you and I are likely to disagree. For “bad” is often in the eye of the beholder, vulnerable to be subjectively felt as opposed to being objectively right and good and true.  

Whatever the complexities, in my first major work on this topic – a book published in 2004, titled Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters – I developed a typology that still works well. I divided bad leadership into seven different types, with which some readers of this post will already be familiar. They are:

1. Incompetent Leadership – The leader and at least some followers lack the will or skill (or both) to sustain effective action. Regarding at least one important leadership challenge, they do not create positive change.
2. Rigid Leadership – The leader and at least some followers are stiff and unyielding. Although they may be competent, they are unable or unwilling to adapt to new ideas, new information, or changing times.
3. Intemperate Leadership – The leader lacks self-control and is aided and abetted by followers who are unwilling or unable effectively to intervene.
4. Callous Leadership – The leader and at least some followers are uncaring or unkind. Ignored or discounted are the needs, wants, and wishes of most members of the group or organization, especially subordinates.
5. Corrupt Leadership – The leader and at least some followers lie, cheat, and, or steal. To a degree that exceeds the norm, they put self-interest ahead of the public interest.
6. Insular Leadership – The leader and at least some followers minimize or disregard the health and welfare of “the other” – that is, those outside the group or organization for which they are directly responsible.
7. Evil Leadership – The leader and at least some followers commit atrocities. They use pain as an instrument of power. The harm done to men, women, and children is severe rather than slight. The harm can be physical, or psychological, or both.

These seven types of bad leadership are not of course etched in stone. Nevertheless, they are intuitively as well as empirically indicative. Indicative of the fact that leaders are not angels – which is precisely why the devil in them, in us, must be grist for our mill.

Perhaps it’s coincidence, perhaps not. Either way it was noteworthy when two recent columns in two prominent papers took on the same subject at the same time: bad leadership. Bad leadership not in the political realm but in the corporate one. Both columns were about leaders who were good at leading in business but bad at leading more generally. At assuming significant or even modest responsibility for society at large.*

The underlying questions are not new: Have capitalism – and, concomitantly, the masters of the universe – run amuck? Have they in the last half century led us to a place of such inequity in wealth – a handful at the top unimaginably rich and the rest of us far, far less rich, or maybe not at all rich, or maybe even poor – that it, capitalism, and they, corporate leaders, can no longer be defended? Further, can it reasonably be claimed that market inefficiencies and inequities – the rampant unfairness – are in good part to blame for the dangerous tribulations of liberal democracies?

What distinguishes the articles to which I refer is that the questions they raise pertain particularly to leaders.  The first is by Peter S. Goodman, whose piece for the New York Times is titled, “C.E.O.s Were Our Heroes… At Least According to Them.” The leader he especially takes on is Salesforce’s Marc Benioff who, as Goodman correctly observes, has long depicted himself as a leader who is singularly enlightened. Indeed, Benioff claims a special place in heaven for business leaders generally, describing them, apparently with a straight face, as the guardians of human progress. “In the pandemic, it was C.E.O.s in many, many cases all over the world who were the heroes,” Benioff said. “They’re the ones who stepped forward with their financial resources, their corporate resources, their employees, their factories, and pivoted rapidly – not for profit but to save the world.”

To Benioff’s assertion there is some truth. Still, it is equally true he seems oblivious to how much he personally has benefited from public goods and services, and to how little he and others of his ilk have had to sacrifice. The fact that leaders like Benioff pay so little (or even nothing), certainly relatively, in taxes, means they effectively starve governments at the federal, state, and local levels of the resources they need even to begin to level the playing field.  Benioff then, far from being socially enlightened, a force for good in the world, is instead, Goodman charges, “an enabler, a beneficiary and a custodian of the world as it is.” In this Benioff is like other rich-as-Croesus corporate leaders: In theory, in his head, enlightened. In practice, in the real world, not so much. Or not at all.

The second article calls on leaders to refrain from refraining from politics. This one, titled “Business Leaders Have to Play a Better Political Role,” is by Martin Wolf, a regular columnist for the Financial Times. Unlike Goodman, Wolf does not single out anyone. Instead, he takes on corporate leaders as a class that should no longer, can no longer afford to stay on the sidelines of democratic discourse.

Wolf makes the critical connection between capitalism and democracy. Essentially, he argues that if we permit the former to run amuck, it will have devastating consequences for the latter.  Wolf points out that business leaders are highly influential in setting public policy in areas such as company and competition law, financial and environmental regulation, and, of course, in taxation. But their influence is not objectively grounded, it is subjectively driven. Driven not necessarily entirely but largely by self-interest, their own interests and those of the companies they lead. The result of this imbalance of power and influence is a highly unequal distribution of rewards and, at the same time, a shift of risks onto the backs of ordinary people.   

Wolf is a capitalist. He believes in capitalism and makes clear he considers it superior to other economic systems. At the same time, he now sees capitalism, especially but certainly not exclusively in the U.S., as badly in need of repair. Again, his column was written with private sector leaders in mind – leaders who should ask themselves these questions:

• What am I as in influential individual, business leader and member of business organizations doing to increase the capacity of my country and the world to make sensible decisions in the interest of all?
• Am I mainly lobbying for special tax and regulatory treatment for our own benefit or am I supporting political action and activities that will bring the people of my divided country together?
• Am I prepared to pay the taxes that our success makes justifiable, or am I exploiting every loophole that allows me to assign profits to tax havens that have contributed nothing to our success?
• What am I, my business, and the organizations I am part of doing to discourage online harms, corruption, money laundering and other forms of dangerous and indeed criminal activity?
• What am I doing to support laws that will bring accountability to rogue business organizations and their leaders? What, above all, am I doing to strengthen the political systems on which successful collective action depends?

Far be it from me to lay blame for everything that has gone wrong with capitalism and democracy entirely at the feet of leaders. This is a systemic issue, with blame, or responsibility, to go around. I include in the mix followers, ordinary people, and changes in the context, especially in technology, that make sustaining healthy capitalism and viable democracy newly difficult.  

Still, leaders, all leaders, must be held accountable. Ideally governments, political leaders, should be fixing what ails us. They should be addressing the harm that capitalism as currently constituted inflicts on democracy. But, alas, they are not, certainly not in the United States, up to the task. In fact, in good part it is they who are responsible for why we are where we are. Moreover, they give us no reason to expect they will, they can, perform better in the near future than they did in the recent past.

Which brings us back full circle – to business leaders. Especially those with outsized power and influence. Am I, along with Wolf, being naïve in believing they can change? Is it too much to expect they will assume greater responsibility for society, for a healthy democracy and a balanced economy, than they have up to now?

This much is in any case sure. If corporate leaders remain on the sidelines, content to dabble in being responsible – their newfound proclivity for substituting the word “stakeholder” for “shareholder” does not quite cut it – Houston, we have a problem. It’s one thing to have bad leadership in one realm. It’s another to have it across the board.  

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*The link to Peter Goodman’s article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/business/davos-man-marc-benioff-book.html  The link to Martin Wolf’s column is here: https://www.ft.com/content/4b844f8b-4906-46b4-81e5-059a4d8d4eb6 .The italicized questions are quoted from Wolf’s column.

Is it just me or is there a similarity between bad leadership and climate change? By this I mean in both cases is widespread agreement they exist, are real. But, in both cases our capacity to address the problem, the threat they pose, is so limited that meaningful change has been, continues to be, impossible.

Climate change is at least being discussed. It’s on the agenda, a matter of public policy in many if not most countries around the world. Still, our individual and collective capacity meaningfully to take it on so far has been too little and too late. Human nature is such that climate change remains – and is likely to continue to remain – a frightening problem with no solution.

I now think of bad leadership in the same way. It’s not as if we’re in denial. Though our definitions of what constitutes bad leadership differ – a problem of itself – people do not disagree it exists, and they do not disagree it is, or at least it can be, a threat to the general welfare. In fact, ironically, we’re obsessed with bad leadership, be it who we see as our bad boss or our bad president. Still, for all the bitching and moaning about bad leadership our ability to take it on usually is no match for the task at hand. We have a hard time coming to grips with bad leadership – and an even harder time doing something about it.

Consider the case of Lebanon. Beirut was once known as the “Paris of the Middle East.” In recent years, however, the city, the country, have been in free-fall. This past week the World Bank issued a report that described Lebanon as being in crisis, as being on the precipice of becoming a failed state. Key pillars of the political economy have disintegrated. Basic services have collapsed. The level of political discord has been debilitating. And there has been a massive brain drain, leaving the poor and middle class behind, victims of what happened.

Did this calamity come about of its own? It did not. It was in direct consequence of bad leadership. According to the World Bank Lebanon Economic Monitor: “Lebanon’s deliberate depression is orchestrated by the county’s elite that has long captured the state and lived off its economic rents. This capture persists despite the severity of the crisis – one of the top ten, possibly top three most severe economic collapses worldwide since the 1850s.”

It is not as if the Lebanese people have been passive in the face of the catastrophe.  As recently as October were massive protests, one of many in recent years, in this case leaving six dead. Still, public outrage has come to naught, the people too weak and divided effectively to challenge a leadership class riddled with corruption.   

There are exceptions to the general rule. Bad leaders – bad people in positions of authority – are sometimes held accountable. Recently, in a courtroom in Germany, two perpetrators of crimes against humanity from another Middle Eastern country, Syria, were found guilty. But verdicts like these are a drop in the proverbial bucket. In fact, in another grim irony of history, the chief Syrian culprit, the man mainly (though by no means solely) responsible for more than a half million Syrians dead since 2011, and more than half the country’s population displaced, President Bashir al-Assad, has not only been left personally unscathed he is being politically rehabilitated. As a scholar from Syria recently noted, writing in the New York Times, “In June, the World Health Organization appointed Syria to its executive board. Interpol readmitted Syria to its network in October. Algeria and Egypt have pushed to reinvite Syria to Arab League membership, and other Arab nations have gestured toward a rapprochement with Mr. al-Assad. And throughout, Mr. al-Assad’s relationship with Iran and Russia appears to have deepened.”

Is it that our memories are short? Is it that in time realpolitik supersedes the dictates of our conscience?  Or is it simply that all too often we are, or we feel we are, as helpless in the face of evil (bad leadership) as we are in the face of danger (climate change)?  

Clearly I refer not just to bad leaders in the Middle East but to bad leaders everywhere. In business as in government, in the United States as elsewhere in the world. Just yesterday former President Donald Trump flat out admitted that what he wanted after his defeat was for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election, which by all objective accounts was free and fair. Trump confessed, in other words, that his intention was to stage a successful coup. A successful coup against the U.S. government, a successful coup against the U.S. Constitution. In the history of the United States leadership has not been worse than that.    

This is not the first time I have lamented our collective inattention to bad leadership. For years I have charged the leadership industry specifically with benign neglect of precisely this sort. The question is at which point does the neglect become other than benign? At which point will we be individually and collectively responsible for our refusal to deal with the dark side?    

Brady has long been a leader, both on the football field and off it. He gets other people to follow not so much because of what he says, but because of what he does, what he is. How he lives his life as a person, as a player, and as a professional.

Similarly, Brady has long been a leader who lusted. Almost from the start of his singular career his lust for success – his unstoppable need to achieve – has been apparent. It explains what most mattered: his tireless willingness to sharpen his skills; his singular focus on playing the game; his fierce determination and endless ambition. Brady has been an exemplar of supreme athletic accomplishment for two reasons. First, he was naturally endowed with a great gift; second, he cherished his gift. He honed his natural talent, polishing, protecting, and nurturing it at every turn and with every fiber of his being.

Right now is rampant speculation about whether Brady is about to announce his retirement from the game. There is further speculation about why he would leave at this time, now as opposed to, say, a year from now. Most of this speculation settles on his wife and family – he is retiring because they, especially his wife Giselle, want him to retire.

But whenever Brady decides to hang it up will be not because of what someone else says or does. It will be because he has concluded his success on the field is no longer guaranteed or maybe even likely. Brady’s body has been an astonishment – but it is not immune to the diminishment and decline that inevitably accompany advancing age. Which is why when Brady feels his body can no longer be relied on – relied on to satisfy his unquenchable quest for success – he will quit playing football.

The crisis in Europe has been going on for weeks. Nevertheless, it seems somehow unreal. As if it cannot be possible the clock is being turned back to the height of the Cold War – or even to the last global hot war, to World War II.

Though it is not familiar to most Americans, Ukraine was at the center of European politics for most of the 20^th century.  In the 1930s it was the site of one of the most calamitous famines in modern history. (Courtesy of Stalin.) In the 1940s it was the heart of the bloodletting during the Second World War. (Courtesy of Stalin – and Hitler.) And in the 1990s when communism collapsed and the Soviet Union fell, it was the Soviet Socialist Republic whose loss was most keenly felt by Russian nationalists.

Nor did Russian fixation on Ukraine end there. In 2014 President Vladimir Putin stole from it the Crimea; since then Russian troops have strayed into its Eastern flank. And now Russia appears to be preparing for a major invasion, even, possibly, into Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.  

In recent weeks nothing has so preoccupied the West’s foreign policy establishment as the question of Putin’s motives for destabilizing Europe. The answers are several – to wit what I wrote on January 5^th, in my post titled, “Leaders of the Year – The Autocrats.” Putin is making trouble on Russia’s Western flank 1) because he longs to restore key parts of the old Soviet Empire; 2) because he thinks he can shore up his position at home by adventurism abroad; 3) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the United States; 4) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the European Union; 5) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis NATO; 6) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis Xi Jinping; and 7) because he longs to go down in history as one of the greatest Russian leaders ever.

But for students of leadership the matter of cause is less important than the matter of effect. What interests most of us most is not the psychological genesis of what Putin does but the political consequences thereof.  We cannot psychoanalyze the president of Russia. We cannot know what is in his mind, or in his heart. What we can know though, what we do know, is that one man has bent the West to his will. He has forced other leaders in other places, leaders of countries from Estonia to Romania, from the United States to the United Kingdom, to scramble to stop him. He acted. They reacted. So far therefore it is Putin who has won the war of attention. He has not however, at least not yet, won the war of attrition.    

His candidacy is unlikely. And his success as candidate for president of Italy is even unlikelier. Still, Berlusconi’s run for the office is not frivolous. Nor is he being laughed off the political stage. Instead, Berlusconi, whose on/off again tenure as prime minister lasted from the mid-1900s to 2011, is making one last, quasi-serious effort to play a prominent part in Italian politics.

Berlusconi is 85, and not in the best of health. More to the point, his public persona is so stained, and his political legacy so tarnished, it’s hard to fathom how anyone in Italy can take him seriously. Even at a time when leaders in liberal democracies struggle to be respected or even trusted, Berlusconi is a case apart. His long record in business and politics is an embarrassment, a national humiliation. Instead of being welcomed back into the political fold, he should be expelled from it, forever.

In Italy the prime minister is usually a divisive figure. But not so the president. The president, whose term is seven years, is generally expected to be a political centrist associated with probity and moral authority. What an absurd fit for a man whose record the New York Times recently summarized this way:  “There are the countless trials; the investigations over mob links and bribing lawmakers; the tax fraud conviction; the ban from office; the sentence to perform community service in a nursing home; his use of his media empire for political gain; his use of the government to protect his media empire; the wiretapped conversations of his libertine party guests regaling the Caligulian extent of his bung-bunga debaucheries; his close relations with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, who gifted Mr. Berlosconi a large bed; his appraisal of Barack Obama as ‘young, handsome and sun tanned’; his comparing a German lawmaker to a concentration camp guard; and his second wife’s divorcing him for apparently dating an 18-year old.”

Berlusconi was a central figure in the book I wrote with Todd Pittinsky, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy. While Berlusconi was lustful in several ways, in his prime he was most famous for, most infamous for, his lust for sex. He was on a constant prowl, specifically for sexual gratification, resulting in a series of scandals that ended only after he left the political scene.  But the wonder was always not what he did but how the Italian people tolerated, accepted, or even welcomed his behavior which sometimes went from antic to abusive. He was not, after all, a Roman Emperor. He was the late 20^th and early 21^st leader of a liberal democracy that was a member of NATO.   

Of course, the answer to the riddle of this leader’s longevity lies not with him but with the context in which he was embedded – and with his followers. Italy has long been considered the only country in Western Europe that after World War I failed to develop a reasonably effective and enduring political system. Further, in his heyday – which lasted many years – Berlusconi played the Italian people like a fiddle. He fed their illusions; played to their basest fears; set them against each other; lied and otherwise misled; and promoted corruption and cronyism. He lasted because he was a showman and a strongman, both of which are types long admired in Italian society.  (Think Mussolini.)    

Again, Berlusconi in his dotage is unlikely to get to the top of the greasy pole. Still, the fact that he’s trying, and is not being dismissed out of hand, should serve as a warning. Even leaders with wretched track records attract some of the people some of the time.   

In the old days, when leaders were not leading, they could play as they pleased. They were generally free to do what they wanted when they wanted. To nap as long and as often as they were tired or sleepy.  To indulge in games or in sport whenever they were inclined. To drink heavily, no matter the occasion or time of day. And, especially, given leaders mostly were men, to carouse – to bed as many women as they desired whether morning, noon, or night.

Now though things are different. Now leaders, especially in liberal democracies, have no choice. They must watch themselves at every turn. They must remember the technology – remember that their every move, their every sound might be recorded for posterity. They must remember the culture – remember that the culture no longer keeps secrets. And, above all, they must remember their followers – remember that today’s followers don’t look up to leaders. They see them as equals. In fact, many if not most followers lie in wait for their leaders – wait to pounce on their every misstep.

Consider the Brits. As I write their prime minister, Boris Johnson, has been obliged to grovel on account of his ill-timed partying. And, as I write, among the most prominent members of the royal family, Prince Andrew, a son of the queen, has been publicly humiliated, stripped of his military titles and royal patronages on account of his involvement in an American lawsuit charging sexual abuse.

Not a good look. More to the point not a good look for leaders at a time when people who are not in positions of power and authority have little tolerance for people who do.  Even under the best of circumstances – which these circumstances are not.

Anyone who reads this post and is familiar with my work is bound to be bored. For I return here to a familiar theme: the failure of the leadership industry. The inability of the leadership industry adequately to address our most pressing problems – and its refusal to be self-aware. To reflect and self-correct.

I take no pleasure in pointing out that this argument, which I have made for nearly a decade, seems now to have been prescient. For ten years after the publication of my book The End of Leadership, and for four years after the publication of my book Professionalizing Leadership, the deficiencies of the leadership industry have become blindingly clear.

How to defend the existing leadership industry in light of this history? A history in which its rise has precisely paralleled democracy’s decline. A history that is nothing if not a sorry trajectory.

I do not claim that if the leadership industry were reconceived it would be a magic bullet. What I do maintain that if the leadership industry were reconceived – reimagined and reconfigured from the bottom up – it would have a better shot, a much better shot, at contributing to our collective cause.

Democracy is not just about good leadership. It is at least as much about bad leadership. Democracy is not just about good leadership. It is at least as much about good followership. Until these lessons are learned, in the fight for democracy the industry will be a weak warrior.

By chance they’re both named Elizabeth – Elizabeth Holmes and Elizabeth Cheney. Holmes is, of course, the now thoroughly disgraced founder and CEO of Theranos, who was recently found guilty on four counts of fraud. (On other charges she was found not guilty, and on still others the jury was unable to reach a verdict.) Cheney, who is called Liz, is, of course, the congresswoman from Wyoming who is one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the January 6^th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

To have followed Holmes’s career and, recently, her trial, is to be amazed by how she was able to do what she did. She started her company as a college dropout with no experience and no expertise. Still, she managed to persuade people that she could and would revolutionize the Big Business of testing blood.

How did she do it? How did she get rich and powerful people to give her buckets of money initially to fill, and then to replenish the coffers of her startup? How did she get members of the media to make her a superstar? How did she convince otherwise clever mentors, customers, and workers that she really was onto something, that she really would deliver what she promised?  

Holmes used her feminine wiles to sell her wares. Is it politically correct these days to talk about such attributes, especially in a leader? Probably not. But let’s get real. Despite her lack of experience and expertise, Holmes was able to raise almost a billion dollars for Theranos. Which must raise the question of how she did it. She did it on the strength of her public persona which was uncommonly appealing, attractive, especially to older men who early on supported her startup with large sums of money and gave her credence by lending her their names. (Nearly from the get-go her board, for example, was peopled by luminaries, again, mostly older men, who, it should be added, knew nothing about blood-testing.)

Holmes was alluring in the traditional sense. She was tall and blond; young and pretty; classy and composed; articulate and energetic; well-dressed and well put together; and she famously had large, unblinking eyes plus a voice that was uncommonly deep. When Holmes entered a room people noticed. When Holmes spoke people listened. When Holmes was on the cover of Fortune, people paid attention. And when Holmes promised, repeatedly, without much if any hard evidence, that she would change the world, people believed her. They bought what she sold because they wanted to hitch their wagon to her train.

The other Elizabeth, Liz Cheney, is altogether different. She seems to do what she can to distract from her femininity. This is not to say that she is plain, not at all. Rather it is to say that she never ever draws on what I earlier referred to as feminine wiles. Cheney dresses simply and straightforwardly, and wears little or no makeup. She speaks in a flat voice, with no emphasis or modulation. She virtually never smiles or pulls people in by any other part of her public persona. She is the opposite of obviously ingratiating, the contrary of obviously charismatic. It is, however, precisely this absence of any other sort of appeal that compels us to listen to what she has to say.

Cheney has other assets. Not only her illustrious father, Dick Cheney, the former vice president who, until recently, was a powerhouse in the Republican Party. But, additionally, her formidable mother, Lynne Cheney, about whom I wrote last year. (https://barbarakellerman.com/leader-mother-lynne-cheney/ ) Moreover, unlike Holmes, Cheney has experience and expertise. A graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law, she is personally and professionally exceedingly well equipped to play the part she has chosen for herself – Republican renegade.

Of course, Holmes crashed not on account of her style, but on account of her substance, her lack of it. Her house it turned out was a fantasy, a fiction. It was made of cards.

Cheney in contrast has long relied entirely on substance – on the whole truth and nothing but as she has seen it. For years this meant she toiled in relative obscurity, a conservative Republican from a rural state with no special claim to fame, certainly not on the national stage. Now though things are different. Because she is one of only a handful of Republicans not only to separate herself from former president Donald Trump, but forcefully to condemn him, repeatedly, she is front and center of our national politics.

Liz Cheney is matter of fact in her manner. And she is matter of fact in her facts. At this moment she is the most interesting woman leader in America. At this moment she is the most interesting leader in America.    

2021 was a good year for leaders who are autocrats. By comparison leaders who are democrats seemed hapless, feckless, disappointingly unable even to persuade large majorities of their own people that democratic systems are superior to autocratic ones.  Democratic leaders have, moreover, been unwilling to stand up to dictators around the world – leaving them mostly free to do what they want when they want.

Because the United States was the model of a democracy, it is now the most glaring example of a democracy as disappointment. Democracy as fractious and fractured; as unable to pass even legislation supported by most of the American people; as plagued by extreme inequity in income and opportunity; as riddled with petty players intent on undermining even that most fundamental of all democratic rights, the right to vote; and as led by a leader in trouble. One year after taking office President Joe Biden’s approval rating is close to an historic low.

Nor is the United States alone in its democratic descent. According to Freedom House, 2021 was the 15^th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Countries experiencing deterioration “outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.” India is a striking, example. Once touted as the world’s largest democracy, in 2021 Freedom House concluded India went from being “Free” to just “Partly Free.” This because the Hindu government “presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population.”  Prime Minister Narendra Modi did his part by muzzling the opposition and cracking down on those who anyway dared to dissent.

Meanwhile the autocrats had a good year. Men – they are all men – such as China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and, yes, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Xi has swept China and now Hong Kong with his persona, his politics, and his policies. Effectively leader for life or, at least, so long as he wants, to all appearances he gets his way if not all the time then most of the time. Not a single domain lies beyond Xi’s grasp, not politics or economics, not education or culture, not the media or academia, not domestic policy, or foreign policy. Everything and everyone are being blanketed if not suffocated by the Chinese Communist Party, which Xi has revived as his primary instrument of power.      

Putin, meanwhile, has become Xi’s mini-me. Ever more repressive and oppressive, within Russia he has airbrushed history; demolished, or locked up most of his opposition; and tightened still further the reins of his power. He too wants to be leader for life and is doing what he can to give himself the option. Without Russia Putin has managed to drive the West nuts, most recently in Ukraine. Why is he making trouble on Russia’s Western flank? Because Putin longs to restore the old Soviet empire. Because Putin distracts from domestic politics by stirring up foreign politics. Because Putin wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the United States. Because Putin wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the European Union. Because Putin wants to prove his manhood vis-a-vis NATO. Because Putin fears being outdone by that other dominant autocrat, Xi.  Because Putin yearns to go down in history as one of the greatest Russian leaders of all time.  

Autocrats are not confined to the political realm – no reason they should be. The most outstanding example of an autocrat in the corporate realm is of course the inevitable, perennial Mark Zuckerberg. He too had a banner year – swatting away whatever came at him, ending 2021 more powerfully positioned than ever.  Notwithstanding an onslaught of damaging and widely publicized revelations about what Facebook had done in the past – courtesy of whistleblower Frances Haugen – Zuckerberg spent most of his energy on preparing for the future. His company’s name change – from Facebook to Meta Platforms, Inc. – was emblematic of where he was at. “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

Once autocratic leaders are entrenched it is difficult if not impossible for followers to dislodge them. It’s why stopping them early on is critical, even essential. The insidiousness of incrementalism – unless, of course, you yourself lean not democratic but autocratic.