On Real Leadership

I did not support Trump among his Republican challengers back in 2015-16. Had I been the Republican Party, I would have gone with Jeb Bush. The conventional choice. I privately endorsed Trump in the general, but through gritted teeth. Ironically, I feared that if Hillary were elected, we would all have to go through the turmoil of an impeachment investigation. Over her emails. Which also suggested, it seemed to me, background collusion with either Russia or China. Mere incompetence did not seem a sufficient explanation.

By now, like many others, I am inclined to think that Trump has been an unusually good president. Not just because of a prosperous economy. He knows how to make deals. And that turns out to be an extremely valuable asset in a president.

I did not support Ronald Reagan, either, back in his primary runs. In 1976, sticking with an incumbent president, Gerald Ford, seemed obviously the right path for the Republicans. Even though I would have voted, instead, for almost any Democrat. In the 1980 Republican primaries, I thought they should have gone with George (HW) Bush. In the general, I would have preferred Reagan to Carter, but again, by default.

It shows how wrong I can be.

But not just me. Reagan came to power only due to exceptional circumstances. Trump’s rise was also exceptional: he won the general by a hair, and defying all predictions. So was Lincoln’s—the presidency was his first significant public office. So was Churchill’s, pulled in from the wilderness in a general emergency. Even after he saved the world in the Second World War, people were reluctant to vote for him.

Why are we all like this? Why do we actually resist voting for the best leaders?

I am drawn to this reflection by the odd refusal by the Dems to give Tulsi Gabbard their attention and support. It seems bizarre and almost suicidal to go instead for obvious old hacks like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.

It is, surely, a love of the familiar. The same instinct that brings us xenophobia. People move along in their accustomed mental ruts, and there is an instinctive fear of anything outside them: fear of the unknown.

The problem is that Gabbard, like Reagan or Churchill, does not simply parrot the expected line on the issues. Yet this is a necessary trait in a leader: that they think for themselves, and have core principles.

You see the same thing in the arts—perhaps in all human endeavor. People resist anything that is genuinely fresh and new. They do not want their accustomed ways disturbed. They want décor.

And I, it seems, on the evidence of Trump or Reagan, am as bad on this as everyone.

But then too, there is a reason for this. At least sometime this gut conservatism is wise; that is probably why we have it. It is a good survival mechanism to mistrust the unfamiliar.

Hitler, too, was a leader who came out of nowhere and who seemed to be saying something both new and principled. Or Mao. If some large, impressive, and previously unknown creature emerges from the nearby forest, it is wise to be cautious.

If we could figure out how to make the distinction, between the principled genius and the dangerous demagogue, it would be the key to a great improvement in the human condition.

I think there is a distinction. Leaders like Hitler or Mao looked as though they were acting on principle, but actually had no principles. They were driven only by power. They chose their new principles only strategically to appeal in a time of turmoil. William Manchester, who followed his rise closely, noticed that Hitler said something completely different to each audience--whatever he expected they most wanted to hear. This is why Nazi ideology has always been hard to pinpoint. Mao, similarly, was in no way consistent in terms of which faction he supported within the CCP.

So the best test is a moral test: if a candidate has visibly done something that seems to go against their own career interest, on what seems a matter of principle, they are probably the real deal.

Churchill is an obvious example of this, in his principled opposition to dealing with Hitler and the Nazis, in his warnings of impending war. I think Tulsi Gabbard is also in this category: she hurt her career as a rising Democrat star last cycle by dissenting from the efforts of the DNC to fix the primaries for Clinton. Trump perhaps qualifies with his attacks on the press and political correctness. They have turned out well for him, but is he so savvy as to have foreseen this, or was he just determined to do it anyway?

On this same test, I think Maxime Bernier is the real deal in the current Canadian election. He did not seem to be thinking strategically in coming out against supply management. It is supposed to be an unpopular stand in Quebec. He definitely seemed to buck his own best interests in terms of seeking power by splitting from the Conservatives a year ago. In the normal run of politics, we would have expected Scheer to lose the next election, resign, and then Bernier would be the front-runner to replace him. He gave that up, apparently on principle.

I wonder if they could still coax him back, if Scheer comes up short.

On this same test, the Liberals, if they lose their majority or worse, ought to turn to Jody Wilson-Raybould or Jane Philpott as new leader.