Where the Leaders Are
Who do you trust in American life?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this for the last number of years. Recently, it has been around the pandemic – who do Americans trust for their medical advice? But it’s been on my mind for a while.
I’m 46, so the list of people that comes to mind for me is a little bit dated: Oprah, Warren Buffett, Tom Hanks. In an earlier generation you would have listed TV journalists like Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. Today, by the numbers Joe Rogan has to be up there.
Of course, our politics shapes who we trust and admire. The most admired Americans according to Gallup are the Obamas and Trump, with various other political figures making the list separated by party. After them it’s a steep dropoff.
On the podcast with Zach this week, I noted that we have something of a leadership vacuum in American life. I have a theory as to why that is. The market forces are so strong today that they shape our behavior in just about every aspect of our lives and careers – certainly in politics and the media. Success means doing what the market demands. If you do more of it, you do better.
Yet true leadership probably, in many environments, would mean the opposite. Think about the brave whistleblower or the conscientious objector.
There is an essay penned by William Deresiewicz in the American Scholar delivered to cadets at West Point that laid out the case very convincingly:
We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we don’t have are leaders.
What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.
Take the time to read the essay in its entirety – it’s powerful stuff.
We like to think that the person who goes against the grain is then prized and elevated. Sometimes they are. But just as often, we read a headline about them and then they disappear, or there is no headline. The truth is that going along and getting along, as Deresiewicz puts it, is not just the path of least resistance – it’s often the path to market-based rewards.
Leadership, in my mind, often means walking away from short-term rewards and staking out your own path.
The Forward Party is now about six weeks old. One of the joys of the past six weeks has been meeting like-minded people who have been operating in the political wilderness for a number of years. People who have been agitating for non-partisan open primaries like John Opdycke or ranked choice voting like Rob Richie, or for a fairer more representative government like Nick Troiano or Josh Silver, or for a better set of political incentives like Katherine Gehl. These are people who have been making a difficult case for years with little reward. Most of them left the well-lit marketplace of politics to fight for a cause that few cared about because they believed it is the public good.
They are, in other words, people with real vision. Leaders. Some of the best I’ve met.
Making common cause with them is a lot of fun.
One of my knacks, I believe, is that I recognize leadership when I see it. I’m attracted to it and emboldened by it. I hope you are too.
Of course, you don’t need to start an organization to be a leader. Sometimes, just sending your friend an article or starting a conversation is exactly the right step. Every person I've met who has professed excitement for the Forward Party has been phenomenal. I can't wait for there to be more of us and to get us all together in an arena or conference hall.
The country needs more leaders in a very difficult time. Let’s provide them.
- Andrew
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