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No one – certainly not the organizers – anticipated it. They were a motley collection coalescing for the occasion. The occasion was “No Kings Day” which even a few days before only a plugged-in few had even heard of. The day was a random Saturday in June. There was no program or agenda. And there was no single designated center or speaker. It was all rather loosey-goosey, slightly haphazard and lightly organized, more of an experiment in political movement than a political movement.

And yet. And yet it turned out to be some five million strong. It turned out either the largest political demonstration in American history ever or among them.

For all its anonymousness and amorphousness No Kings Day did have one central organizing principle. It was vigorously, decisively, and unambiguously against President Donald Trump. It was to put a stake in the ground – to demonstrate to the American people generally and this leader particularly that large numbers of his followers were as fiercely angry as deeply unhappy with most everything he was and most everything he did.

It took a while for dissenters in numbers to be seen or even heard. Moreover, where they, we, are headed from here is not clear. Still, for those among us who fret about the future of American democracy it was a splendid display and heartening day. It was a real-time reminder of how good followers can stand up to a bad leader.     

Last year I came out with a book titled, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers. The book was a warning. It warned that without exception – unless and until they are stopped or at least slowed by something(s) or someone(s) – bad leaders become worse leaders.

This progression is universal. This progression is inevitable. This progression is inexorable. This progression is ubiquitous. Always and everywhere bad leadership – like every other malignancy – starts small and then it gets larger. It grows, then grows more, and keeps on growing unless and until finally it is excised. If, on the other hand, it is never removed, it will transform what was original into what is unrecognizable.

The term “tipping point” seem at odds with this process. Because it implies change that is major not minor, tipping point further implies change that is sudden. But when “tipping points” are defined as a series of small changes that in time become larger and more significant, they can be seen as integral to the progression in which bad leadership becomes worse.

The United States is, then, at a tipping point. For just six months into his second term, President Donald Trump has let loose force. He has let loose force not abroad – about which he is skittish. He has let loose force at home – about which he is decidedly not skittish.

The most obvious evidence of this is of course in California. Though you and I might differ about the specifics of the situation in Los Angeles, we might nevertheless agree that federalizing the national guard and sending in 700 marines to maintain order in one square mile of the city is overkill. But I refer not to California. I refer instead to Washington DC where this weekend a an imposing military parade will take place, ostensibly to celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, oh yes, the 79^th birthday of the commander in chief.  

I don’t like the idea of showy military parades under any circumstances – they are associated with autocracies not democracies. However, my objection is not to the parade per se. Rather it is to what Trump said in connection with the occasion. Yesterday he threatened that anyone who protests his parade will be punished. “People that want to protest will be met with big force,” the president said. These are people “that hate our country. They will be met with heavy force.”

Which is precisely why the United States is at a tipping point. Twice in one week Trump has made clear that he sees the American military as his military. To be used when and how sees fit, no matter the law, no matter the Constitution.

If you think this is the end of it, think again. If you think, for example, American elections will be exempt from Trump’s infractions, think again. If the president gets away with using the miliary for his purposes this week, think what will happen next. Think leadership from bad to worse.  

The title of this post is the subtitle of a book by Post. Specifically, it is the subtitle of a book by Jerrold M. Post, titled Leaders and their Followers in a Dangerous World. As I was looking through the book this morning I found myself stopping at chapter 9. It’s titled, “Narcissism and the Charismatic Leader-Follower Relationship.”

Post died a few years ago. But he had a long, prolific career as a psychiatrist, academic, and analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. In all three roles he applied his expertise in psychology to politics, especially as it pertained to people in positions of political leadership, including heads of state.  

Given my interest in followers rivals my interest in leaders, I have occasionally gravitated to Post’s work. For he more than most understood that leaders do not operate in vacuum, in isolation. Necessarily they interact with and absolutely depend on their followers.   

Leaders and their Followers in a Dangerous World was published in 2004, long before the Time of Trump. Still, what Post wrote, specifically about charismatic leaders and their followers, is as timely as relevant.    

For the purposes of this discussion, I will assume that President Donald Trump is a narcissist. He has never been formally or professionally diagnosed as such. But for at least the last decade he has been labeled a narcissist by experts and laypeople alike, both seriously and casually. The parallels between Trump and his followers and what Post has to say about charismatic leaders and their followers are in any case striking.

To be clear: being narcissistic and being charismatic are not one and the same. Not all people who are narcissistic are charismatic, and not all people who are charismatic are narcissistic. Still, according to Post, the “narcissistic personality helps us understand the nature of the charismatic leader-follower relationship.”

Here nine Post points for interested readers to consider:

• Charismatic leaders require a “continuing flow of admiration from their audiences to nourish their famished selves.”
• Central to charismatic leaders’ ability to “elicit admiration is an ability to convey a sense of grandeur, omnipotence, and strength.”
• Charismatic leaders “convey a sense of conviction and certainty to those who are consumed by doubt and uncertainty.”
• Analyses of speeches by charismatic leaders reveal a good versus evil, strength versus weakness, “all or nothing polar absolutism.”   
• Such either-or categorization, with charismatic leaders on the side of the angels, “is a regular characteristic of their evocative rhetoric.”
• Post quotes eminent psychiatrist Heinz Kohut who found that certain types of narcissists “display an apparently unshakable self-confidence and voice their opinions with absolute certainty.”   
• Followers of charismatic leaders are characterized as “ideal-hungry personalities.” They experience themselves as worthwhile “only so long as they can relate to leaders who they can greatly admire.” Followers like these are “forever” searching for leaders who are “idealized figures.”
• Charismatic leader-follower relationships can yield outcomes that are “destructive,” as in the cases of Adolph Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini. Or they can yield “powerful transforming social movements” as in the cases of Mahatma Gandhi or Mortin Luther King Jr.    
• Charismatic leaders must be seen in tandem with their followers. Therefore, the word charisma does not properly apply to the leader; it applies to the leader-follower relationship.

On the assumption that Post made a good case, finally an irony. Long one of the most lacerating charges against Trump is that he is a narcissist. It is, however, precisely this narcissism that could explain his tight grip on the many millions who follow where he leads.

This grip is not, however, necessarily permanent. It just seems that way.

In my most recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers, one of the cases I examined most closely was that of Martin Winterkorn.* Winterkorn was the CEO of Volkswagen during the infamous scandal known as “Dieselgate.”

Under Winterkorn’s leadership Volkswagen regularly, and over a period of about eight years, defrauded customers, regulators, competitors, and the public. The company knowingly installed software in millions of vehicles deliberately designed to test more environmentally friendly than they really were. The scheme continued until it didn’t. Until it was stopped by authorities after being alerted by outside investigators who discovered the crime.

Though the wrongdoing became known a decade ago, up to now only a handful of people have been held to account. Winterkorn has not been among them. He faces criminal prosecution – but so far, he remains a free man.

Still, it’s not over till it’s over. Just this week two former Volkswagen directors were found guilty in a German court of fraud. Two were sentenced to several years in prison – but Winterkorn was not among them. This time his case was separated from the others because his lawyers claimed health issues precluded his appearance in court.

Poor Martin.

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* Oxford University Press, 2024. https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Bad-Worse-Happens-Festers/dp/0197759270  

The above-named piece was in good part about the silence of “leaders” in Donald Trump’s America. Specifically, that of chief executive officers of major corporations who in their behavior toward Trump are not leaders but followers. Alarmingly like Republican members of Congress, the captains of American business and industry are so subservient they are servile.   

Two days later after I posted my piece the New York Times published a review of a book written by Peter Hayes. It was titled, Profits and Persecution: German Big Business in the Nazi Economy and the Holocaust.

Here is an excerpt from the review, written by Max Chafkin.

Hayes convincingly shows that German businessmen were skeptical of the Nazis, but tended to approach Hitler’s rise with an eye to the bottom line, seeking to preserve their financial advantages within the regime and, in doing so, slowly acquiescing to its most insidious demands. His book is both horrifying and riveting, in part because the rationalizations offered by business leaders will sound eerily familiar.   

I rest my case.

Monday, May 26, 2025. In the United States of America, it’s Memorial Day, a federal holiday that honors those who died serving in the U.S. military. By extension, it’s also a day to ruminate about what it means to us, to each of us, to be an American.

One could argue that of all the liberal ideas and ideals that undergird the American experiment none is as foundational as liberty. According to the U. S. Constitution, our right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is unalienable. Patrick Henry’s line, “Give me liberty, or give me death” is as much of a clarion call now as it was 250 years ago. And the Statue of Liberty remains in the present as in the past: a colossus in New York Harbor emblematic of its name.

However, liberty is realized only if it is exercised. If Americans do not exercise their freedom that freedom is an abstraction. Pretty on paper but irrelevant. Irrelevant not only to the powerless but to the powerful. Specifically, liberty is irrelevant to leaders who choose not to use it. No matter how much power, authority, or influence an individual has, if they decide to be passive as opposed to active, to stay silent rather than to speak up, then liberty lies fallow. In which case liberty – like a muscle that has atrophied – is as useless as pointless.   

So far, during President Donald Trump’s second term in office, America’s corporate leaders have been even more reluctant than they were during his first to speak truth to power. They stay silent even when the president says or does something that not only threatens their business but drives them nuts. Such as on tariffs, a subject on which Trump bobs and weaves as rapidly as regularly. Still, even leaders whose businesses are most directly affected by Trump’s every move are fearful. Fearful of invoking Trump’s wrath lest he retaliates not just against them but against the companies for which they are responsible.

A few weeks ago, the CEO of Mattel, Ynon Kreiz, said on CNBC that he did not intend to move manufacturing to the United States. When word of this reached Trump, he was furious. He threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on Mattel’s products, commanding the company would not “sell one toy in the United States.” Then Trump gilded the lily. He added, “I wouldn’t want to have him [Kreiz] as an executive too long.” In response to these sorts of warning shots, Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told the New York Times that it was prudent for chief executives not to challenge the administration. He added that which I incessantly point out – to effect change corporate leaders must take collective action.

Though America’s corporate leaders have enormous clout, in their relationship to Trump they are virtually without exception followers. Followers who are servile. Followers who have been cowed not just into submission but into silence.

Which returns me to how pointless liberty is unless it is exercised. To which the titans of corporations would reply their hands are tied because their first responsibility is to their shareholders. Shareholders who would be threatened by even a single potshot from the White House.

Jamie Dimon has been CEO of JPMorgan for 20 years. On his next birthday he will be 70 years old. Tim Cook has been CEO of Apple for 14 years. On his next birthday he will be 65 years old. What would happen if these two leaders acted like leaders not followers? Especially if they did so in concert. If just one time they opened their mouths and said what they really think and feel about the Trump administration as opposed to remaining mute.

From Dimon and Cook’s long history in business, and from their deep familiarity with financial markets both at home and abroad, we can safely surmise that not everything that Trump has said and done in recent months is to their liking. Apple particularly has been a favorite Trump target. But publicly Cook has remained deaf, dumb and blind, failing to make a single public statement that might irk the president. But… if the likes of Cook and Dimon believe that they cannot, given their positions, speak truth to power maybe they should resign their positions. It’s why I single them out. They have had all the power that anyone could ever want. And they have all the money that anyone could ever need. What’s left for them other than to exercise the liberty that rightfully is theirs?

Bruce Springsteen is a different animal. I do not compare him to the likes of Dimon and Cook. Springsteen is a leader – but another sort entirely. A leader who has never had to play the part of a follower. Who has always believed he was at liberty to tell his truth. So, it’s liberating to see and hear him put his money where his mouth is. To take on a man who cows near everyone else into denying what rightfully is theirs – liberty.

Here is Springsteen last week at a performance in Manchester, England.

Liberty. Leaders who don’t use it lose it.   

The word “leader” has some four hundred different definitions. Some focus primarily on position, others primarily on behavior, and still others primarily on impact. Here I define a leader as an agent of change. A leader leaves an imprint.

The word “great” is similarly murky. What do I mean by “great” – a “great leader”? A leader who is exceptionally good? Or prominent? Or significant? Or impactful? I mean the last – a leader who is not just exceptionally but singularly impactful. Which in my lexicon means sometimes good, but sometimes bad.

For many years when I asked groups to whom I was speaking who they thought was the greatest living leader, their answer usually was Nelson Mandela. They assumed that I was asking which living leader was both exceptionally effective and exceptionally good. But after Mandela died (in 2013), when I asked the same question, most people were mute. They could not name a single living leader who they thought “great.”      

Then often as not they would train the question on me. “Who,” someone would ask, did I think “the greatest living leader?” To which I replied and still do, “Bill Gates.”

Gates was in the news again this week. He announced that his enormously well-endowed and impactful foundation, the Gates Foundation, would spend some $200 billion over the next twenty years – and then would close.

Normally Gates no longer makes headlines. But not for a moment for approximately the last half century did the man fall off our radar. His announcement this week was, then, just a reminder of how immensely successful he has been, how hugely wealthy he has become, how astonishingly innovative and generous his philanthropy, and of how his foundation, especially though not exclusively through its medical and scientific interventions, has saved and improved the lives of many tens of millions.

Gates’s greatness is evident not just in one domain but in two that are totally different. At about age 20 he cofounded Microsoft, one of the most successful companies in American history. As the subsequent decades testify, he was astonishingly brilliant at technological innovation and not just at starting a business but at running it. Several decades later, during approximately the second half of his adult life – Gates will turn 70 later this year – he proved himself equally remarkable in another arena entirely, philanthropy. He was exceptional not just at giving away humungous sums of money but in deciding how to give these sums away, and as importantly in persuading other mega-rich to give their money away.

Bill Gates is no saint nor is his foundation flawless. Gates might have dabbled during his marriage and his fleeting association with Jeffrey Epstein did him no favors. Moreover, his foundation has been accused of sins ranging from being too dominant to taking advantage of tax breaks.

Still, as mere mortals go, Gates is great. Greatly gifted, greatly curious, greatly hardworking, greatly disciplined, greatly dedicated, and greatly civic minded. Gates would be the first to admit that he won what Warren Buffet called “the ovarian lottery.” As the recently published first volume of Gates’s autobiography testifies – the book is called Source Code; I recommend it – he was born not just white and male but also to highly accomplished, comfortably situated, loving and smart parents. As a child, adolescent, and young adult, he had every advantage. But his early history also makes clear that he was preternaturally smart from the start, with an almost uncanny ability to focus laser-like on that which captured not so much his mind as his imagination.

Two women in Gates’s life made enormous contributions, especially to his greatness as a philanthropist. The first was his exceptional mother, Mary Gates; the second his exceptional, erstwhile wife, and mother of his three children, Melinda French Gates.* While his mother died relatively young, his wife was his decades-long partner in what became as consuming a passion for Bill Gates as Microsoft had been – how to give away enormous sums of money as wisely as well.

Bill Gates has been threaded through American life for decades. So, we’ve taken to taking him for granted. But he is a very, very rare bird. A leader who is great in the very best sense of this word.   

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*The Gates Foundation was originally named the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After their divorce, the name was changed.

Friedrich Merz was just elected chancellor of Germany. But what a miserable start! For the first time in Germany’s modern history the candidate was humiliated on the first vote, denied the chancellorship by parliament. While he mustered the necessary votes on the second round, Merz’s authority as leader of Germany was compromised even before he left the gate.  

So, what else is new? Democratic leaders everywhere and in every sector are finding leading tough sledding. Don’t believe me? Ask Katrina Armstrong, who lasted for all of seven months as interim president of Columbia University. Don’t believe me? Ask Rishi Sunak, who lasted less than two years as British Prime Minister. Don’t believe me? Ask Ashley Buchanan who was just booted out as CEO of Kohl’s after five months.

Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers. Rising rates of top tier turnover are everywhere. A recent headline in the Wall Street Journal: “More CEOs Head to the Exits.” Last year some 373 leaders of publicly held companies left their jobs, up almost 25 percent from a year earlier. It’s a remarkably high figure – especially given the rewards they receive. Lots of authority. Lots of money. Lots of perks from private planes to corner tables. Still, CEOs who are very well fed but very fed up are heading for the exits in unprecedented numbers.

Which raises the question of why. What is it about this moment – the third decade of the 21^st century – that makes democratic leadership so difficult?

The piece in the WSJ provides a few answers including the fresh challenges of AI, tariffs, and the scrutiny of diversity.  In the end though the piece leaves us wondering. Hard to deduce from its description of the syndrome why what’s happening is happening, especially since it applies not only to leaders at the top but to managers in the middle. Apparently “the leadership issue extends beyond the C-suite. The pipeline of up-and-coming executives is thinning.”

Part of the piece is however about stress – about how many at the top are so sick of the stress they quit – that seems to me to be key. Leaders are more stressed now, much more stressed now, than they used to be.

Which raises the all-important question of where their stress comes from. Why are leaders more anxious today than yesterday? More now than a generation ago?  Yes, AI is a big issue, and so are tariffs, and so is this, and so is that. But are these challenges so much greater than those faced by CEOs in the mid to late 20^th century, or in the early 21^st? Or is something else going on?

To these questions I have, no surprise, an answer. In the past, CEOs of large publicly held companies were compensated for their labor in two ways: remuneration and respect. They got lots of the first and, in addition, lots of the second. Now they still get plenty of the first – but nearly none of the second.

Same holds for democratic leaders everywhere. They still get well paid, but they get little if any respect. We as soon tear leaders down as build them up. In the old days presidents of colleges and universities were, for example, shielded from the riff raff by the ivory towers within which they were ensconced. Now no longer. Now nothing protects them against the people – the press and the public; parents and politicians; alums, faculty, students, administrators and donors. Everyone wants a piece of them.

Bottom line is it’s tough out there. Most leaders get good money. In some cases, outrageously good money. But most even of them get no respect. We are quick, extremely quick, to trash our leaders. We are slow, extremely slow, to respect them.      

When Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker spoke in New Hampshire a few days ago he made headlines for railing not just against Republicans but against “do-nothing Democrats.” He got attention for seeming the fighter that so many Democrats – along with countless independents – want and need.

That’s typical. Followers long for a leader who seems strong. Who seems to be a winner, not a loser, who can elevate them and as necessary, protect them.

But while Pritzker got a lot of attention, since the presidential election the breakout stars of the Democratic party have been Senator Bernie Sanders together with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of American politics!

Like Astaire and Rogers, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez constitute what now at least is a formidable team. In this case not a dancing team but a prancing team. Bernie and Alexandria have been strutting their stuff, pulling in large “electrified” crowds wherever they go.  

So unanticipated was the striking success of their recent “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, it should be explained. So, here fifteen reasons why the unlikely Bernie Sanders along with the little-known Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attracted tens of thousands to their rallies even when they took place in Trump territory.  

1. Their pairing. Louis B. Mayer couldn’t have coupled them better.
2. Their differences. Most obviously, he’s 83, she’s 35. He’s visibly old and grizzled; she’s visibly young and gorgeous.   
3. Their similarities. What they say. They echo each other. They sing from the same hymnal.  
4. Their style. Informal, casual, approachable.   
5. Their speech. Forceful, angry, urgent.
6. Their content. Anti-establishment.
7. Their argument. The upper class are oppressors. The middle and lower classes are oppressed.
8. Their pugnaciousness. American democracy is in question and American capitalism is in decline.
9. Their orientation. To the future not the past.
10. Their appeal. To the young and restless, to those left of center, to all those raging against, especially, income inequality.   
11. Their sense of excitement. Their rallies are what Trump’s used to be. Lively, fun, forging communities of like-minded souls.
12. Their domestic context. America 2025 – in which inflation lives while the Dream, the American Dream, dies.
13. Their global context. Unending wars. And unprecedented competition coming from China with whom the United States is, or is not, engaged in a new Cold War.
14. Their Democratic opposition. “Do-nothing Democrats” or hapless Democrats or unknown Democrats or drowsy Democrats.
15. Their Republican opposition. The corrupt, inconsistent and incompetent President Donald Trump in tandem with a sea of congressional Republicans who have surrendered their independence to the White House.  

It’s not clear how long Bernie and Alexandria will be joined at the hip. Nor is it clear how long their act will play to large and largely wildly enthusiastic audiences. What is clear is that in recent months these two leaders have connected to their followers in ways that no other Democrat can claim. What’s equally clear is that the appeal of Fred and Ginger, the team of Fred and Ginger, is timeless.

It’s never a good idea. A lightweight taking a swing at a heavyweight? The latter is sure to win! Inevitably he’ll take out his weaker – and dumber – adversary.  

This simple law of physics dictates it was brainless of President Donald Trump publicly to challenge President Xi Jinping over tariffs. Setting aside the inevitable competition between China and America, Xi is far stronger than Trump both personally and politically.

Unlike Trump, who early in his life led a sheltered existence, protected against hardship by a demanding but nevertheless stable and wealthy family, Xi’s late childhood and adolescence were traumatic. When he was ten, his father was arrested for political reasons and his family life destroyed. Unlike Trump who was helped by his father to get into the real estate business, and who for most of his life was rich, famous, and amused, Xi’s spectacular political success was exceedingly hard earned.  He was able to work his way to the top – not just of the Chinese Communist state but of the all-important Chinese Communist party – because he was a preternaturally smart and skilled, and a ruthless political animal.

Trump is in the first year of his second four-year term as president. Xi – who in 2017 declared himself president for life – became chair of the party in 2012 and president of the country in 2013. At every step he consolidated and grew his power so that now there is not a single aspect of Chinese life that is not dominated by Xi’s politics and personality.       

Whatever Trump’s attempts to extend and expand his control, they are, necessarily, feeble in comparison with those of his Chinese counterpart. After all, last I looked the United States remains a democracy while China has never been anything but an autocracy. By this criterion alone, Xi is far, far more dominant than Trump ever was or will be. Which means that Xi can wait Trump out for as long as it takes for him to realize who is the stronger, the more stable and secure.

Until Xi decides it’s in his interest to negotiate with Trump over tariffs or anything else, Trump will be forced to cool his heels. He might huff, puff, and bluff, but the experience will teach him a lesson. Xi is in it to win. No way in hell will Trump triumph over his Chinese counterpart.