Author: Barbara

Though he will not be president much longer, Donald Trump is continuing to exercise his prerogatives as chief executive. Which is to say that he is continuing to lead the American people to unnecessary chaos and unprecedented corruption.

One might even venture that the president is exhibiting a sadistic streak. For while he is ostentatiously playing golf, he is causing countless Americans to endure hardship over the holidays for lack of knowing how, or even if they will be able to stay in their homes, keep the heat on, put food on the table.

Again, the torment is needless, a heedless intrusion on an agreement reached (tortuously) by Congress to ensure a modicum of stability for legions of people for months to come. In fact, as I write, unemployment benefits have lapsed – Trump’s doing, single-handed.

So, again, the question I ask often: What is to be done? How to get rid of a leader who is bad? It will not suffice to respond in this instance, “Hang on, hang in, Trump is almost out the door.” It will not suffice first because even in his remaining weeks the president can do damage. And it will not suffice second because it avoids the larger question of how we can repair a system that as it stands is ill-equipped to self-correct?  

The 25^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1967. It deals with presidential disability and succession. It was intended to make it feasible to remove from office presidents who are disabled to the point of being unable responsibly to carry out their duties.

Section Four of the amendment pertains directly to this discussion. Its rather vague and open-ended language is intended, in part, to be used in those cases in which the president’s unfitness to hold office is contested by the president himself. What has become clear over time is that this contestation might well arise regarding a physical impairment – and that it might even more readily arise regarding a mental impairment. In other words, the system works well if the president is fine with what common sense would dictate. It does not work well or even at all if the president is not. Moreover, if the problem is psychological as opposed to physical, the likelihood that a president would readily or even reasonably acquiesce to prevailing opinion is slim to none.  

Bottom line is we are stuck. For various reasons ranging from the political to the psychological, from the legal to the medical, the American people have no exit. No way out from under a president who is bad.

Does this mean that there is nothing to be done? No, it does not. What it does mean though is that the act of electing a president must be much, much more careful and considered. And what it similarly means is that the system must be fixed so it is far, far better prepared to protect itself against leaders who are as unethical as they are incompetent.

We have learned in the last four years that we cannot depend on the better angels of our nature getting the better of those who are not. This means it’s up to us to fix what’s broke.

It is presumed a given that nations are led by men and women specifically tasked with leading them. In liberal democracies these designated few are politicians who rise to the highest rank – typically presidents or prime ministers, chancellors or premiers. Which raises the question of whether other people in prominent positions of authority – such as chief executive officers of large corporations, presidents of colleges and universities, heads of religious institutions and professional organizations – have a role to play in leading the nations within which their institutions and organizations are situated.

Should, for example, Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors; or Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft; or Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, be expected to speak out if they find an American president to be severely lacking? Similarly, what about Larry Bacow, president of Harvard University; or Audrey Bilger, president of Reed College; or Mark Schlissel, president of the University of Michigan? Should they remain mum when the American government goes badly wrong? And what about Patricia Lee Refo, president of the American Bar Association; or Rory Gamble, president of the United Auto Workers; or Paula McClain, president of the American Political Science Association? Do they have an obligation to say something if they believe that their country is going extremely astray? And, even if they do say something some of the time, do they have a responsibility to do more – to make their voices heard clearly, consistently, and constantly, and even to organize on behalf of what they have come to believe?

I am not claiming that people such as these never say a word about our national politics. Nor do I deny that they need be careful about what they say and do lest they and, worse, the entities they lead are seen to have been politicized and, therefore, compromised. I get that being neutral is being safe.

Still, when a situation is extreme, staying safe will not suffice. Ergo, when a national leader is demonstrably and even dangerously corrupt and inept, other leaders in other places have a moral duty, and a civic responsibility, to step up and speak out. History has taught us – or it should have – that there are times when remaining silent is becoming complicit.  

Israel’s governing coalition collapsed yesterday – primarily though not exclusively because of corruption charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This means that on March 23^rd Israelis will have no less than their fourth national election in two years.

Great Britain meanwhile is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Though he is to blame only in part, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has not exactly distinguished himself during his eighteen months in office. Bad luck to have to manage a once-in-a-century pandemic. More bad luck to have to manage a once-in-a-century self-inflicted wound – Brexit. Still, Johnson’s leadership has been pockmarked by vacillation and vainglory. Notwithstanding the 11th hour deal on Brexit between the United Kingdom and the European Union, Johnson remains under assault.

France is another liberal democracy in which the leader has struggled. In this case President Emmanuel Macron, who only a few years ago was hailed as a leader for our times: young and attractive, whip smart and broadly educated, widely experienced and, especially, a bridge-builder between the deeply entrenched French left and the hardcore French right. But the system has chewed him up too. Among his many headaches his battle against Islamic extremism: it has pushed him further to the right than anyone, likely including Macron himself, anticipated.        

Germany has been, under the near-exemplary 15-year leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, an exception to the general rule. It has been a bastion of good leadership in a liberal democracy during an era in which such a feat was becoming alarmingly anomalous. However, in less than a year she will have vacated her post. And even she will bestow on her successor a major problem: a resurgence of far-right extremism that is “horrifying a country” that has prided itself on dealing honestly with its murderous past.*

About the United States under President Donald Trump there is little that has not already been said – including by me. Suffice to say here that his leadership continues even during his waning days in office to be catastrophically bad. The likelihood that he will have survived four full years in the White House is testimony then not only to the fact that leadership in liberal democracies is under stress – but also to the fact that we have no idea whatsoever what to do about it.

Bad leadership and followership remain a social disease for which we have no cure. Good leadership and followership in liberal democracies remain a challenge the mid-twentieth-first century has yet to meet.

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*New York Times, December 21, 2020

America’s experience with President Donald Trump has demonstrated yet again how miserably ill-prepared we are to push from their perch leaders who are bad. Leaders who have shown no capacity for leading either wisely or well. Given this inability to protect ourselves against leaders like these we rely on systems to save us. For example, we have depended on regular presidential elections to replace presidents who are bad with presidents who are good or, at least, better.   

From time to time, however, the system is revealed as inadequate to the task. It is widely agreed, for instance, that the electoral college is no way to pick a president – that it should be eliminated in favor of a direct popular vote. Trouble is the electoral college is deeply entrenched. It goes back to the beginning of the Republic, and strong political interests defend it no matter its deficits.

A different matter is the approximately eleven-week stretch between the day American presidents are elected and the day they are inaugurated. Inauguration day used to be even later – originally it was in March. But in 1933 it was moved to January 20, where it has stayed ever since.

Most countries have no such yawning gap. In most countries newly elected leaders take office within a couple of weeks – in Great Britain it is the next day. Still, the United States persists in maintaining its antiquated system, in which the length of time between casting a vote and implementing that vote is atypically long.

The reason given for the extended transition is to ensure it will be smooth. For the outgoing administration to have sufficient time to show the incoming administration how to run the railroad. Well, in the heyday of the railroad this might have made sense. Now it no longer does. In fact, as the current transition has evidenced, the risks of prolonging the time of the changeover are considerable.

I need not spell out here why this year’s transition from one administration to the next has been especially deleterious. The real point in any case is a larger one. It is that given how miserably bad we are at removing bad leaders, whatever reasonable measures we can take to shore up our systemic defenses against them ought to be implemented.     

America’s President Donald Trump has done Russia’s President Vladimir Putin several favors. The biggest of these is to distract the American people from Putin’s aggressions and transgressions. Americans have spent the last four years so obsessed with Trump that Putin has been left alone, largely free to do what he pleased when he pleased. Every now and then the Europeans scream and yell, but without American muscle to back them up they remain powerless to stop the Russian bear from behaving badly.

Recent examples:

• The just revealed SolarWinds supply chain attack was by all accounts among the most significant breaches of U.S. government agencies ever. While the precise scope and nature of the hack remains unclear, what is clear is that departments such as Treasury, State, and Commerce were among those compromised, along with the Pentagon. What seems similarly clear – though not yet officially confirmed – is that the attackers were Russian. The group thought to be responsible is known as “Cozy Bear.” It is associated with Russian intelligence, and known to have carried out the 2016 attack against the Democratic National Committee.  

• The evidence that Russian agents were responsible for executing the murderous attack against Aleksei Navalny, by far Russia’s best-known dissident and for years a serious thorn in Putin’s side, continues to accumulate. This week the New York Times reported a research group specializing in open-source investigations had found that “officers from a secret spy unit with expertise in poisonous substances” had trailed Navalny for years and “were nearby at the time he was exposed to a highly toxic nerve agent that almost killed him last summer.” No great surprise here – Russian agents have long been known for poisoning Putin’s political opponents. (Navalny nearly died but did not. He continues however still to recover in Germany.) Still, attention must be paid.

• At home Putin is tightening the screws on those who show signs of refusing to fall into line. Given his level of popularity is down from what it was, and given intermittent signs of growing domestic restiveness, and given the resistance movements in other countries, Putin is clearly getting edgy – nervous lest the opposition get out of hand. To preclude this possibility his government is proposing a slew of new laws, all targeted at those who might have the temerity to take him on ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections. As one observer put it, a woman associated with Human Rights Watch, the proposed new laws would “enable the government to designate individuals as foreign agents, …basically barring them from participating in elections.” She continued, “The government clearly aims to stifle civil society.”    

Any one of these three recent developments should be anathema to Americans – the chief executive above all. But as is well known by now – though the reasons conspicuously are not – this American president has given that Russian president a pass.

My hope is those days are over. Even if the next administration does nothing, it damn straight can say something.

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*”Putin Patrol” pieces have been featured regularly on this post for years.

The word “follower” has always been problematic. Though it is the obvious antonym of “leader,” there are at least two reasons for the disdain in which the word, “follower,” continues to be held. First, followers are usually associated with weakness and passivity. “Leaders” suggest strength and success; “followers” the opposite. If not failure exactly, then certainly not achievement or accomplishment. Second, followers do not always follow. Sometimes they refuse to go along with what their leaders want and intend.

I have tried to get around both these problems by defining followers simply by rank. Followers are subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than do their superiors and who therefore usually, but not invariably, fall into line. *

The list below is in keeping with this definition. The list is not composed of followers as they are usually conceived. But each of these people had far less power, authority, and influence than did their leader, in this case the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Given that millions of Americans did and still do support Trump – on November 3^rd he received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Joe Biden – and given that the Republican political elite followed the president effectively in lockstep, it has been inordinately difficult, especially obviously for Republicans, to stand up to his powerful persona. To resist saying and doing exacty what Trump wanted and intended. But, some people, not many people, hardly any people, but some people did. This then is a select list of followers, each a Republican, who had less power, influence, and authority than the chief executive, but who nevertheless had the guts to speak truth to power – even at personal, professional, and political risk.

• Rick Bright – Bright is a physician and a whistleblower. It was Bright more than any other single scientist in the Trump administration who dared to defy not only his immediate superiors but the entire Trump administration. In a May 2020 formal whistleblower complaint Bright alleged that he was not only ignored but demoted for trying to call attention to the danger posed by the new coronavirus which, even by then, had morphed into a public health crisis. In a theatrical twist, Dr. Bright has since been named by President-elect Joe Biden to be a member of his coronavirus advisory board.

• Brad Raffensberger – He is Georgia’s Republican secretary of state – the one who had the temerity publicly to insist that his state’s vote for Joe Biden was legal and binding because it was accurate and complete. For his troubles he was asked by his fellow Georgians, and his fellow Republicans, Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, to resign. And, for his troubles, he was accused by the administration of committing fraud, and threatened with death by some in his state who had been incited and inflamed by Trump’s baseless allegations.

• Mitt Romney – He has all the blessings in the world, such as piles of money and a large, loving family. Moreover, his seat as senator from the state of Utah is secure. Still, Romney was the only Republican senator, the only one, who had the independence not to acquit President Donald Trump of both charges for which he was impeached. Romney said he broke with his party to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power because he believed that Trump was guilty and that he should, therefore, be “removed from office.” Romney’s vote made him a unique figure in American history. Never previously in American history has a senator voted to remove from office a president from his own party.

• Gabriel Sterling – Sterling is on the list not just for what he said but for how he said it. His oratory was brilliant, passionate, memorable. “This has all gone too far,” he said, his voice quaking with passion and emotion. “It has to stop.” Sterling is another Republican, and another election official from the state of Georgia. His anger and upset were at the violence that Trump had encouraged, if not explicitly then implicitly. All in the service of the president’s ego, an ego so fragile it cannot cope with humiliation or diminishment of any kind. “Mr. President,” said, Sterling, “Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed. And it’s not right.”

• Aaron Van Langevelde – His is not a name etched in your memory? Really? Well, maybe it should be – for it is a name we should note. It belongs on this honor role of people with far less power, authority, and influence than the American president who nevertheless were brave and bold enough to take on him and his Republican toadies and lackies. Van Langveld works for Republicans in the Michigan statehouse. He is a young lawyer who is active on behalf of his party, but who defied his party by voting to certify the results of the presidential election in Michigan, in which Trump lost to Biden by more than 154,000 votes. This should not be regarded an act of exceptional political courage. But in this political climate it is. For example, the other Republican on the four-person board abstained on the final vote – demonstrating the sort of cowardice the president has come not only to demand but expect.

Sad. This list is sad – a sad reflection on the state of the nation.

But … today is December 12th. 2021 beckons!

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*The definition is in my book, Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (Harvard Business School Press, 2008).

Click on the link to the Cambridge University Press site below and you’ll access an article I wrote (with Todd Pittinsky) – of above title – that is tied to our recent book, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy.

Hillary Clinton – Leader Non Grata

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci has been Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for over 36 years. Twice over during his atypically long tenure he played a particularly prominent part in a health care crisis.

The first was in the 1980s when, in response to the reasonable raging of legendary gay rights activist Larry Kramer, Fauci was instrumental in getting the government, in collaboration with big pharma, to develop and distribute drugs to combat AIDS. And the second was, of course, during the last year, when as director of NIAID, and as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Fauci became the nation’s most visible and widely trusted health care expert. For most of 2020, as America’s experience of the pandemic went from bad to far worse, it was Fauci more than anyone else who represented the American medical establishment.

Though initially he was in Donald Trump’s good graces, as spring turned into summer Fauci was effectively exiled from the White House. The president no longer wanted to hear what he had to say.  But this week Fauci was brought in from the cold – not by the incumbent president but by the president-elect. Joe Biden asked Fauci to be his chief medical adviser – an offer that Fauci, by his own testimony, accepted “on the spot.”

But is Dr. Fauci the hero that he has been made out to be? Was he the leader that we needed in winter and spring of 2020, when we should have been warned over and over again, if not by Trump then by others in his administration, especially health care professionals, of the dangers that lay ahead if Covid-19 got out of hand? I would argue no. I would argue that Fauci – like other medical bureaucrats, such as Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – was far too passive and far too pliant to play the part of Paul Revere. As an expert in infectious disease Fauci should have known better than to tell us early in the year that there was no reason for us not to travel – and that there was no reason for us to wear a mask. Additionally Fauci should have known better than to stand by silently as the president lied to the nation about the pernicious threat that was Covid-19 – as when he promised the American people the virus would “just disappear.”

Fauci became somewhat more forthright, somewhat more direct as the months dragged on and the pandemic got worse. But by then it was not only too little but too late – Fauci had been too careful, cautious, and conservative for too long. By then many millions of Americans were no longer able or, better, willing to hear his admonitions or recommendations. By playing the part of Trump’s good solder during the early months of the year Fauci failed to be what we needed him to be – a leader in health care, not a follower.         

What should Fauci have done instead of what he did? He knew or he thought he did that if he refused to follow where Trump led in the months of, say, February, March, and April, he would have been fired. To which I would reply – so what? Fauci has anyway clung to his position for far too long. No leader should ever remain in a post for as long as he already has. Moreover, given that he was reporting to a leader who was bad, as incompetent as unethical, one could argue, and I do, that it was Fauci’s moral responsibility not only to speak truth to power but to shout truth to power. Fauci though is a gentleman of the old school. He did not have it in him to do what he needed to do – to break rank. Time for fresh blood.

For a panel discussion – yes, I was a member of the panel – on this subject at the Global Peter Drucker Forum 2020, click on the YouTube link below.

Warning: Discussion runs for more than one hour!

The president of the United States has gone off the rails. I mean seriously.

All along have been doubts about his mental health. In 2017 was an edited volume titled, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, in which 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessed his stability. They warned that Trump was unfit for duty – unfit to be president of the United States.

Their conclusion was based on observations of behaviors that became the more obvious the longer he was in the White House. They included but were not limited to: engaging in angry outbursts; lying habitually, chronically; disparaging and demeaning opponents; praising tyrants and other authoritarians; failing to evidence any empathy; encouraging violence certainly implicitly; being indifferent to governance; wildly exaggerating his own achievements; demanding tireless praise and expressions of admiration; and bullying both online and in person.    

In 2020 Donald Trump’s niece, herself a psychologist, came out with a book, Too Much and Never Enough, that had a similar message. Based on knowing her uncle as long and well as she did, in addition to watching his performance as president, Mary Trump concluded that his “pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests.”

Donald Trump’s behaviors since he lost the presidential election provide still further confirmation of what years ago was diagnosed. His relentless denial of electoral reality; his relentless refusal to pay attention to the pandemic, and his relentless raging against anyone who is other than a servile sycophant, is further evidence if any were needed that he is mentally, psychologically, unfit to be chief executive. An excellent if unsettling account of the president’s responses to his defeat is an article in the Washington Post, “20 Days of Fantasy and Failure.” Among its many revealing lines is this one: “Sequestered in the White House and brooding out of public view after his election defeat, rageful and at times delirious in a torrent of private conversations, Trump was, in the telling of one close advisor, like Mad King George, muttering, ‘I won. I won. I won.'”*

No news here really. Nor is it news that we the people continue to put up with Trump – and that tens of millions of us continue strongly to support him.  What only time will tell though is whether this moment – the four years during which Trump was in the White House – is an aberration. Or whether, instead, it is in indicator. An indicator of America not just in the present but in the future.  

Those among us who think Trump the worst president in American history heaved a deep sigh of relief when Biden beat him at the polls. But our relief was premature. It will take one more presidential cycle, or even two, to confirm that Trump was an outlier.

Imagine yourself a European politician, one whose country has been a member of the NATO alliance since it was founded. This would mean that for more than 70 years your country’s foreign policy was based on the belief that the United States was an ally. An ally whose values mirrored your own, an ally that was dependable, reliable, predictable. But along comes Trump, a president whose values were other than yours, a president who had turned America into an ally that was, or seemed at least undependable, unreliable, and unpredictable.

Do you – as this hypothetical European politician – base your country’s present foreign policy on the assumption that Trump was an exception to the American rule? Or do you base it on the assumption that he was a harbinger of America’s future? Or do you hedge your bets – believing you cannot not know what the United States will look like, will be like, ten or even five years hence?   

The questions apply of course not just to our allies but to ourselves. The deep concerns raised by Trump’s tenure as president will not, should not, must not vanish just because he does. His time in the White House has revealed frightening fissures in America’s political system. We would do well to address them – very well.

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*https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-overturn/2020/11/28/34f45226-2f47-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html