[Vision2020] Fw: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?]

[Sue Hovey]

Subject: [Fwd: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?]






Excerpt: Where Have All the Leaders
Gone?


By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's
happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody
murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right
over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't
even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of
getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians
say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is
America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums
out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and
maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country
anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore
the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of
lies.Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the
wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are
not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq,
the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the
press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the
promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.

I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't call
yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and
willing to have. My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're
eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to, as
soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them
to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I
think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight
shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least
it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they
don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their
interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us. Who Are These
Guys, Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in
Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least some of us did. But I'll
tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We
didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are
sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from
that's a dictatorship, not a democracy. And don't tell me it's all the fault
of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually
lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not
just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and
ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us
stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln?
What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was
a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and
made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

*The Test of a Leader*
I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few
things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points, not ten (I
don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine
Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious
qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the
current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be
around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the
polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the
candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose
wisely.

So, here's my C list:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the
"Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because
the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never
reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this
right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a
newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether
we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush
disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped
through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas,
he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know
he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either
you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006
election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the
polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he
should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on
the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but
even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was
calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something
different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on
never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God
forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly
messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation
he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was
in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President, the explosive
mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the
oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was
sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr.
President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know
all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's
shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He
told Bush,"Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure
didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.
Leadership is all about managing change, whether you're leading a company or
leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe
Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business
School.<http://www.bullnotbull.com/gallery/g-bush-harvard-mba.html>

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth
or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the
truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk
straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince
us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's
denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while.
Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful.
The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of
communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at
the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties
and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference
between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham
Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power."
George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush
has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he
has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He
has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi
citizens) to their deaths. For what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge
his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his
daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable,
and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does
not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for
female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George
Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like
a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the
twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a
commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know
it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the
audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called
town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted
fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION, a fire in your belly. You've
got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do
you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number
of vacation days taken by a U.S. President, four hundred and counting. He'd
rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of
governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency
so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked
lake. It's
no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in
2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President
Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect
to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But
Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not
leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma
is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to
inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition
of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue
or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our
planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy
pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with
world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an
unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came
up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right
through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to
know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround
yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our
first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks
to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social
Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price
tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a
problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on
the back burner.

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie
Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car
business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East
Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a
huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee,
the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to
reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a
dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have
common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know,
Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished
Bush. Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic
home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world,
and I like it here." I think our current President should visit the real
world once in a while.

*The Biggest C is Crisis** *Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is
forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the
desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've
never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your
world comes tumbling down. On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader
more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us
out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet
goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting
there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape.
You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back
to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked
people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White
House. He basically went into hiding for the day, and he told Vice President
Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our
TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were
going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days
to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero. That was
George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when
he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq, a road his own
father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't
listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being
faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you,I
don't know what will.

*A Hell of a Mess.*
So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for
winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the
history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while
our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas
prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy.
Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is
being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders
gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people
of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a
sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

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? Had Enough? Hey, I'm
not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a
fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my
lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest
moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises, the Great
Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the
Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years
culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get
anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take
action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for
our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising
in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in
America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake
off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough



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