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Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t is the title of my new book. It will be published next week by the University of Toronto Press.

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The title of this post is the same as that of the second chapter of Why We Follow…. So, I’m not surprised that Americans of all stations are standing fecklessly and helplessly by as their president throws Ukraine under a bus.

But let me be as clear as I can. Unless this trend is reversed, American decision-making on the war between Russia and Ukraine will be the single greatest stain on and, possibly, the single gravest mistake in American foreign policy history.

Earlier this year less than a third of Americans were very or somewhat confident that Donald Trump could/would make good decisions about by far the deadliest war in Europe since the end of the second world war. Since then, though most Americans continue to support Ukraine, and though in recent weeks especially the country has increasingly been under deadly attack, the United States has drastically scaled back its support. Additionally, the personal and political rift between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, has grown even more tenuous, acrimonious, and dangerous.

Which raises the question of how such a thing can happen. How can the American people – especially but not exclusively the political elite – be reduced to such abject submission on a matter of such critical consequence?

The answers are not hard to understand. But nor are they familiar or immediately obvious. Suffice here to say that 1) they are in my book; 2) they testify to how and why followers are as important a determinant as leaders; and 3) they clarify how leaders who are bad if not even evil get away with murder.

Submission is the human condition – usually. But it is not always. As my new book makes equally clear, there are reasons why sometimes, not often but sometimes, people resist.  

As I wrote in Part I of this post, the idea that leaders should be role models goes back thousands of years. Moreover, it lives still – at least in theory.

Of course, some of the instructions that we used to get are dead and gone. For example, we used to be told that at the age of six George Washington was given a small ax, with which he swung at his father’s cherry tree. When he was asked what happened, George replied, “I cannot tell a lie. I cut it with my hatchet.” But instead of being punished by his father, his father embraced him. He valued George’s honesty more than his cherry tree.

This small story once taught two lessons. First, that virtue is its own reward. Second, that virtue is rewarded. Both apply to leaders as role models. Leaders are virtuous because being virtuous makes them feel good. And leaders are virtuous because it’s likely their followers will follow suit.

Virtue is variably defined. It can mean being honest or kind; it can also mean being diligent or abstinent or all the above. But whatever the nuances and differences, healthy groups and organizations have a common understanding of what virtue is. What good character and behavior look like and consists of.

It’s peculiar then that the chief executive of the United States of America is a man who by every conceivable conception or definition is the antithesis of a role model. The character of the President Donald Trump is bad and he behaves badly – he is not a man of virtue as this word is conventionally and commonly understood.

It is not political but demonstrable to say that Trump is, for instance, each of the following:

• A chronic liar.
• A vengeful adversary.
• A coarse vulgarian.
• A nasty bully.
• A rapacious money-grubber.

He is moreover shameless. Trump does not pretend to be what he is not. Not only does he not aspire to be a role model of any sort, but he also seems to pride himself on being singular, on getting away with what no president ever did or would ever have dared attempt.

All of this says more about us, the American people in the 21^st century, than it ever did about him. Even when we elected Trump president the first time, we knew what we were getting. We knew we were getting a leader who lacked all relevant experience and expertise – and who was instead a showman and charlatan.

Which raises two possibilities. Either the idea of a role model is dead and gone. Or the ideal of a role model has been turned on its head.  

The idea that leaders should be role models – should themselves model the character and behaviors they want their followers to emulate – goes back to ancient times.

Confucious wrote in the Analects that the sage, Master Zeng, said, “I examine myself three times a day. When dealing with others, have I been trustworthy? In intercourse with my friends, have I been faithful? Have I practiced what I was taught?” And when he was asked by a leader what he could do to make his followers “respectful, loyal, and zealous,” Master Zeng replied that he himself should set the example. “Approach them with dignity and they will be respectful. Be a good son and a kind father, and they will be loyal.”

Similarly, in Plutarch’s classic, Lives. The intent of Lives was to instruct. To compare leaders so that others would copy those of good character. As I wrote elsewhere, “Plutarch’s work is timeless primarily because he trains his lens on personality rather than on politics, on private dispositions as opposed to public deeds, and on the importance of character in addition to capacity.* For instance, unlike Brutus, Dion was “a commander without fault improving to the utmost those counsels which he himself gave.” Dion was a role model. He was what he wanted others to be. And he did what he told others to do.

Now it’s the American military that most clearly and consistently articulates the idea that leaders should be, that they must be, role models. At the United States Military Academy, for example, cadets are advised or maybe forewarned: “From the moment that you arrive as a plebe to when you graduate as a commissioned officer everything you do here is designed to develop your character and leadership.” Character first, who you are; leadership second, how you behave.

Well over a century after West Point was founded (1802), the so-called father of modern management, Peter Drucker, saw fit to point out, approvingly, that the academy’s “core competence was its ability to turn out leaders who deserved trust.” Though Drucker himself was a realist, not an idealist, he nevertheless believed that good leaders earned the trust of their followers. How exactly? By being themselves of good character and setting high ethical standards.

In their popular book, The Leadership Challenge – the 7^th edition was published in 2023 – James Kouzes and Barry Posner reiterate yet again the importance of leaders as role models. In a section they title “Model the Way,” they emphasize that leaders should be who they want their followers to emulate. This makes it essential that leaders know themselves – that they are aware of what they stand for and what their priorities are. Once this work is done, they can lead others, presumably relatively wisely and well.

The idea that good leaders should be good role models is timeless. It goes back thousands of years – and still it’s alive and well. At least in theory.

*Barbara Kellerman, ed., Leadership: Essential Selections (McGraw-Hill, 2010), p. 32.

Most Americans – including me – know little about North Korea. Still, some of us know that in contrast to South Korea, which is staunchly capitalist, North Korea is stalwartly communist. Some of us know that while North Korea remains poor the economy is measurably more robust than it was five years ago. Some of us know that despite weak-kneed interventions of several American presidents, North Korea has developed an impressive nuclear arsenal. And some of us know that leadership in North Korea is dynastic – and totalitarian.

A recent report from Freedom House reads in part: North Korea is a one-party state led by a dynastic totalitarian dictatorship that regularly engages in grave human rights abuses. Surveillance is pervasive, arbitrary, arrests and detentions are common, and punishments for political offense are severe. The state runs all media outlets, and freedom of assembly is not recognized. The state maintains a system of camps for political prisoners where torture, forced labor, starvation, and other atrocities take place.

Because we’re largely ignorant of North Korea, and because what we do know we generally detest, we tend either to ignore or dismiss it. Mistakes. North Korea must be reckoned with. First, it, like China, testifies to how dictatorships can, in critical ways, succeed. Second, while America’s alliances have frayed, North Korea’s have not. Quite the contrary. Among its greatest recent achievements have been strengthening its relationships with both Russia and China.

The course of North Korea is charted by its Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. Since its inception in 1948 the country has had just three men at the helm, each a son of the previous one. Kim Il Sung (1948 to 1994); Kim Jung Il (1994 to 2011; and Kim Jong Un (2011to the present).

It was the founding father, Kim Il Sung, who first sowed, and then secured what became an intensely secretive and totally controlling quasi-religious, quasi-political cult. According to his recent biographer, Jonathan Cheng, Kim Il Sung forced North Koreans into “what would become the largest and most all-encompassing religious society in history.” His childhood was rewritten to make him a “precocious deity from birth,” His teenaged years were extolled for their great revolutionary accomplishments. And as Kim Il Sung became the Great Leader, rituals of devotion dedicated only to him were threaded through the lives of every North Korean.

Kim Jong Un is in this tradition. Though less obsessed than his grandfather with religion, he too is determinedly dictatorial. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Jung H. Pak writes that when Kim first came to power he “came out swinging.” He promptly conducted purges to guarantee absolute loyalty and, to publicly prove his absolute power, went so far as to kill his influential uncle and assassinate his half-brother.   

Kim Jong Un is a heinous tyrant. But we in the West must accept that tyranny and efficiency are not mutually exclusive. Kim Jong Un has tightened even further his grip on power. But under his leadership North Korea’s economy has measurably improved. And under his leadership North Korea has started to play an important role in the changing world order. Kim has used his nuclear power to avoid being bullied by his far more powerful neighbors. And he has used his personal power to ingratiate himself with like-minded dictators, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Not half bad for a bad leader. For a leader who, however hideously unethical, has been highly effective.

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*Korean Messiah (Knopf, 2026).

I’ve been writing about the physical and psychological differences between women’s and men’s bodies for years.* Especially because this is a subject that the leadership industry continues strenuously to avoid. Leadership experts do not ask, at least not out loud, if these enormous differences have any impact whatsoever on women and leadership. On why even now, compared to men, very few women are in positions of power.

The most recent women’s movement is more than a half century old. But despite what have been countless efforts to correct inequities between the genders, the number of women in leadership roles remains low. This applies in every sector. And it applies in every place – even in countries that have tried hard to level the playing field. (Notably those in Scandinavia.)   

I do not dispute the conventional reasons for the imbalance in leadership roles, such as implicit and explicit biases against women, the motherhood penalty, and women’s relative lack of networks, mentorships, and sponsorships. What I’ve tried is to add to the discussion the suggestion that the physical and psychological differences between the genders must also pertain.

There are signs that the studious avoidance of this off-limit topic is starting to give way. Specifically, increasing attention is given to an experience that men do not have, certainly not in the same way, menopause. In the United States there is growing willingness publicly to discuss menopause and increasing understanding of how much it affects many if not most women in middle age. We know, for example, because research has repeatedly confirmed it, that women aged 50 to 65 – prime time for ascending to the top of the leadership ladder – are more likely to leave the workforce than men. Now we are poised finally to acknowledge that this might be not only because of women’s preferences, or only because of their greater caregiving responsibilities. In fact, it might mainly be because of their overall health. Because, for example, menopausal symptoms are impinging on their well-being.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand recently called for the first-ever congressional hearing on menopause. By drawing attention to a subject that Washington has never openly addressed, she is advocating for more federal funding for related research. A similar recent development was the announcement by Tufts University that it had received a $4 million gift to establish the Tufts Women’s Health and Menopause Initiative. The money will fund a university wide program that combines clinical care, research, nutrition science and medical education to alleviate what is neither a disease nor a medical condition, but that nevertheless effects countless women, in some cases for many years.

Inconceivable that the physical and psychological differences between women and men are totally irrelevant to who has power. Past time we faced facts. Such as, for example, women menstruate, men don’t.

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*To read some of my previous writings on this general subject click on these links.

My new book – Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t – will be published in October. It gives the reasons why usually we follow – and why occasionally we don’t. This post is in keeping with the theme.

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Nothing will baffle future historians more than why America’s “legislative branch descended into total dysfunction.” Why Congressional Republicans allowed President Trump to neuter them – “to dictate what they did, what they didn’t do, and even how they behaved.” Why was Trump able to neuter them so that instead of being his equals, as the Constitution mandates, they became his toadies.

This post is based on a recent article in the New York Times by Robert Draper, “How Congress Fell Apart.”* It extracts from Draper’s piece explanations for why congressional Republicans turned craven. To be clear, they did not morph from one thing into something else only on account of Trump. There is context here, such as, in the early aughts, the upstart, right-wing Tea Party movement disrupting Congress’s business as it had traditionally been done. Still, most of the reasons why congressional Republicans bend at the waist to the president are personal.   

• Fear. Draper quotes former Republican Congressman Fed Upton, “The White House starts to turn the screws. Then you start getting threats on social media. I’ve had very serious threats to my home. … Today it’s worse than ever.”
• Normalization. Behaviors that used to be out of bounds have been normalized. Whereas these behaviors used to be unacceptable, now they are acceptable. They include bragging, insulting, threatening, using foul language, self-dealing, and habitual, shameless lying.  
• Pugilism. Whereas once congressional norms rewarded perceived virtues such as compromise, conciliation, and civility, now it’s the opposite. Draper quotes another former Republican Congressmen, Michael McCaul: “You’re elected not to get along with the other side and get good things done for the country. You’re elected to fight and kill the other side.”
• Timeframe. American politics has always been framed, foreshortened, by the electoral cycle. But, thanks to social media, members of congress are now tempted by instant, constant gratification. Equally they dread instant, constant vilification.
• Leadership as Followership.  McCaul further pointed out that Speakers of the House used to be, themselves, leaders.  No longer. Incumbent Speaker Mike Johnson is famously without congressional clout and, more famously, a puppet of the president. Johnson is craven – preferring to sit placidly on his perch rather than risk Trump pushing him from it.

Unraveling one of the mysteries of the human condition – why much more often than not we kowtow to people in positions of authority. Even, sometimes, when we hate their guts.

*https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/magazine/congress-trump-midterms.html   

You don’t know? OK, I’ll give you a hint. The leader is the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN). “What is a Secretary General?” you ask. Well, technically the Secretary General is the UN’s chief administrative officer. More to the point, the Secretary General is the individual primarily responsible for the organization. He is – the position has never been held by a woman – the leader of the UN because he is the only one who personifies it and, occasionally, steers it in one or another direction.

Which brings me back to my question – who leads the United Nations? Not in the least surprised that you still don’t know that since 2017, the Secretary General has been Antonio Guterres. Before that, from 1995 to 2002, Guterres was prime minister of Portugal and then, before he became Secretary General, he was UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

No question that the United Nations continues to do good work. Its various agencies coordinate humanitarian aid around the world; same with multiple health initiatives. There is similarly no question that as a peacemaker – as a hub for high power negotiations between and among nations – its effectiveness, such as it ever was, has dwindled to near zero.

The UN never lived up to its original aspirations. But under the only two strong secretary generals it ever had – Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold (1953-1961) and Ghana’s Kofi Annan (1997-2006) – it did play a prominent and intermittently effective role on the international stage.

No longer. Under Guterres and his other predecessors, the UN’s impact on world affairs is scant. The organization is not an embarrassment, but increasingly it is irrelevant. During his recent visit to the United States, China’s President Xi Jinping bypassed it entirely. (His only stop was at the White House.) And for all the hubbub in New York last week, at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, the organization is widely seen as described by the New York Times. As “faltering, dysfunctional, and largely ineffectual.”

Again, in some ways and on some occasions the UN plays a positive part. But hard to argue that despite the best efforts of smart and well-intentioned men like Guterres, time is running out on the organization.

By the end of this year the UN General Assembly will have selected his successor. Whoever he or she is, their formal authority will not increase. Which makes it of paramount importance that the next Secretary General have the personal power to seize the organization, to wake it up and to shake it up. To prevent its decline to decrepitude the UN’s next leader must have the personal will and political skill to breathe life into the honorable role that it was intended to play.

Organizations cannot thrive or even survive without a leader. When the leaders that they have lack institutional resources, they must have personal resources to make a difference. Without either the former or the latter they are destined to be marginalized – and their organizations are doomed permanently to be sidelined.

Donald Trump has an edifice complex. He is obsessed with building as large as possible, as showy and ostentatious as possible, new somethings, from ballrooms to helipads to triumphal arches. Further, he is hellbent on stamping his name on key buildings already existing – the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is the quintessential example. Finally, Trump is intent on destroying significant parts of what was before, such as the East Wing of the White House. It’s his way of erasing America’s past while forcing himself on America’s future.   

For months it’s been reported that Trump’s fixation on building has become as constant as consuming. Even during meetings, the president opens “his desk drawer and toys with models of structures that he wants to build. In the evenings, he supervises from the windows of the Executive Mansion as crews work around the clock on the grounds.”* His beloved ballroom is now slated to be 90 thousand square feet – it will double the area of the existing White House.

Trump is not however alone. Other leaders lust after bricks and mortar – though how they do so is different from one to another. Some private sector leaders have an apparently insatiable appetite for real estate that they might or might not personally frequent. Hedge fund manager Ken Griffen has a property portfolio so large it would make the gods blush. It’s worth over 1.5 billion dollars – in Palm Beach alone he has more than 27 contiguous acres. Similarly, Larry Ellison, Executive Chairman of Oracle and one of the richest men in the world. His properties include morsels such as private islands and trophy homes and, of course, the usual commercial investments.    

Other business leaders take a different approach, but some are also deeply, very deeply devoted to edifices. Such as Jamie Dimon, longtime CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who from day one was intensely focused on the massive Manhattan skyscraper that he had commissioned to serve as the bank’s headquarters. For six years he and his top executives were deeply involved in creating and shaping his professional but also deeply personal monument to presumably enlightened capitalism.

Described by the Wall Street Journal as “a $3 billion monument to work,” Dimon’s building is one of the most expensive and expansive office towers in America. It extends a quarter mile into the sky and features an impressive array of amenities primarily intended to appease JPM’s labor force. Why? Because everyone who works for JPM is required to be in the office five days a week. Hybrid workweeks are not, in other words, something that Dimon approves.

Leaders’ fondness for concrete is not of course confined to the present nor to the United States. The pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and Versailles are just three of the most famous manifestations of leaders who lusted after edifices. Another contemporaneous example of a leader who built and then built some more – all material, tangible reminders of who rules – is Turkey’s longtime president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He undertook so massive a construction program that at one point it was consuming more than a quarter of Turkey’s annual GDP. Among his projects was a mosque with a capacity for 37,000 people – it is larger than any ever built by the sultans. And then there is Erdogan’s still relatively new, spectacularly grandiose palace – the White Palace. It is three times the size of Versailles. It covers over 2.1 million square feet. It has 1,000 rooms. And it takes its architectural inspiration primarily from Turkey’s Ottoman heritage.

All of these are however child’s play. At least they are in comparison with the building projects conceived – only some were executed – by the leader who had among the most obsessive edifice complexes of all time. Adolf Hitler. To give a sense of his fixation I turn to Frederic Spotts, author of a splendid book titled, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. I cannot rival Spotts’s description of Hitler’s preoccupation.

Of course, monomaniacal leaders always used monumental structures to enhance and perpetuate the glory of their state and their person…. In Hitler’s case, however, the construction of monuments became an obsession, the visible manifestation of his rule…

Lord of the world. Such was what Hitler dreamed of being. Through political and miliary means he hoped to achieve it. And through architecture he intended to manifest it… [To Hitler] great architecture was the outward sign of inward political greatness.       

Through the ages countless works of architecture were commissioned by countless leaders. Very few were/are great. Very many were/are not great. Always though there’s a consolation. What goes up can come down.

*Antonia Hitchins, “In His Image,” The New Yorker, September 14, 2026.

The title of Robert Putnam’s well-known book (2000), Bowling Alone, became a mantra for those arguing that community in America had withered or even fractured. Since then, loneliness has become a running theme, culture and media in tandem growing our isolation.

While there are some situations in which being alone, and acting alone, has advantages, resistance is virtually never among them. Maybe more than any other public act dissidents fare better when they act in tandem. When instead of dissenting alone they do so with others.

There are of course exceptions. For example, some whistleblowers successfully expose corruption and deception. But by and large, precisely because they are acting alone, they don’t fare well. Usually, whistleblowers put themselves at risk precisely because they are solitary Davids taking on behemoth Goliaths. They are lone followers challenging powerful leaders.

In recent years ordinary people have seemed easily to grasp the power of numbers. Millions of Americans had no trouble demonstrably opposing President Donald Trump on three separate No Kings Days. Elites, on the other hand, perhaps because they felt they had more to lose, never got the message. Early in the president’s second term they were striking in their aloneness. As, for example, law firms like Paul Weiss and universities like Columbia – both exemplars of trying to pacify the president while operating from a position of what they should have understood was obvious weakness. The weakness of those standing alone rather than alongside others.     

Maybe the lesson has been learned. Remarkably, America’s mainstream media have just banded together. Have just decided to join forces to resist Trump’s ban of three media outlets from setting foot inside the White House.

This remarkable cooperation – remarkable both in its alacrity and efficiency – is on two levels. First, the three media targets, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, have already joined forces to file a lawsuit against the administration challenging its ban against them. Second, even more amazingly, the five major television networks have banded together in solidarity. They have announced that until the ban against their brethren is lifted, they will halt all video coverage of all presidential events.

Be clear here. Normally these networks fiercely compete, one against the other. But because they understand that if one is at risk, all are at risk they are acting strategically.  Instead of bowling alone they are bowling together.

I know – I’m repeating myself. In fact, I’m repeating a point about which I wrote an entire book. But I can’t help it. Every day confirms the importance of my message – leadership that is bad inevitably gets worse. It inevitably, inexorably, gets worse unless it is stopped or at least slowed by someone(s) or something(s).

Bad leaders – leaders who, for example, are corrupt or callous, intemperate or dictatorial – never ever wake one fine morning and say, “Golly, gee, I’ve been bad. I’m going to change my ways. I’m going to be good.” On the contrary. They refuse to acknowledge their wrongdoing, even to themselves, and then double down.

Once bad has burrowed in, it digs in deep and then deeper, making it finally very difficult to extract or excise. In other words, once the system is close to being completely corrupted, it’s late, maybe even too late. By then bad leaders and their followers are so entrenched that they control the system itself, which is why at this point the only way to totally get rid of bad is to totally get rid of everyone involved.*  

• During his quarter century in office Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has gone from bad to worse. His greed has known no bounds and his lust for power has grown more voracious with every passing year. Since his attack on Ukraine (2022) he has outlawed whatever the opposition and crushed whoever dissented. Elections ended yesterday in Russia – they were of course an unmitigated sham. Surprise! surprise! Putin’s party won!
• During his fourteen years in office China’s President Xi Jinping has gone from bad to worse. Like Putin, Xi has concluded that to remain in control he must gain in control. He has continued to tighten the screws on his people – to the point where he now rules with an iron fist. Just last week Xi imposed sweeping controls on overseas travel. Controls so onerous that they resemble those in effect during the reign of Mao Zedung. Mao was, of course, one of the most dictatorial, tyrannical leaders of the 20^th century.
• During his second term in office America’s President Donald Trump has gone from bad to worse. Suffice here to say that his personal shamelessness – his proclivity to coarseness and corruption – seems increasingly to know no bounds. And that his political avariciousness – his appetite for control and zeal for revenge – seems increasingly to know no bounds. Over the weekend Trump announced on Truth Social that he was banning reporters from three mainstream media from covering the White House. Their sin? “FAKE NEWS.” Litigation will of course immediately ensue – but the fire hose will continue to spew more aggressively, outrageously, and outlandishly with each passing day.      

Left unchecked bad leadership gets worse. No exceptions. Case closed.

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*Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers (Oxford University Press, 2024), p. 4.