The phrase “crisis of leadership” is commonplace. Not so much its obvious obverse, “crisis of followership.”
Is such a thing even possible? Can it be that followers trigger a crisis – or themselves constitute a crisis – not leaders?
It is, it can. Americans have ample evidence right now. In the U.S. House of Representatives in which members of the majority Republican Party have been unable to agree on who should be their leader. On who should be Speaker of the House of Representatives.
On one level the situation in which House Republicans find themselves is just a few days old. It was only on October 5 that the former Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted by a handful of his right-wing Republican colleagues (who did the deed by joining with House Democrats). But on another level, it goes back to when McCarthy was first elected Speaker – which he succeeded in doing only by granting his ostensible followers the power absurdly easily to push him from his perch.
Finally, is yet another level which goes back even further, to when Ohio Republican John Boehner, who became Speaker in 2011, found that members of the Tea Party – again, Republican right-wingers – made it impossible for him to do what he presumably was elected to do, to lead. Though Boehner tried every which way to accommodate his right flank, to minimize differences between mainstream Republicans such as himself and Tea Partiers, they made his life impossible. They refused to follow – which is precisely why, four years after he became Speaker, Boehner resigned. A lifelong politician, he quit politics completely and indefinately.
It took just eight House Republicans (who joined with Democrats) to depose Speaker McCarthy. Eight Republicans out of a total of two-hundred and twenty-one. Among them was Floridian Matt Gaetz, a right-wing flame-thrower for whom the noun “follower,” and the verb “follow,” seem not to exist. People like him loathe following, they despise going along to get along, they equate it with weakness. Instead of doing what they perceive as caving they are ready and willing to Burn Down the House.
Americans are taught that leaders are all-important and that followers are unimportant. Nothing, but nothing, could be further from the truth. Leadership is a relationship. A leader without followers is powerless to act, to get anything accomplished. Moreover, followers who refuse as a matter of principle to follow will certainly gum up the works. Preclude even the work that must get done – say, approving appropriation bills to avoid a government shutdown – from getting done. To be clear, there are times when followers can and should resist people in power. But in the American system of government, when resistance becomes recalcitrance, and recalcitrance hardens into refusal, the system breaks down.
As further evidence consider the case of Alabama Republican, Senator Tommy Tuberville, who for months has single handedly blocked key military confirmations, promotions, and appointments. The reason he has given for his outrageous intervention is his objection to the Pentagon’s policy on abortions. But the net effect of his refusal to go along with the overwhelming majority has been badly to hinder what should be a source of great American pride, the American military.
Tuberville is most certainly not a leader – not one of his colleagues has followed his lead. Rather he, like Gaetz, is a wretched example of an elected official who fails totally to understand the importance of following in the interest of the greater, the common, good.