[Sosfbay-discuss] Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Tue Apr 17 12:26:35 PDT 2007

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/21233
Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-04-13 15:48. Media

Excerpt:from the book: 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.

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

___________________

JamBoi: Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer
The Green Parties' #1 Blogger
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com

"To the brave belong all things"
Reply from Celts invading the Italian penninsula's when nervous Romans asked. 
approx 400BC

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)

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