Author: Barbara

The word “totalitarian” – as in totalitarianism, or totalitarian leader – was once in fashion. Now we hardly hear it anymore, but in the 1950’s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, it was used with some frequency, certainly by political scientists, especially when referencing Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Hannah Arendt’s classic, Origins of Totalitarianism, originally published in 1951, gave the word a certain currency, which for decades thereafter it maintained.

However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and obviously the defeat of Nazi Germany, the word has lapsed in our lexicon. Seemed almost obsolete. But, it is not. Just because Great Dictators no longer control so much of the earth’s surface does not mean that they are extinct.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin controls what he can, though he cannot be a totalitarian leader without risking his neck. And China’s Xi Jinping controls what he can, though he cannot be a totalitarian leader without risking his neck.

There is, however, one totalitarian leader without question – one leader who violates the general rule. Who has total control over every aspect of civilian and military life in the country in his grip. I refer, of course, to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

His grandfather, Kim Il-sung, ruled North Korea from 1948 until his death in 1994. His father, Kim Jong-il, ruled North Korea from 1994 until his death, in 2011. Since then North Korea has been ruled by his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, with no less than the proverbial iron fist.

How is a totalitarian leader distinguished from an authoritarian leader? Or from a despotic or dictatorial leader? The answer is as the word implies: the continuous capacity to exercise total control over everyone and everything. How is this accomplished?  The shortest answer: through terror. It is not the only answer. Hundreds if not thousands of books have been written about the phenomenon of totalitarianism. But the easiest way to understand why followers submit so completely and obsequiously to a single leader is that they are scared to death of doing otherwise.

For good reason. When the most serious threat to Jong-un’s authority was thought by him to be his uncle, he arranged for his father’s sister’s husband to be seized by uniformed guards in front of hundreds of high-ranking officials. After being denounced as “an ugly human scum worse than a dog,” Jong-un’s uncle was summarily executed by a firing squad. Many of his followers were similarly killed, others sent away to labor camps. I could go on – but you get the idea. Evil leadership takes many forms – totalitarian leadership typically is the most extreme.

Bad leadership – it’s worth regularly reminding ourselves – is a slippery slope. It can go from bad to worse. And from worse to worst.

It’s curious that good leadership at the International Olympic Committee has been a standard so difficult to meet. It’s curious because, given the Olympic ideal, which is performance at the highest level of excellence, one would think its leadership of similar caliber. But it is not. For decades now the I.O.C. presidency has been shrouded by a cloud of suspicion.

In my book Bad Leadership, I wrote extensively about Juan Antonio Samaranch, a Spaniard who was president of the I.O.C. for over twenty years (from 1980 to 2001), but whose reputation as a leader has since been shredded. Derided for his love of money and luxury, for his cronyism and capitalism, and for cozying up to dictators who sanctioned doping, Samaranch bequeathed the presidency of the I.O.C. to Jacques Rogge. A Belgian, whose tenure was less questionable, Rogge nevertheless presided over a series of controversies, including tolerating internet censorship in China during the 2008 summer games.

Now the I.O.C. is led by a German, Thomas Bach. Bach has been president only since 2013, but his time in office has already been other than stellar. Whatever the shining moments in Rio, the games have already been marred, especially by Bach’s decision not to bar all Russian athletes from participating – in spite of the massive evidence of state-sponsored doping.

As Juliet Macur put it, writing in the New York Times, “Instead of using the power of the I.O.C. to stand up to Russia, a nation whose highest sports officials have been implicated in a doping program that lasted at a minimum from 2011 to 2015, Bach withered…. Bach could have set a strong example for nations who dare to cheat…. But he failed, and in so many ways, too. As a Leader. As a voice for clean sports and clean athletes. As someone expected to keep his word.” *

What is it about good leadership? Why is good leadership – leadership that is effective and ethical – so damn difficult to find?! Even among Olympians?

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• July 26, 2016.

Up to now, Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, has been the perfect Republican citizen. After failing in her own campaign for governor of California (2010), she stayed staunchly aligned with the Republican party, remained close to Mitt Romney (the 2012 Republican presidential nominee), and continued actively to fund-raise for the party in which she believed.

Yesterday, however, she broke ranks. Rather than remaining a rigid follower, she become a good follower. She refused any longer to follow in the footsteps of top elected Republican officials – including Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House), Mitch McConnell (Senate Majority Leader), and John McCain (Senator, 2008 Republican candidate for president, and war hero). Instead she left the fold, at least for now. Whitman declared Donald Trump a “dishonest demagogue,” and announced she would “vote for Hillary.” Moreover, she put her money where her mouth is. Whitman made what was described as a “substantial” contribution to Clinton’s campaign.

Leadership experts pay scant attention to followership. The Leadership Industry is forever touting its capacity to teach good leadership, while ignoring nearly entirely the critical importance of good followership. The critical importance of followers who support good leaders – but who refuse to support bad leaders.

Whitman’s loud, clear parting of the ways with the Republican leadership class is a vivid reminder of the importance of exemplary followership. She sets a splendid example for those among us so pusillanimous we avoid speaking truth to power.

It happens rarely. But it happens sometimes.

Sometimes there’s spontaneous combustion – the man meets the moment and a leader is born.

So it was, last week, with Khizr Khan, who, along with his wife Ghazala, addressed the Democratic Convention to speak of their fallen soldier son – and to take on Donald Trump.

Mr. Khan was able to do what no one else has been able to do. To draw blood, to wound Mr. Trump, who previously had been impervious to political harm. Khan changed the nature of the conversation, made it all but impossible for even the silent majority to remain silent. But, as important, after years in which outsiders have longed for a moderate leader from within the Muslim community, to no avail, one has now emerged. Mr. Khan, it would appear, is not going anywhere. In other words, American Muslims, Muslims the world over, now have a leader who speaks in measured tones and who can, therefore, be a bridge. A bridge between individuals and groups that have trouble communicating, connecting, and collaborating.

Michael Bloomberg is one of the most estimable men in American business. And Michael Bloomberg is one of the most estimable men in American politics. He has not done everything right. But he has done nearly everything right. In business, coming from nothing, he built a great fortune, and is now one of the nation’s leading philanthropists. And in politics, he served as mayor of New York City for twelve years, most with high distinction.

He is, moreover, of singularly even temperament. He nearly never raises his voice. He nearly never engages in needless disputatiousness. And he nearly never resorts to rhetoric even remotely extreme. So, when he made a deliberate decision to go public, to speak as an independent at the Democratic Convention in order to call out Donald Trump as a “dangerous demagogue,” attention had to be paid.

Let’s assume for the moment that being a demagogue is bad, but not that bad. After all, being a demagogue is not the same as being a despot. But being a dangerous demagogue suggests something different. It suggests a slippery slope. It suggests a slide, from demagoguery to tyranny. Bloomberg was suggesting, in other words, that Trump has it in him to transition from being a troubling leader, to being a terrible leader.

Such a transition is not uncommon. History is full of examples of men, nearly all men, who came to power in a reasonable manner, but who in time changed. Who in time became dictators satisfied with nothing less than total control.

Look at China’s president, Ji Jinping. By every account, in the last two years he has gone from strongly resembling an authoritarian leader to strongly resembling a totalitarian leader. Through a brutal purge and a total overhaul of its structures, Ji has transformed the People’s Liberation Army into his personal power base. And, after eroding or even eliminating civic freedoms, he threatened, punished, and finally muzzled most of his political opponents. *

This is not to say with any certainty that if Trump became president, he would go down that same dark path. Among other reasons, America is not China. But Bloomberg did issue a warning. And Bloomberg is a reasonable man who additionally is clever. Very, very clever.

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*Financial Times, July 27the and 28^th, 2016.

Any regular reader of this post knows where I stand. I wish the first woman nominee for American president by a major political party had been someone different. Had been someone other than Hillary Clinton.

But… it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge – not to celebrate! – this milestone.

Additionally it would be remiss of me not to make my position clear. For given the essentially binary choice that I, like millions of other Americans, will face in November, even now I know where I stand.

Who knows what will happen between now and Election Day? What events will take place, malicious or benign? What secrets will be revealed, unsettling or embarrassing? What behaviors will be displayed, contemptible or curious? I certainly do not.

This however I do know. That I will vote. That I will vote for one of the two major party candidates. And that I will not vote for Donald Trump. Whatever my complaints about Clinton, intellectual, psychological, or temperamental unfitness is not among them. About her Republican opponent I cannot say the same.

You know that followership has arrived – followership as a conception as important as leadership – when the tail wags the dog.

That fact that Bernie Sanders has been unable so far to control many of his own followers at the Democratic Convention speaks volumes. This may soon change, even this evening, or it may not. At a minimum it is a reminder to Hillary Clinton that between now and November she is in abject thrall to “followers” on her left flank.

• After being booed off the stage earlier today in Philadelphia, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, leader of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), announced that she was withdrawing from all previously scheduled performances during this week’s Democratic convention. Why? Because her ostensible followers were so furious at her now amply documented partiality  during the presidential primaries, that she could not appear in public without risking her own humiliation – and her party’s conflagration.
• After struggling for four years to save Yahoo as an independent corporate entity, Marissa Mayer finally threw in the towel – she agreed to have the company acquired by Verizon. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Yahoo might have been beyond saving when Mayer took over. Trouble is that one of our most visible women leaders has replicated the rapacious greed for which male executives are famously well known. Evidence is that some of the best paid CEOs run some of the worst companies. Mayer then is no exception. But let’s be clear here. According to the Wall Street Journal, for her labors over her four-year tenure, Mayer “stands to make more than $50 million in compensation if she is terminated as a result of the sale, after earning over $100 million in cash and equity.”
• After pooh-poohing charges made by Bernie Sanders for the better part of the year, that the supposedly neutral DNC was rigged against him and for her, Hillary Clinton has been caught red-handed. Yet again. If you believe that she knew nothing about how the DNC favored her during what turned out a series of stiffly fought primary contests, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Sad.

When I first started blogging, I had regular posts titled, “Putin Patrol.” Long thought the snake bore watching for what he was doing at home – and abroad.

However, never thought it would come to this. Never thought there would be good evidence that he and one of our leading presidential candidates were in bed together.

A failure of my imagination.

Where did Theresa May go on her first overseas visit since becoming Prime Minister? To Berlin. Properly so, for by far her most important counterpart as head of state is Angela Merkel.

By all accounts their meeting went swimmingly. Merkel was conciliatory toward May, backpedaling from her earlier demand that the United Kingdom negotiate its exit from the European Union as soon as possible. By the time the visit was over, Merkel was conceding that it was “completely understandable” May needed more time to decide what Britain’s “future relationship with the EU” should look like.

Both women seemed bent on stressing the symbolism of their situation. According to the Financial Times, when May was asked her first impression of the German chancellor, she invoked gender. Her reply? “We are two women who get on with the job and want to deliver the best possible results for the people of Britain and Germany.”

Moreover, on the single issue of their greatest disagreement – immigration – they will inevitably be brought closer. May recently reiterated that Britain expected controls on the freedom of movement for EU citizens. And while up to now Merkel has taken the opposite tack – strongly supporting open borders within the EU – the events of the past week will oblige her to modify her position.

Earlier this week a young ax wielding Afghan refugee wounded four passengers on German train. (He was shot and killed by German police.) And yesterday the entire city of Munich went on lockdown until it was determined only one man murdered nine people in a large, local shopping mall and that he was now dead. The 18-year old perpetrator had dual citizenship – German and Iranian. (He died of his own hand.)

Whatever the short term consequences of this week’s events, over the longer term the pressure on Merkel to harden her stance both on freedom of movement and on immigration will grow. Put differently, the context within which Merkel and May are situated will increasingly unite them and decreasingly divide them.