By Bob Chambers
I.
Wither our leaders?
This question has troubled me for decades. I have raised it among academic folk, business people, sports persons, and especially politicians at every level. This obsessive interest in the paucity of leadership in our country long ago turned me into a political junkie. It’s one reason my all-too-sprawling private library is packed with volumes about politicos here and abroad, some of them pretty good leaders in the end, but hardly enough of them.
We now seem to be in something of a heyday of dramatic books about politics. Perhaps that’s because our leadership is so pathetic, wherever we look. Failed politicians, ironically, energize angry observers who, in turn, grind out good reading for the rest of us. Since political commentaries are almost invariably ponderings about leadership – what it is, who is good at it, where is it taking us – I want to focus here on three of the most probing recent political studies. Two of these are by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ron Suskind: The Way Of The World: A Story Of Truth And Hope In An Age Of Extremism (2008) and Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, And The Education Of A President (2011). The third book – Game Change: Obmaa And The Clintons, McCain And Palin, And The Race Of A Lifetime (2010) – is co-authored by two of our leading students of politics today, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.
Looked at together, these three volumes, totaling some 1,300 pages in all, offer hundreds of insights into the last dozen political years in America. All the major actors are here – from the Clintons, through the Bushes, to the Obamas – as well as countless lesser ones, including Sarah Palin, John McCain’s unwelcome gift to all of us. In the end, the question above about our leaders remains largely unanswered. Where are they?
From tales of Bush’s stubborn incompetence to Obama’s surprising reluctance to do the things we all expected him to do (at least, the things many of us expected him to do), we are left dangling. The disappearance of true leadership has cast a pall on the United States, and thereby on much of the rest of the world as well. Here we are saddled with a shamefully inept Congress, a shambling White House, and an aging and divisive Supreme Court. And this crippling anemia has spread. Are the Europeans, the Asians, the Africans, the Aussies, any better off than those of us here in the Americas? The sole politician anywhere today who seems capable of providing even a dollop of inspiration is Boris Johnson, the zany mayor of London, who’s wowing ’em at the Olympics. Just ask the Queen. She loves him!
But read on!
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Posted on August 1, 2012
