Author: Barbara

Peter Salovey is the president of Yale University. We can assume then that he is smart not stupid. Still, when he was interviewed recently about leadership, he sounded more bland and boring than brilliant and different.*

Salovey sampler:
• “The first task of a responsive and responsible leader is to recognize that many issues are not bipolar – not black and white.”
• “Responsive leadership involves not only talking to people like ourselves, but also having a particular sensitivity to people who are not like ourselves.”
• “In some ways, responsibility is at the core of leadership. Irresponsible leadership can cause great, great harm.”

This raises the question of why Salovey’s responses to questions about leadership were so unsatisfying. Here three answers: 1) because he was altogether general and not at all specific; 2) because he spoke in the abstract, devoid of the context within which he led, that is, Yale; and 3) because he was in every way conventional and correct – politically correct.

Word to the wise: if you’re president of a great university and you know you’re going to be interviewed about leadership, read up on it. Read Plato, say, or Freud, or Hannah Arendt.

—————————–
* Q & A, Peter Salovey, Yale Alumni Magazine, March/April 2017.

In my 2012 book, The End of Leadership, I wrote:

Alexei Navalny is a sign of the times. Navalny is a lawyer by training, based in Moscow, whose website reaches between one and two million people a day. While his website was originally intended to expose corruption in business, more recently he has exposed corruption in government – sometimes to great effect…. [But] caution is in order. Putin shows his enemies no mercy…. [Still] because the levels of fraud, bribery, and outright theft in Russia are so famously high, Navalny has had some leeway. [Moreover] by now he has a network in place. If anything happens to him, his work will continue.

And so it has – his work has continued. And so, remarkably, has he – he has continued. Five years later, Navalny remains at the forefront of Russian dissent, arrested again this weekend for spearheading the largest wave of unsanctioned protests in Russia since 2012. This weekend’s protests were, moreover, not only in Moscow, but in hundreds of towns and cities across Russia, from Vladivostok in the East to the so-called window on the West, St. Petersburg. Astonishing!

Navalny’s willingness to disobey authority, and thereby put his life at risk, is singular. He has repeatedly been hauled into court. Employees of his Anti-Corruption Foundation have been arrested and their offices ransacked. And he is regularly denounced by the Kremlin as a widely-reviled nuisance and provocateur. All this in a climate in which Putin’s political opponents incline to be murdered or otherwise dispatched.

Notwithstanding the threats against him, Navalny is openly charging Putin’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, with corruption. Additionally, Navalny has already declared that in the 2018 Russian election, he will run against Putin for president. This is not, then, a time to celebrate anything – not even signs of Russian resistance to overweening power and deep-seated corruption. But, it is impossible not to be struck by one man’s courage against overwhelming odds – and to wish him safekeeping. Brave, brave leader along with brave, brave followers – more than one thousand of whom on Sunday were taken into custody.

This week we learned that President Barack Obama bequeathed to President Donald Trump two Big Things. The first was a new norm: health care in America is not a privilege, it is a right. The second is Putin reborn: Russian President Vladimir Putin reborn as an international menace, no longer an international nonentity.

What this means for Obama is that his record is mixed. He will go down in history as the president who expanded our conception of what is owed every American – basic health care. And he will go down in history as the president who enabled a thug to reclaim what he regarded as Russia’s rightful place of power in world affairs.

What this means for Trump is that he is shackled in ways that he never imagined. He never imagined how powerful the idea that no one should go broke on account of being ill. And he never imagined how Machiavellian his putative pal in the Kremlin, who went on to haunt rather than help him.

The history of Obama’s time in the White House has yet to be written. But I am betting that America’s forty-fourth president will be credited with expanding national health care. And I am betting that America’s forty-fourth president will be faulted for letting a rat in the tent. His legacy to Trump is, in any case, clear. Not one albatross around his neck, but two.

When Donald Trump left his popular and long running television hit, “The Apprentice,” I had no idea that he was planning to take his show on the road. To the White House. But by appointing Rex Tillerson Secretary of State he selected a man without a prayer of success in his post absent a rigorous apprenticeship.

• Tillerson has worked at Exxon, only at Exxon, for over forty years.
• Tillerson has no political or government experience.
• Tillerson has no foreign policy experience.
• Tillerson has admitted he did not want to be Secretary of State.
• Tillerson has admitted his wife talked him into being Secretary of State.
• Tillerson has a history of being chummy with Russia.
• Tillerson has held not a single press conference since being Secretary of State.
• Tillerson has chosen to limit the press “pool” to a single individual – this during his recent trip to Asia.
• Tillerson has been systematically excluded by his boss from top foreign policy meetings.
• Tillerson’s boss has decided that the budget for the Secretary’s bailiwick, the State Department, should be slashed by more than 30 percent.
• Tillerson has announced that he would not in the month of April travel to Brussels to meet with NATO foreign ministers.
• Tillerson hs announced that he would in the month of April travel to Moscow to meet with top ranking Russian officials.

Tillerson’s decision to bag Brussels in favor of Moscow was seen as so outlandish and outrageous – Former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, said it had to be “fake news” – it might yet be revoked. Still, if Rex were a contestant on “The Apprentice” rather than our real-life Secretary of State, and if Donald were host of “The Apprentice rather than our real-life President, weeks ago the latter would have told the former, “You’re fired.”

We knew with near certainty that when he appeared yesterday before Congress, FBI Director James Comey would dismiss Donald Trump’s claim to have been wiretapped by Barack Obama. What we did not know was that Comey would state so confidently, so baldly, that the FBI was investigating possible collusion during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump’s team and Putin’s minions. Additionally, we sure as hell did not know that this investigation has been ongoing since last July.

Flabbergasting! Mind-blowing! Dumbfounding!

We must never, ever lose the capacity to be morally outraged by a leader clearly guilty of egregious wrongdoing. Even if nothing material ultimately comes of the FBI’s investigation – an outcome more unlikely than likely – the fact that the president of the United States blithely, falsely accused his predecessor of a felony is, of itself, sufficient to dismiss the nation’s chief executive as sane and serious.

Which brings us to this question: what to do now? Let’s be clear here. Any sort of collusion with the Russians would make Watergate look like child’s play. So, how to respond in real time to the story unfolding before us? Break the cast of characters into groups and the magnitude of our collective task becomes clear. Ten to start:

• Republicans
• Democrats
• President’s cabinet
• President’s advisers
• President’s spokespersons
• Intelligence community
• Business community
• Political activists
• Press
• The rest – the American people

Last I looked America was still a democracy. This means that no group of followers will ultimately matter more than the last – the American people. So… take heart! The percent of Americans who approve of Trump’s performance as president has dropped to an historically low 37 percent – this from a poll taken before Comey dropped his bombshell.

It’s good she has many men in her life. Not only a husband but many colleagues, other leaders at home and abroad, who manifestly are male and who treat her well. For if Angela Merkel had to rely for personal or political sustenance from a man like Donald Trump, she would wither.

The most telling moment of their Friday summit was the two of them sitting alongside, their chairs close together, when the German Chancellor asked the American president if he wanted to shake hands for the benefit of the cameras. He did not respond – or even look at the woman immediately to his right.

Later in the day Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, explained away, or tried to, the president’s remarkable rudeness by saying that he did not hear Merkel’s question. No matter. For even if he heard not a word, his body language gave him away. Staring stony-faced and straight ahead while she leaned in and proffered her hand – you can see it on youtube – was as cold a shoulder as any eminent host might give an eminent guest.

Good for Merkel. She did what she could under the circumstance. Turned out the president was not only outmatched but outclassed.

When Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel meets later today with President Donald Trump, she will for the first time come face to face with her absolute opposite.

• Merkel is modest. Trump is bombastic.
• Merkel is pragmatic. Trump is dramatic.
• Merkel is consistent. Trump is mercurial.
• Merkel is an internationalist. Trump is a nationalist.
• Merkel is a Europeanist. Trump is an America firster.
• Merkel is a steadier. Trump is a disrupter.
• Merkel is incremental. Trump is radical.
• Merkel is a collaborator. Trump is a loner.
• Merkel is a conflict avoider. Trump is a conflict trigger.
• Merkel came of age in East Germany, in a communist system. Trump came of age in New York, in a capitalist system.
• Merkel’s personal history includes a father who was a ruminative pastor. Trump’s personal history includes a father who was an aggressive developer.

Notwithstanding the extreme differences between them, and notwithstanding Trump’s charge that Merkel was “ruining Germany” (because of her liberal immigration policy), the Chancellor will do what she can to smooth relations between her and the American president. Which is to say between the United States and Germany, between the United States and the European Union, and between the United States and NATO.

America’s chief executive is not now leader of the liberal world order. His immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, largely eschewed the task, thereby contributing to the president’s declining role on the global stage. Trump, in turn, is completely unequipped to play the part. His experience in foreign policy approximates zero. His expertise in foreign policy approximates zero. And his commitment to the Department of State and, apparently, to his Secretary of State also approximate zero. Moreover, to the degree that Trump has a coherent foreign policy, he is a deviant. As Walter Russell Mead writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “For the first time in 70 years, the American people have elected a president who disparages the policies, ideas, and institutions at the heart of post war U.S. foreign policy.”

Ergo the leader of the liberal world order: Angela Merkel. Is there anyone else to fill the post? If so, the name escapes me. Of course, Merkel has her own pile of problems: Russia’s belligerence, Turkey’s outrageousness, Britain’s recalcitrance, France’s electoral uncertainty, Italy’s financial instability, Greece’s financial crisis, terrorists, refugees. Not to speak of her domestic concerns, which, politically, are more considerable now than they were. Until recently Merkel was a shoo-in for a fourth term as Chancellor. But, again, largely because of her policy on immigration, her popularity is diminished and her electoral prospects less assured.

Still, for the moment Merkel is on a mission. She is in the United States to make peace with the president and, in so far as she possibly can, to get his support for that which she has long held dear, the European project. A Europe that is centrist – and more united than divided.

Charles Blow writes a twice weekly column for The New York Times. He is African American. He is bisexual. His political views are reliably liberal or even progressive. He is strongly and passionately opinionated. And he is personally revelatory. In 2015 he published a searing memoir – Fire Shut Up in My Bones – about coming of age as a black boy in the deep south.

I provide these biographical details to differentiate Blow from those about whom I wrote in my last three blogs – David Remnick, Philip Roth, and David Letterman – and to provide context. Blow has been at war with Trump all along. Blow is reliably quick to take on those who do not share his liberal views. Blow is a columnist whose task is to write what he thinks. And Blow represents demographics that on more than one count would incline to the left, not to the right.

All this said, Blow brings to his bias a fury and fierceness that take your breath away. His rage is on the page – but it is palpable.

Charles Blow on Donald Trump:

We have now passed the 50-day mark of the Donald Trump administration and one things is clear: There is no new Trump.

That’s who Trump is. America elected a parasite.*

——————————————————————–
“Trump and the Parasitic Presidency,” New York Times, March 13, 2017.

David Letterman has become a grizzled old man – or, at least, that’s how he presents himself two years after leaving late night TV. Now, when he deigns to appear before a camera, he sports an enormous gray beard, a furrowed face, and a cantankerous expression or maybe a half-grin, all more suited to the lair in which he mostly hibernates than to the public platform of a public figure.

For over thirty years Letterman belonged to a very small, special elite – the elite of nighttime talk show hosts who year after year sufficiently amuse us, provoke us, engage us, to preside night after night over a talk fest in which we vicariously participate. Like all the best late night hosts, Letterman carved out a special niche. He was more ironic than witty, more creative than reflective, more difficult than ingratiating, more distant than intimate, more intellectual than visceral, more cool than hot.

Letterman was never particularly political. More precisely, he was a little bit political. But not a lot political. He was not, for example, like Jon Stewart who built his great reputation on skewering the ostensibly high and mighty, or like Steven Colbert, who in his new incarnation finally hit the mother lode, discovering in the presidency of Donald Trump an endless procession of occasions on which to make fun. No, David Letterman was not like them. He was too removed from the daily fray, too chill to send through the medium of television a consistent political message.

Now though things are different. Now Letterman – like David Remnick and Philip Roth* – is so angered and agitated he declared war.

David Letterman on Donald Trump:

Trump’s the president and he can lie about anything, from the time he wakes up to what he has for lunch and he’s still the president. I don’t get that. I’m tired of people being bewildered about everything he says: ‘I can’t believe he said that.’ We gotta stop that and, instead, figure out ways to protect ourselves from him. We know he’s crazy. We gotta take care of ourselves here now.

That press conference that [Trump] held berating the news media? I mean, how do you build a dictatorship? First, you undermine the press: ‘The only truth you’re going to hear is from me.’ And he hires the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Steve Bannon, to be his little buddy. Bannon looks like a guy who goes to lunch, gets drunk, and comes back to the office…. How is a white supremacist the chief adviser to our president? Did anybody look that guy up?”

When he was asked if comedians or late night talk show hosts should take on Donald Trump, this was Letterman’s reply. “I think you have an obligation.”**

—————————————–
*See my two blogs immediately previous.
** David Marchese, “David Letterman in Conversation,” New York, March 6-19, 2017.

There are those – me among them – who consider Philip Roth the greatest living American writer. Primarily a novelist, Roth has also been, episodically, un homme engage. A man engaged in the life of his times – the political life of his times. He has, in other words, not shied from making known his political views, and during the Cold War, and for a time thereafter, he was deeply involved in the culture wars that then characterized East Europe.

But, for most of his life Roth has done little other than write. He has led something of a solitary existence, not antisocial exactly, but nevertheless sealing himself away for years on end in rural Connecticut, so that he and his pen could be left in piece. Not for him the quotidian habits of a family man. He was the quintessential writer.

I say “was” because several years ago, Roth announced that he was hanging it up. He was done. He would write no more. I have no idea if this is true or not. For all I know Roth is continuing, in private, in secret, furiously to practice his craft. But likely as not, at about 80 years of age (he is now almost 84), he felt finished, he felt that his best work was behind him, and so he stopped.

His voice has, however, not been stilled. Though he is as he has always been – out of the public eye – he is not mute. President Donald Trump has so stirred Roth that Roth has been stirred to make himself heard.

“I was born in 1933, the year that F. D. R. was inaugurated. He was President until I was twelve years old. I’ve been a Roosevelt Democrat ever since. I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency….

As for how Trump threatens us, I would say that, like the anxious and fear-ridden families in my book [he refers here to his novel “The Plot Against America”], what is most terrifying is that he makes any and everything possible, including, of course, the nuclear catastrophe.”*
————————————————————————–

*From an exchange with Judith Thurman, in The New Yorker, January 20, 2017.