In my recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse, I wrote that “Bad leadership and followership are not static. They develop over time: they go from bad to worse. But they go from bad to worse only if we allow it. If in contrast, bad leaders and followers are checked before they corrupt, at least before they corrupt completely, the outcome can be different.”
Seems the apparently bad Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has just been stopped. He’s certainly been stopped in his tracks.
Click on the link below and you’ll see my piece about Hizzoner the Mayor. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago when it started to seem clear that he was other than pure as the driven snow. And now this headline sprawled across the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, “ADAMS CHARGED WITH BRIBERY AND FRAUD”!
Specifically, he has been charged with bribery conspiracy, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions. The sums involved are not – certainly not by today’s exorbitant standards – great. But the picture the indictments paint is a sordid one, with corruption apparently endemic to large swaths of the Adams administration. Moreover, in at least one case – involving a fire inspection – were potentially dangerous consequences.
Like everyone else Adams is innocent until proven guilty. But until this drama plays out it is his constituents, and the great city they inhabit, who will pay the price for what is at a minimum, his carelessness and incompetence. Still, it’s much, much better than the alternative – an alternative in which bad would have been permitted to persist.
—————————————————