What are my criteria for “Leader of the Year – 2023”? Same as those for “Leader of the Year – 2022.” Which means I have only one. My single criterion for this designation is impact. Which leader had the greatest impact during the preceding twelve months?
Given my Leader of the Year last year was Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, it’s evident that my selection does not imply a value judgment. In this race to the top there is no good or bad – or, more precisely, it does not pertain. Rather my decision is based on which leader had the greatest effect in any given year – for better or worse.
This year were several candidates, all men and most though not all Americans. For example, I considered naming as my Leader of the Year, Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve. He managed to bring down the rate of inflation while engineering a soft landing and, simultaneously, to grow the American economy. I also thought of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who, despite a recent leadership fiasco, remains the face most closely associated with Artificial Intelligence. Shawn Fain also came to mind. He is the president of the United Auto Workers who this year steered his union to a major victory – likely a harbinger of similar union activity in 2024.
Among non-Americans my choice would’ve been to name two to the top slot: Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both leaders have made and are continuing to make decisions that are wreaking havoc on Israelis as well as Palestinians, with implications that are regional, and global.
But, instead of naming one or two of the above I decided to choose none of the above. This year I am making a different point entirely. One triggered by Eric Schmidt, who earlier in his career was CEO and executive chairman of Google, and who in recent years was a co-author and close friend of Henry Kissinger’s. After Kissinger died last month, Schmidt wrote an appreciation of the former Secretary of State and Nationial Security Advisor that was published in the Wall Street Journal. Schmidt wrote that Kissinger believed that “the world sorely lacks great leadership.” We simply have too few people, Kissinger thought, “with the vision we need.” He suggested that “we compare our leaders today with, for instance, the Roosevelts to understand what we are missing.”
Kissinger was preoccupied with great men lifelong, specifically political leaders. He was a Jewish boy growing up in Germany when Hitler came to power. As a student and then as an academic he was clearly fascinated by legendary leaders and statesmen such as Bismark and Metternich. And during his long career as a public servant, he mostly had a front row seat, allowing him to see world leaders up close and personal, from Nixon to Mao, from Brezhnev to Putin. In his last book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, he focused on six exceptional examples including Charles de Gaulle and Anwar Sadat. So, when Kissinger opined at the end of his long life that the world in which we now live “sorely lacks great leadership,” we can safely say that he knew whereof he spoke.
My choice then for “Leader of the Year – 2023”? None – I refuse to choose for the simple reason that he, or she, is missing in action. He, or she, has gone MIA. This year no leader can claim the title of “great” – this year having diminished even autocrats such as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, China’s President Xi Jinping, and, yes, Putin. And this year leaving still open the question of whether Sinwar and Netanyahu will in the end drag the world into their war.
Which raises the question that Kissinger implicitly posed, “Where have all the leaders gone?” He of course was referring to leaders who are exceptionally good. So… why is it that we, we Americans, look back longingly at the Founders, at the Roosevelts, at Martin Luther King and Betty Friedan, and yes, at Ronald Reagan who now looms as large as he does genial and decent, and wonder why the 21st century is so bereft of leaders who can lay claim to being singular.
Even corporate chieftains and titans have recently been diminished. Bob Iger’s highly anticipated comeback has not turned out especially well; Bill Gates has been outed for being human; Elon Musk has made a mockery of himself; Jamie Dimon has not moved on despite getting long in the tooth; and Mary Barra has been obliged to eat crow.
And how about the presidents of some of our most vaunted institutions of higher education – Harvard, Penn, and MIT? At a recent congressional hearing each badly embarrassed themselves and the institutions they presumed to represent. Since then one has been canned, and another is under constant fire. Only the third, the leader of MIT, seems for the moment safe in her slot.
Whatever your views on Joe Biden or Donald Trump, stunning that the system is so stuck we’re stuck with this choice. Stunning that the Speaker of the House is a right-wing extremist. Stunning that the median age of members of the Senate is over 65. Stunning that the mayor of New York City is widely perceived unethical as well as incompetent. Stunning that the percent of U.S. Governors who are women is still less than 20%. Stunning that the Supreme Court is tarnished by allegations of corruption and at least one decision so archaic it reversed a right long since secured. Stunning that only about 15% of Americans trust the government in Washington to do what is right “most of the time.”
How did we get here? A partial list:
- Trajectory of history. For hundreds of years leaders in liberal democracies have gotten weaker and followers stronger.
- Changes in culture. Leaders in liberal democracies are no longer protected by a mantle of authority. Praising them is out; debasing them is in. Moreover, we feel emboldened and even entitled to peer not only into their public lives but into their private ones. Nothing now is off limits.
- Death of civics – and civility. Civics is no longer taught or, at least, not taught nearly as extensively as it used to be. And civility is positively old-fashioned. It’s clear our national discourse has been badly coarsened.
- Color of money. The money made by top leaders in the private sector now far, far, far outstrips that made by leaders in the public sector. It always did – but the chasm between them has become humongous.
- Ubiquity of social media. This has meant among other things: the spread of misinformation and disinformation; increased threats of violence as a tool of political power; attention spans shrinking to the point of near vanishing; and constant preaching, or yelling and screaming, though only to the choir.
- Diminishment of the liberal arts. Why study history or philosophy? Or literature or art or music? It’s become a cliché to say that in important ways our schools are failing us. But they are – in ways that explain the lack of leaders who have “the vision we need.”
- Absence of shared values. The single best example of this is truth telling. Most of us continue to teach our children, at home and at school, not to lie. We tell them that lying is bad and when they lie sometimes certainly, they are punished. But when it comes to leaders, large numbers of us routinely accept lying as a matter of course – no punitive action taken.
Leaders change. Followers change. And the contexts within which leaders and followers are located change. Which is precisely why our leaders are regularly diminished and demeaned. And why our faith in our institutions, in America’s institutions including government, business, schools, religion, media, even the military, is now alarmingly low.
Of course nothing is impermeable. We are not destined to repeat history. Still, to change the course we’re on would require heavy lifting. Do we have it in us? Maybe. Meantime, Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023 was, atypically, not a leader as this word is generally understood. It was Taylor Swift.