A former head of the CIA, the sane and steady four-star Air Force General Michael Hayden, recently went on record as predicting that in less than four years North Korea will have the means to destroy Seattle. “I really do think,” he said, “it is very likely that by the end of Mr. Trump’s first term, the North Koreans will be able to reach Settle with a nuclear weapon on board an indigenously produced intercontinental ballistic missile.”

Hayden’s grim view of North Korea’s ambitious, relentless march to being a nuclear power is in keeping with that of other experts. While Graham Allison, director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, is somewhat less worried that North Korea will launch a nuclear-tipped missile at a major American city, he is somewhat more worried that it will sell a nuclear warhead (or nuclear material) to a group capable of smuggling a bomb into the U.S. The point is that many if not most foreign policy experts consider North Korea the single greatest threat to America’s national security.

How to stop North Korea from presenting such a clear and present danger? By virtually every account, there is only one way that falls short of military action. By getting China to help us. By getting China to exert diplomatic, economic, even military pressure on North Korea to cease and desist from posing an extreme, even existential threat to the American homeland.

There’s just one small problem. President Obama has failed to move the needle even a whisker on this one. And president-elect Trump seems determined to engage China in what many of our most sober observers consider dangerous provocations. Maybe Trump will succeed where Obama failed. Maybe China will react to Trump’s tough guy approach in a way that works in America’s favor. Maybe Trump’s talk with the leader of Taiwan will prove not a foolish gaffe but a fresh start. Maybe.

The risks in any case are high. Trump focuses and even fixates on economic competition with China – on what he claims is currency manipulation, unfair competition, and excessive taxing of U.S. imports. But the far, far greater challenge for the U.S.-China relationship is reaching an understanding on what to do about North Korea.

The situation will soon become untenable. No American leader – not civilian or military – can permit North Korea to get to the point of being able to launch a nuclear attack on American soil. But few American leaders – civilian or military – are willing to say out loud how dire and direct the threat. Which is precisely why, if leaders don’t get it sooner rather than later, if they don’t act to mitigate the threat, including leaders at the state and local levels, followers, ordinary people, will have to start beating the drum. Beating the drum slowly but steadily – and increasingly loudly.

Let me put it this way. If I lived in Seattle, I would take General Hayden’s warning seriously – very, very seriously. Failing visible progress on this issue in, say, six months, I would buy me a drum.

Yahya Jammeh, who ruled Gambia for 22 years, has agreed to step down after being defeated in yesterday’s presidential election. The winner of the election was Adama Barrow. He is a property developer who has never before held political office in his life.

Sound familiar?

Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister of Italy, said today that he would resign after voters rejected his proposed constitutional changes. Renzi’s most vocal opponent in the national referendum was Beppe Grillo, leader of the anti-establishment, populist Five Star Movement. Before he became a political activist, Grillo was a comedic actor turned popular blogger.

Sound familiar?

Nancy Pelosi is the highest ranking and most consistently successful female politician in American history. Trouble is that she, like so many of her male counterparts, does not know when to let go. Or does know when to let go but can’t stand to let go. Power being not so much, as Henry Kissinger famously said, the ultimate aphrodisiac, as the ultimate addiction. Once you taste it you crave it.

During her long, illustrious career, Pelosi has been Speaker of the House of Representatives and Minority Leader. But, recently, in her capacity as Minority Leader she presided over an electoral debacle. Come January the Republicans will control not only the presidency, but both the House and the Senate, and two out of every three governorships. Bad – bad leadership.

Which is precisely why most everyone who has had a leadership role in the Democratic Party should resign – for they have failed. Under their leadership the party has suffered a string of stinging losses, from which it will take years to recover. For Pelosi this should be a no-brainer. She has clung to her leadership role for well over a decade, she is long past retirement age, and though once she was excellent, now she is not. Now she is unable creatively, dynamically, effectively, to lead.

Too many people hang on for too long. If Pelosi wants to leave with her reputation intact instead of in tatters, she must get out sooner not later.

One of the most iconic scenes in American film history is in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 black comedy, “Network.” Peter Finch stars as Howard Beale, a network news anchor who’s about to be canned because of declining ratings. Beale starts to unravel while he’s on the air. He becomes visibly unhinged, screaming at his viewing audience, urging them to do what he’s doing – to shout at the top of their lungs, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

The line came to mind while reading today’s New York Times, which testified yet again not only to how furious people are, but to how hellbent they are on fighting people in positions of authority.

Three examples:

• South Koreans, fed up with their president, Park Geun-hye, have taken to the streets in the hundreds of thousands to protest her refusal to respond to charges of corruption and influence peddling. South Korea’s worst political crisis in decades shows no signs of abating. Ms. Park remains defiant. The people remain defiant as well – demanding that she either resign or be impeached.
• The mayors of several of America’s largest cities have vowed to fight any order to deport illegal immigrants, even if instructed by the federal government to do so. Los Angeles’s Eric Garcetti, Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, and New York’s Bill de Blasio, among others, have all pledged to fight the feds on this, even if it means losing millions of dollars in federal assistance.
• After decades of staying silent, at least six former English soccer players have come forward with accusations of sexual abuse by coaches affiliated with England’s Football Association. More than twenty other players have similarly stepped up, though anonymously. After a couple of weeks of doing nothing the Football Association concluded it had no choice but to announce it would investigate the claims. It appointed a lawyer experienced in such matters to pursue the case.

Who knew Howard Beale was forty years ahead of his time?!

I started blogging four years ago. Since then I have written regularly about Vladimir Putin.

Why? Three reasons. First, my master’s degree is in Russian and East European Studies, and old habits die hard. Second, for years I thought that Mitt Romney had a point when he declared Russia our “#1 geopolitical foe.” (Though North Korea presents a much greater military threat.) Third, Putin is the exception that proves the rule: he is a strong leader, a change agent at home and especially abroad, during a time when having a strong impact is rare.

What Putin has accomplished in the last four years is breathtaking! He remains in complete control of Russia, having in one or another way destroyed or muted his political opposition. He has changed the map of Europe by seizing Crimea and declaring it a fait accompli. He has intervened in Ukraine, precluding most Ukrainians from doing what they wanted to do, move closer to the West. He has thumbed his nose at Europe, watching with unmitigated pleasure as the European Union, the greatest diplomatic achievement of the last 70 years, has started to unravel – and watching with unmitigated pleasure as the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) comes under threat. He has inserted and asserted Russia’s military presence in the Middle East, in strong support of his client, Syria’s ruthless, murderous president, Bashar al-Assad. And he has hinted at further military adventure in, say, Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. He has, in sum, been devilishly effective in transforming his nationalist, revisionist, revanchist, and militarist fantasies into realities.

Oh…one more thing. There is growing evidence that Putin had a hand in the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States. Trump his unwavering admirer. Trump his presumed pal. Trump, whose ideologies, policies, and proclivities more closely mirror Putin’s than any presidential candidate in American history.

In recent days The Washington Post chronicled “the successful effort by a hostile foreign power to manipulate public opinion before the vote.”* Scary stuff. During the campaign questions were raised about why Trump regularly praised President Putin, while refusing ever to censor him. Seems Trump knew what he was doing – in exchange Putin helped Trump win the White House. U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia did hack private e mail accounts, did forge a useful relationship with Wikileaks, did release fake news stories, did put its foot on the Democratic National Committee, and did echo and amplify right-wing web sites that portrayed Hillary Clinton as a “criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to shadowy global financiers.” **

As a student of bad leadership I long ago learned carefully to clarify what I mean when I say that a leader is bad. The distinction is between being ethical and being effective. Which is precisely why in some ways Putin is a bad leader. And in other ways Putin is a good leader.

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*https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americans-keep-looking-away-from-the-elections-most-alarming-story/2016/11/25/83533d3e-b0e2-11e6-8616-52b15787add0_story.html
** https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html

• For Barack Obama, who since the second Donald Trump was selected to succeed him has never been better as president.
• For Donald Trump, who since he became president-elect has shown faint signs of sense and sensibility.
• For Bernie Sanders, who will continue to fight the good fight.
• For Chuck Schumer, whose long, strong record as a leading Democrat and master of the Senate will serve his nation well.
• For Melinda Gates, who with every passing year further cements her status as a formidable philanthropic force.
• For American voters, on the safe assumption that most all were well-intended.
• For American institutions, built to bend while staying strong – so far.
• For the American landscape, simultaneously dangerous fragile and breathtakingly beautiful.
• For the Chicago Cubs, who won the World Series for the first time since 1908 – in a nail-biter of a game 7 no less.
• For Leonard Cohen – yes, he was Canadian and is recently deceased, but no matter – whose ravishing, immensely and invariably moving “Hallelujah,” will forever be an anthem.

Much has been written in recent months about the return of the strongman-leader. In many nations around the world leadership has reverted to personalized authoritarianism – to governments in which single individuals, invariably men, lead with an iron fist. Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, Philippines, Hungary – all are examples of countries that have become less free than they were because they have regressed to one-man rule. Moreover, followers, voters and nonvoters, in countries such as India, Japan, and now the United States have embraced leaders with a similar tendency to centralize power – notwithstanding the democracies within which, supposedly, they are situated.

A clear indicator that leader-power is being strengthened while follower-power is being weakened, is the rehabilitation of dead leaders famous for being authoritarian if not actually totalitarian. In Russia, for example, Stalin has been rehabilitated – brought out of the shadows back into the light. It is estimated that under Stalin some 20 million Soviet citizens perished. Notwithstanding, Stalin is being hailed once again as a strong leader who led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and stood up to the West during the Cold War. Last December Russia’s Communist Party ostentatiously honored Stalin’s birthday, celebrating him with flowers and speeches that testified to his “genius and talent.” All this, obviously, with blessings from above, that is, from President Vladimir Putin.

In China Mao Zedong has been rehabilitated. It has been estimated that under his Great Leap Forward some 45 million Chinese died. Notwithstanding, Mao’s reputation has been resurrected in the nation’s discourse, allowing him, in death, to reclaim his status as the single most important figure in the nearly 100-year history of the Chinese Communist Party. All this, again, with blessings from above, that is, from President Xi Jinping, who has taken to extolling Mao as the Party’s founding father, and embracing him as a symbol of nationalism and populism.

The most recent example of such a resurrection is in the Philippines. After twenty years in power, most as a corrupt and ruthless dictator shielded by martial law, Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in 1986. He fled to Hawaii, where he died three years later. Four years after that his remains were returned to the Philippines, to his hometown, where they have stayed ever since – until now. Now, last week, with the blessings of the mercurial and, yes, ruthless new president, Rodrigo Duterte, Marcos was given a surprise and very private hero’s funeral in the Philippines national cemetery. Why? For the same reason that Stalin’s reputation was rehabilitated – and Mao’s. It is to get the past to legitimize the present. It is to get dead strongmen to testify on behalf of live strongmen. It is to get authoritarian leadership to trump democratic leadership.

Richard Nixon anyone?

For years I have argued that the world was changing, that leaders were generally becoming weaker and followers, others, generally stronger. Since the 2016 presidential election, consequences of this shift have continued to crystallize.

I wrote in this space before about the dangers of those ostensible exemplars of democratic governance – referendums. As former Prime Minister David Cameron would be the first to testify, the results of recent referendums have become impossible for leaders to foretell or control. What’s now clear is that voting patterns more generally have become similarly impossible to foretell or control. What was so striking about the events of last week was less the outcome itself, than the shock of coming to understand, viscerally, intellectually, what the outcome was.

Perhaps the single most important lesson of this election is that people are refusing to be tamed. Refusing to play ball. Refusing to do what they are expected to do. Refusing to do what the leadership class would want them do. Refusing to conform to the patterns of the past. Refusing to be quiet and behave well. Refusing to be polite and well mannered. Refusing to refuse leaders who are impolite and ill mannered. Refusing to be politically correct. Refusing to adhere to traditional values.

Not all people, of course. I refer to many and sometimes most who feel that the liberal world order that dominated the international system for the last forty years slighted and shortchanged them. This group or these groups, usually described, occasionally decried, as working class populists and nationalists, have not until now had an outlet for their furies and frustrations. But, in Donald Trump they did. Americans in stunningly large numbers latched on to a bad-boy leader into whom they could pour all their anti-establishment angers. Why Trump in particular? Because he was anti-establishment himself. Because he was able, precisely because he was remarkably course and regularly obstreperous, to harness democratic means toward, what some strongly suspect, are antidemocratic ends.

This of course is the great fear – that democracy will lead to autocracy not only in the US but elsewhere in the world. The leader of the French right wing, Marie Le Pen, was quick to tweet a few days ago that some of Trump’s representatives had invited her to “work together.” And the principal architect of Britain’s Brexit vote, Nigel Farage, was similarly quick to be glimpsed in the corridors of New York’s Trump Tower.

Francis Fukuyama writes that the greatest challenge to liberal democracy comes not from the outside, from overtly authoritarian powers such as Russia and China, but from the inside. “In the US, Britain, Europe, and a host of other countries, the democratic part of the political system is rising up against the liberal part, and threatening to use its apparent legitimacy to rip apart the rules that have heretofore constrained behavior, anchoring an open and tolerant world.” *

Put in language that I use, excess follower-power is every bit as dangerous to democracy as excess leader-power.

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*”US Against the World,” Financial Times, November 12/13 2016.

I did not call this presidential election. A week ago I thought Hillary Clinton would become the next American president.

 

However, I did all along think it possible that Trump might win. To wit the following blog, which I originally posted 15 months ago, on August 20, 2015.

 

Who knew?!

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Imagine It – Melania as First Lady!

 

So far she’s been nearly invisible and entirely inaudible. But one of these days Melania Trump will emerge from behind her gilded curtain and then, well, just you wait! You think the press and the people have gone gaga over Trump now… once his wife is part of the picture the celebrity factor will be multiplied many times over.

 

Melania Trump is no bimbo found in the bulrushes. Before she married Trump – she is his third wife – she was a highly successful model. She has since become a businesswoman, and is involved in several charitable endeavors. But let’s get real: the insatiable interest in her will be not for her substance, but for her style. She is drop dead gorgeous and dresses to kill.

 

Melania would hardly be the first wife of a presidential candidate, or of a president, known not for what she says or does, but for how she looks. Most recently in our history was Jackie, Jacqueline Kennedy, a formidable political asset I decades ago dubbed a “Decoration.”

 

The first book I ever wrote – it was published in 1980 – was titled All the President’s Kin.  It made what at the time was an original argument: that for various reasons close members of president’s families – their parents, siblings, spouses and offspring – were becoming politically consequential.  I grouped the presidents’ kin into several different types, one of which was “Decoration” – one of whom was Jackie.

 

Decorations were defined as follows: Decorations make the president [or candidate] more attractive. They enhance the man, make him and his administration more glamourous – or at 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 exert its political impact.

 

Let me be clear. Typing Melania Trump a Decoration does not mean typing her a lightweight – any more than typing Jacqueline Kennedy a Decoration meant typing her a lightweight. All I am claiming is that physical beauty can be a political asset of considerable consequence.

 

Impossible to make much sense of what happened – President-elect Donald Trump – so soon after the fact.  But when the history of this moment is written, it will have to presume a systemic perspective. It will have to account not only for leaders, but also for followers, and for contexts.

This is a brief first pass.

Leaders

• Donald Trump. Sui generis. The American body politic has never seen anyone like him: a businessman and barker with zero political experience who, by dint of his outlandish, outrageous, and ferocious attacks on the status quo, was ultimately catapulted to the top of the greasy pole.
• Hillary Clinton. Sui generis – but only in so far as she was a woman playing in what up to now has been a man’s game. In every other way she was the opposite of the new and different. In fact, she was excessively familiar: wife of a husband who, for all his gifts, had years ago tarnished the nation’s highest office. And a longtime political player in her own right who, for all her gifts, had been tainted with charges of deception and corruption.
• Barack Obama. Preternaturally popular among the American people in the waning days of his presidency. Nevertheless, a black man in a sea of angry white voters – who, to boot, was responsible for the Affordable Care Act, “Obamacare,” which just weeks before the election jacked up premiums to the point where “affordable care” was anything but.
• Mike Pence. A superior political cipher. He looked the part. Sounded the part. And played the part – perfectly. Subsuming his own political persona to Donald Trump’s, Pence spent the last several months proving he was to the manor born – the vice president’s manor. He was loyal to fault, bereft of his own persona, and when called upon to perform did so by being beautifully bland, not a single gray hair on his carefully coiffed head ever out of place.
• Tim Kaine. The invisible man. Chosen by Hillary Clinton for a range of traits and characteristics, including being a Catholic, a pragmatist, and a speaker of Spanish. But, Kaine first disappointed, then disappeared. Never touted to full effect, once he lost the vice presidential debate to his Republican counterpart, he was hidden behind a scrim
• Paul Ryan. A grievous disappointment to those who once thought that he might be an exception to the general rule – that he might have the courage of his convictions. Clearly distrustful of his party’s nominee, possibly even repelled by him, Ryan chose to remain mute on the man, silent to a fault, straddling the wavering line between retaining a modicum of personal political independence and party loyalty.

 

Followers

• Angry and frustrated American voters. Angry at and frustrated by Washington – its perceived inability to fix what’s broke. Its perceived inability to improve our lot, repair our relations with each other and the rest of the world, and perform the most rudimentary of government functions, providing safety and security.
• Angry and frustrated American voters. Angry at and frustrated by the establishment, by the leadership class – its perceived corruption, collusion, deception, and inefficacy. The leadership class includes not just political leaders, but corporate leaders, educational leaders, religious leaders – you name it. Over fully four decades, the American people have judged leaders of all stripes increasingly harshly.
• Angry and frustrated American voters. Angry at and frustrated by others they perceive as outsiders. Angry at and frustrated by others they perceive as usurping. Angry and frustrated by others they perceive in ideological opposition. Angry and frustrated by others they perceive as being, in some way, un-American.
• Depressed and disappointed American voters. Depressed at and disappointed by the vanishing American Dream. The vague but palpable promise that they will be better off than their parents, and their children better off than they. The fantasy that America really is a shining city on a hill. The notion that America truly is an exception. The now constantly growing gap between what is imagined and what is real.
• Depressed and disappointed American voters. Depressed at and disappointed by their failure to make headway. Their failure since the 1970’s to shrink the distance between them and those more favorably situated. The growing gap between the haves-a-great-deal and the haves-much-less. The fear of being saddled with debt when young – and the fear of being broke when old. The fear of being displaced by technology, by robots, by artificial intelligence.
• Depressed and disappointed American voters. Depressed at and disappointed by the rapidity of changes in the culture as frightening as they are intimidating. Changes in what is permissible and what is not. Changes in attitudes and opinions that make out of political correctness what some perceive as a fetish. Changes in relations between those in positions of authority, particularly perhaps the police, and those who are not.
• Depressed and disappointed American voters. Depressed at and disappointed by their own deep divisions. By leaders’ inability to compromise in the interest of the general welfare. By our own inability to speak with and to each other in a way that is reliably civil. By our own continuing inability to find common ground on some of the most contentious of contemporary issues.

 

Contexts

• The global context – within which the U.S. is situated. Liberal democracies are running into trouble the world over. What happened yesterday in the US is not, in other words, unique. Countries such as France, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Austria, and Australia all have been dealing with growing tendencies to nationalism, nativism, and populism.
• The global context – within which the U.S. is situated. The shock hard on the heels of yesterday’s election is also not new. It’s similar to what happened just recently with Brexit, when the Brits were stunned to discover the morning after the night before that they had voted not to remain in the European Union, but to leave it.
• The global context – within which the US is situated. American voters perceive – correctly – that America’s position in the world has recently been weakened. Examples: We stood by and effectively did nothing while Russia seized Crimea, while Russia let loose bombs on Aleppo, and while Russia hacked into the e mails of the Democratic National Committee. We stood by and effectively did nothing while North Korea persisted an outlier, while further developing its nuclear arsenal. We stood by and effectively did nothing while Europe transformed from being relatively strong and united to being relatively weak and fractured.
• The domestic context. Media madness. Old media, new media, social media. Information saturation. Fractured, fractious, ceaseless discourse. Anonymity providing cover for cyber-bullying and foulmouthed bad-mouthing. Coarsening of the public discourse. Diminishing civic-mindedness. Further dividing the body politic by preaching to the choir.
• The domestic context. The color of money – big money. The impact of so much money in the hands of so few. Big money as American as motherhood and apple pie. Big money as power, and big money as influence. The infiltration of big money into near every corner of American life and the impact of big money on near every aspect of American life – money in business, money in politics, money in education, money in sports, money in art, money in you name it.
• The domestic context. Interests – interest groups, special interests, interests that favor the privileged few over the ordinary many. By every measure there is more lobbying in the present than there was in the past – and the political and financial stakes are far higher. There are some fifteen to twenty thousand interest groups in the Washington area alone – outside the nation’s capital are some two hundred thousand more. Where does this leave the rest of us, those of us not endowed with money or power?
• The domestic context. More prying, more license, more technology, more access – more closing the distance between leaders and led. Think of what we now know about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: secrets about sex, secrets about servers, secrets about spouses, secrets about staff, secrets about wrongdoing, secrets about money, secrets about personal and professional proclivities, secrets about what was done to whom, and said to whom, and how and when and where and why.

I could go on. And once the shock has worn off maybe I will.

Meantime the shock itself should be subject to scrutiny. Why in a world with such an abundance of information was so much information so wrong? Why did most of the experts tell us one thing when another turned out true?