Don’t take me to your leader

It does not always end well

Below is a column from the August, 2013 much missed Sturbridge Times Magazine that was a casualty of the Pandemic. We aver that it has not aged badly. We have added at the end a discussion of one of the acclaimed great world statesmen and how his genius did age badly.

Anyway, posting it just for fun.

Don’t take me to your leader

By Richard Morchoe

There are many qualities that are overrated, but none more so than leadership.  In fact, leadership, if relied on too much will eventually be fatal to those who are led.  Even if it does not lead to physical demise, the propensity to always follow a leader sooner or later leads to ruin.

Now we are not talking about following the boss’s orders.  People rarely feel their supervisor to be a star and sans paycheck, in most cases, they would not associate.

No, we are talking about the great men of history.  The people acclaimed by their partisans as geniuses as they all too often steer the ship skillfully onto the rocks. 

Up on Long Hill, we came to this conclusion after the review of The Great Deformation that appeared in the July, 2013 issue of this magazine.  The author, David Stockman, chronicled the ups and downs of the Federal Reserve under various chairmen.

Some of the Fed’s leaders were able while others, with similar educations and prior accomplishments, failed to varying degrees.  Our current fiscal mess is the result of the two incompetents who succeeded the courageous and brilliant Paul Volcker.  Thus, The Long Hill Institute for Organizational Studies (LHIfOS) has formulated a law that states, Any organization that relies on leadership must eventually face catastrophe.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s do a few examples.  Napoleon may be considered the greatest general of all times, maybe also the greatest leader.  His men loved and were willing to die for him, and they did.  Bonaparte loved France, but like most great leaders, he loved himself a lot more.  He believed he could do it all.  The fatal flaw is that the person who believes it never knows when to stop.  Russia and Waterloo solved that.

You can’t have a column denigrating leadership and not mention Hitler.  Boy, did he lead, inspiring absolute devotion in the faithful.  If ever there was a charismatic guy, it was Dolph.  The lesson, charisma is kind of a Jedi mind trick.

Alexander the Great, wasn’t just great, even more than Muhammad Ali, he could claim to be the greatest.  Grabbed a lot of land in a short time.  Died at 33 years of age.  His companions broke up the empire, murdering his wife and heir, the perils of leaderhood.  Great library, though.

The US, being a democracy should not go in for the worship of the military conqueror.  True, a Caesar or Alexander has not arisen, but that does not mean we do not adulate the jefe Máximo.  In the paper, War and Presidential Greatness, economists David Henderson and Zachary Gochenour have studied what causes a president to be judged great.

So, what does it take to be considered in the top rank of presidents?  According to the authors, “We find a strong positive correlation between the number of Americans killed during a presidents time in office and the president‘s rating. “ 

There you have it.  Make sure a lot of your countrymen die and you will live forever, or your rep will.  One may argue that desperate times bring out great men and the casualties are inevitable.  That may be true in some cases.   Usually, it’s not so much the war finds the man, but the man finds the war.

Case in point, Woodrow Wilson and World War I.  He spent his first administration not getting involved in the murderous conflict waging in Europe.  The campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war” got him re-elected.  Scarcely a month back in office and he asked congress to declare war on Germany for sinking British shipping.  Kind of a contrived rationale, but when you figure you are the man to end war and make the world safe for democracy, why quibble.

None of the goals were achieved.  His League of Nations was useless.  In the end, there was nothing to compensate the 100,000 dead boys, and yet learned men and woman consider him a great president.  Well, I once heard that an intellectual is someone who got good grades, and I didn’t so my wee voice is meaningless.

Though his plans did not work out, his actions had an immense impact on subsequent events.  Had America not jumped into WWI, in all likelihood, the German monarchy would have survived and Hitler would have gone to his death raving in a Bavarian old soldiers home.*  That’s right folks, without Woody, there would have been no Dolph.  Ain’t leadership grand?

Okay, I know you’re thinking.  Someone has to run things.  I grant you, a ship needs a captain, but maybe not a fuehrer.  There is an example of a country that has not been enamored of the great man.  In the middle ages, Switzerland beat up any of the acclaimed military commanders who thought them an easy mark.  The Swiss pikemen were so famous as fighters, all the other countries hired them.  The same infantry still guard the Vatican.

Name a famous Swiss conqueror?  Can’t be done.   The system worked so well, the leader was almost irrelevant.  They have continued that tradition even though it meant missing out on all the slaughter of the last century and the noble adventures of this.

Our system is our system and is not going to undergo a huge change in the foreseeable future unless it becomes unavoidable.  So, we are stuck with whoever comes along.  Is there any hope?  Not according to the greatest observer of our democratic experiment, Alexis De Tocqueville.  His work, Democracy in America, is still the gold standard for commentary on our society.  Below is his characterization of who does and does not run,

“The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own. The vast number of very ordinary men who occupy public stations is quite as attributable to these causes as to the bad choice of democracy. In the United States I am not sure that the people would choose men of superior abilities even if they wished to be elected; but it is certain that candidates of this description do not come forward.”

As someone who once held an unpaid elective position, all I can say is ouch.  Still, it is a thought that I can’t cavil with.  After all, does anyone think that either Presidents Obama or Bush is more intelligent than, say, a Warren Buffett?

The inventors of the wheel and printing press to name merely two have done more for humanity than any president, king, general or potentate ever did.  To be fair, we can blame none of the men who have occupied the Oval Office for the Chia Pet or Crocs.

*This is not original; I just don’t remember who said it first.

Pascal Lottaz of Neutrality Studies has published on his substack A Winter’s Tale – The Decline of German Idealism. By Dr. Bita Kahlen. Her piece deserves to be read, and this is not a discussion of that work, which needs nothing from me. Rather it jogged my memory about a man considered maybe the greatest of stateman, but alas could not keep his country from fatal disaster.

Otto von Bismarck worked to unite the German Nation, a patchwork of states and statelets in Middle Europe.

I was never obsessed by the man, but have read two biographies of Bismarck. The first, Bismarck and the German Empire by Erich Eyck, I was assigned as a student. The second, Bismarck: The Man and Statesman, by A.J.P. Taylor, was a gift that I read while stationed in a place that was so exciting, I read non-stop.

Both were read over 50 years ago, I hardly have an excellent memory, but the man shrewdly unified Germany. When unified, with fancy diplomatic footwork, he kept his European order working until dismissed by Wilhelm jr.

Ludwig’s work of genius, and it was a work of genius, could not be maintained by those who came after him.

True brilliance would have been coming up with something that worked despite successors. Could he have molded Deutschland into one big Switzerland, threatening no one and getting along with everyone? Probably not.

Germany, post-Bismarck, would lose horribly in two wars and have an economic miracle after the second one, so it was all good…or not as Europe is back in the bad old days as the NASDAP is trying to outlaw the SDP.

I have it wrong, it is the AfD that a coalition of rent-seeking parties is working to ban.

Hey, plus ça change anyway.

Just for fun and apropos of nothing, a couple of tributes to genius:

If you watched the Beatles movie Help back in the sixties, there was the Italian-Welsh actor, Victor Spinetti, as Professor Foot who is always declaiming his genius.

At one point, he blurts; “MIT wanted me, wanted me to rule the world.” Well why not?

Also connected to the Beatles is from the 1972 National Lampoon Radio Dinner is a tribute to the non-humility of John Lennon.

Enjoy.