Memorial Day is observed each year on the last Monday in May, to honor those who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Implicitly it also celebrates the ideals for which they fought, especially perhaps democracy. Americans extoll democracy even while they, most of us, do not esteem those who lead our democracy. Nor are we alone in withholding our approval of those who occupy the nation’s highest office. Other leaders of other democracies experience a similar lack of appreciation and support.
As its title suggests, I predicted the trend in my book, The End of Leadership, published in 2012. Still, it’s one thing to make a prediction, it’s another to see it come to pass. It’s another to live in a time in which the American people – and other people in other democracies – are so inordinately reluctant to follow where their leaders lead that it frequently results either in political paralysis or in what seems at least constant bitching and moaning.
Nowhere is this exemplified more vividly than in France. Though President Emmanuel Macron was able ultimately to push through a highly unpopular law mandating the retirement age be pushed from 62 to 64, weeks after the law became a fait accompli, French followers were still hounding and harassing Macron whenever he had the temerity to appear in public. By banging on pots and pans to earsplitting, deafening levels, they effectively said, “You refused to listen to us, now we refuse to listen to you.”
If Macron were alone in experiencing strong resistance to his leadership, it would be one thing. But he is not. As their approval ratings attest, other leaders in other democracies also don’t get much respect not to speak of love.
- Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has an approval rating of 49%.
- American President Joe Biden has an approval rating of 42%.
- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has an approval rating of 39%.
- Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has an approval rating of 34 %.
- Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has an approval rating of 33%.
- Japan’s Prime Minster Fumio Kishida has an approval rating of 31%.
- Macron brings up the rear with an approval rating of 25%.
Of course, there are in such matters some nuances. For example, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi enjoys an apparently splendid approval rating of 78%. But, while India claims to be a democracy, Freedom House ranks it as only “partly free.” Moreover, Modi has changed in recent years. He is increasingly known for using his country’s religious divisions for his own political gain, and for his increasing intolerance of any political opposition.
French followers are an especially recalcitrant lot. But the fact is they have company. Followers in democracies everywhere make it difficult for leaders to lead. To a point this is good. To a point it’s the point of democracies – to give people, all people, a voice. But if the changes in culture and technology are so great that they make leaders weak, render them ineffectual or even impotent, that’s no good.
Over 400,000 American lives were lost in World War II – the greatest number of any war not fought on American soil. Still, no one now argues that against Chancellor Adolf Hitler President Franklin Roosevelt should have kept his powder dry. Leadership is not a luxury.