Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Lee Iacocca unfurls a righteous rant at Borders that demands an answer to the question we should all be asking: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem.

The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.

What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Amen brother.

But I have news for Lee, its not just America, it is most of the world, and yes, much of it is because the world follows the most powerful economy, and military, because that's what weaker people have to do to survive. So when the CEO of the World Bank boosts his girlfriend to an atmospheric salary, without review, to a job that doesn't even exist there is a bit of throat clearing and shoe inspection but so far, no action and no outrage because what he did was perfectly normal corporate culture and that culture now governs the world.

And onto that corporate bandwagon has jumped every slug, carpetbagger, crook and inconvenient son in every country for good reason; it pays really well and, with just a little luck you can NEVER be held responsible for your screw-ups. In fact, with a little luck, you fail upwards and what could be more attractive than that?

Whether you are the failing CEO of GM, or Goerge W Bush, or Tony Blair and John Howard, you can get it wrong again and again, you can recommend that the failed policy be repeated with more force until it succeeds and you will get a standing ovation plus a bonus.

And Lee Iacocca is not innocent in this. He wasn't satisfied with running a business, he pretended to be able to tell other people how they too, could become bigshot bosses. And some of the very people he rants about took what he wrote and used it to their own ends and used HIM as the authority.

Like teaching and juggling and sculpture, you can learn to be more competent with your natural skill level, but if you ain't a born teacher or juggler or artist, or CEO or politician you will never be a leader in that field.

Instead you cope, or in modern parlance, you manage and right now, as we front up to the most radical changes any human generation has ever had to deal with, we are in the hands of copers. No wonder Mr I is having a fit.

Comments

[Keith Henson]

"Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem."

Believe it or not, all three are entangled.

The technology needed for health (molecular nanotechnology) is the same sort that indirectly lets us solve the energy crisis. And if we solve that, the revenue from energy pays down the debt and pays for social security.

"as we front up to the most radical changes any human generation has ever had to deal with"

We better be up to the task. The alternative is the population falling back to level that can be sustained without extra energy input. What combination of wars, starvation and disease will do the job is not certain, but the end result is.

Keith Henson