Presidential Leadership: What We Need in 2020

No doubt, we need a better “leader” for the United States.  On top of all his other sins and shortcomings, the current president has tragically failed to meet the challenge of the Covid-19 crisis, which, in turn, has exacerbated our economic woes (with about 50 million of us unemployed).  And. it has turned the fight for social justice into an increasingly bloody battleground, featuring the unconstitutional use of unidentified military units against American citizens.  As the eminent Yale scholar, Timothy Snyder, has indicated, the not-so-early signs of fascism have reared their ugly heads.

But enough of this.  I know that you need no convincing.  The question then arises: What kind of leader is needed to take on the repair of our society and the great opportunity that lies ahead.  What should we expect In Joe Biden?

To begin, we need great leadership, not a great leader.  Our culture, encouraged by both historians and management consultants, has built our expectations of leadership by a charismatic leader to a dangerous degree.  With each passing generation, the Executive Branch has grown stronger, and Congress has become virtually impotent; cooperation between houses of Congress and between Congress and the President now seems an almost archaic concept.  The current president is a cartoonish and lethal example of the “great leader” theory.  Our Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves had they observed it.

In my view, leadership is not a person but an activity.  It is the ability to accomplish goals, not unilaterally, but by gathering and aligning resources in service of a mission.  Leadership involves more shepherding than orating, more alliance building than bombast.  The style of shepherding can vary from time to time, place to place.  It requires the right person at the right time.  I believe that at this moment, Joe Biden can demonstrate that kind of leadership.

The mission is massive and clear.

• First, defeat Trump.
• Second, wrestle the pandemic to the ground.
• Third, build back the economy.
• Fourth, turn the social justice movement into concrete legislative and cultural action.

Then, we need to:

• Rebuild and democratize our health care system.
• Recover our place in the international orbit.
• Pass the most progressive legislative agenda since 1932.
• Restore the rule of law.
• Help to transform “shareholder capitalism” into a broader economic agenda, including all shareholders, not just stockholders.
• Encourage experimentation, trying new things, succeeding sometimes and failing sometimes, evaluating why and trying again.

This dramatic moment calls for a great shepherd and compromiser—a talented Commoner—with the ability to bring together large, diverse, often conflicting, and frequently aggressive forces in the service of the great mission.

We need leadership capable of and inclined to seize the day, to go with the great political and demographic momentum building among American youth, people of color, women, and other long marginalized and long striving groups.  We need leadership not to invent an agenda but to gather, support, and implement the agenda that is already making itself felt.

We need a practical leader, schooled in getting things done, bringing people together, focusing on their strengths, not on his or her own.  It won’t impede forward movement if this imperfect kind of leadership errs or misspeaks.  It’s the ability to try this and try that—much as FDR did—until solutions emerge.

We want strength in leadership but, to an extent, a strength that emerges as much from vulnerability as from confidence.  Biden, for example, has been characterized as a “conciliatory extrovert,” who combines an outgoing and accommodating nature with strong needs for affiliation and approval.  He seeks friends and allies everywhere.  In his encounters, he exudes good will.  And when conflict emerges, his inclination is to smooth things over, sometimes even at the cost of conceded.  Imagine putting pride on hold to sustain relationships and continue a project!

This leadership style might not fit the traditional American idea of male strength, the powerful, solitary, testosterone-fueled individual, standing tall against all opposition.  That’s a blessing.  But it does speak to the temperament needed to bring people together to achieve shared goals.

Surely it’s no coincidence that the cruelest failures during the pandemic can be found among the world’s manly authoritarians, like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and, of course, Donald Trump.  And great successes have been achieved by the more reasoned, collaborative, and empathic approaches of women, such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern.

Biden’s partnership with Barak Obama may portend effective leadership during these extremely challenging times.  As I understand it, Biden served a number of roles for Obama, one of which was to test ideas and even stir up conflict when necessary.  He’s not afraid to join a fight.  A second was to represent Obama.  This happened a great deal in foreign relations.  In other words, he has the fortitude to take stands in complex situations, and he can represent others.  Third, he stood comfortably behind Obama.

This seems a key for a person shepherding a mission.  He doesn’t have to be “the” person all the time.  He can be second fiddle when it serves shared goals.  When bringing together the many proud and ferocious forces that are roiling our society, this ability to stand behind, to push from behind, to give credit to others—these are critical skills requiring a very different temperament than we normally associate with leaders.

Leadership is not always about moving forward, going with the energy.  One of its vital functions is healing.  In this terrible moment of illness and death and cultural polarization, we need a great healer.  Everything about Biden’s biography suggests that this is one of his strengths.  His own, personal tragedies have enhanced his capacity to feel the suffering of others.  His empathy is palpable.  I can readily imagine his holding weekly fireside chats, reminiscent of FDR.

In order to heal and to align diverse groups, it is essential to share a basic narrative with them.  Biden has risen twice from personal tragedies.  We, as a nation, are down now and we need to rise up.  We need to bring out and bring to bear our best.  The emerging American narrative features a rising tide of women and people of color, rising like Phoenix from the ashes.  The eagerly anticipated handoff from Joe Biden, the American everyman, to a woman of color speaks beautifully to the exuberant future of social and economic justice that many of us proudly imagine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caught in the Gaze of the “Other”

There’s something about being caught in the uncomprehending gaze of another person or group of people.  Particularly when the gaze is dismissive or denigrating or haughty.  And especially if the gaze is hostile. Then it signals danger.  And the danger can range from physical to mental assault.  Anxiety about physical assault is easy enough to understand but the fear of mental assault, at once more oblique and more intense, is harder to explain.  Something about your personality, your ego, being altered or crushed as you look on helplessly.

Most of us share something like these feelings during adolescence, when dismissed by adults for lack of experience and perspective.  Even when we made what we were pretty sure were reasonable, even intelligent arguments, they wouldn’t listen.  They distorted our efforts to fit their preconceived notions.  We might react angrily, but inside we’d also feel ashamed and diminished—and, at least in the moment, we hate them for making us feel that way.

Most women know what I mean.  Immigrants, people with disabilities, “nerdy” boys who failed at sports—many, if not most, people have experiences like this throughout their lives.   While I am the proverbial White man, I have, too.  No one who hasn’t been immersed in these destructive gazes for their entire lives, as Black Americans have, can feel the full destructive power that it holds.  But we can empathize in small ways.

I’d like to share a story from my life that offered me a glimpse into that fearsome power, hoping that you will unearth stories of your own.

It was 1974.  I was consulting with the staff of a New York State reform school, conducting a “retreat” in a cabin in the remote woods just south of Buffalo, New York.  My mission was to help transform the ‘school’ from a punitive to a rehabilitative institution, from a prison to a school.  There were ten, small town White guys at the meeting.  I had been imported by management, who insisted on calling me Dr. Dym, the expert from Boston. The guys hadn’t bought into any part of this exercise and were particularly annoyed because our workshop was taking them away from hunting season.  They agreed to leave their rifles but not their attitudes at the door.

Over the prior few months, I had won over one, young, open-minded guard—call him Andy—and he had been acting as my ally, translating and advocating for my ideas to his colleagues.  I was grateful for his help until that sudden moment when another guard, big and grizzled, stepped in front of Andy, apparently protecting him from me. “What’s going on here?” he said.  I could see the confusion and fear on Andy’s face.  He knew that he had to choose sides and he chose safety.   Pointing at me, he growled: “He’s gay and he’s after me.”

I made the mistake of trying to allay his fears but my soothing tone only seemed to prove his point and to deepen the threat.  Two other men went to Andy’s side. “What the hell are you all about?” one barked.  I tried to explain how men might not be accustomed to talking about their emotions and mistook the talk for something feminine or gay, but it helped to understand ourselves if we wanted the teenage inmates to reach any form of self-awareness.  The guys weren’t having it.  I decided to take the easier course: “I’m not gay,” I told them.  “I’m a married man and I have no designs on Andy.”  But their minds were made up—I was a predatory gay man.  I explained some more. They began to close in on me.  My explanations grew ever more strained and shrill.  As I said, the cabin was remote. No one was coming to my rescue.  I was terrified.

But cornered as I was, I realized my situation was not hopeless.  I had been brought in by the Superintendent, their boss, whose imprimatur conferred some legitimacy on me.  Relying on that imprimatur, on a kind of culturally assigned power, I yelled at them,  “Get the hell back.”  And there must have been some authority in my voice.  They backed off, then left, holding onto Andy, as if his life depended on it, and retrieving their rifles.  But they never stopped believing they had saved him from me.  I never regained their trust, and, 46 years later, I retain some of the fear of that moment.

Throughout my life I have had many, if less dramatic, times when I have been held risoner in someone else’s hostile and denigrating gaze.  And my response has been predictable.  I feel confused, angry, helpless, and prone to irrational behavior.  At rare moments, it has brought me close to violence.  I feel compelled to segregate and console myself with those who are like me.

Generally — at least in my mind — I’ve not “suffered these [arrogant, narrow-minded, shortsighted] fools lightly.”  I have developed a range of strategies to deal with my enemies.  You may recognize them.

First, I try to convince them that they are wrong.  Wrong about me and wrong about themselves.  When reason fails, I have grown often insufferably argumentative and bullying.  When reason fails, as it invariably does, I’ll sometimes “lower” myself and tell my oppressors how harmful they are being, how much they are hurting my feelings or limiting my opportunities.  Here I’m trying to maintain some sort of connection, which seems important,

When those strategies fail, I distance myself, partly to show them that I don’t care about their opinion.  In any case, I need time to lick my wounds.  And since I’m still smarting, I also need time and space to devise my next strategy.

But distance, even isolation, does not sufficiently soothe my hurt and indignation.  So I revile my “observers.”  If they can blame me, I can blame them.  I can fix them in my gaze and paint them as evil.  If I can tar them convincingly, I sometimes feel better about myself.  But even as I play out this strategy, I know that I remain defensive and vindictive.  And sometimes, when I’m at my best, I let go.  I focus on myself and my friends and my work.  I live my life, independently.  I determine my own goals and act on them.

There are times when, in spite of feeling criticized, I can see the merit in other people’s positions, however hostile they are towards me.  There were “consciousness raising” groups during the 1970’s that invited me in, presumably to explain what men were really about.  But they had their own ideas and nothing I said changed them.  In fact, the more I explained, the more I seemed and then became defensive, thus proving their points.  Nor, I think, was I sufficiently able to humble myself in those moments in order to fully learn what they were telling me.  There were race-relations groups that I facilitated during the 1970’s and 1980’s that almost exactly replicated my experience with the women.  I see now that my role of neutral facilitator was inappropriate.

It may take me time but sometimes, when I see at least the kernel of merit in the gaze of others, I am able to pull back and learn. Then I enter a strange state of purposeful passivity, where I try my best not to filter what I’m learning through my traditional lenses.  Then, and I think this is key, if I have learned something new, I understand that I have to act differently.  Understanding is not enough.  In the beginning, new actions may feel forced, inauthentic to me, but I have to keep at it until it feels right— both to me and to the “other.”

I have had a very hard time with this process, with learning from people who I think are looking down or cross-eyed at me.  But here’s the key: if I can free myself from feeling dominated by their gaze, I am able to learn.

 

 

 

 

To Choose One’s Own Way

Reflecting on his time in a Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankl wrote about “The last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  The time of Covid-19 isn’t the worst of times but it is chaotic, confusing, frightening and full of deprivations; and each of us must find a attitude that helps us to live as well as we can.

Friends and acquaintances of mine have chosen or fallen into many different attitudes or stances.  I’d like to mention a few so that you might better orient yourselves.

Defense. There is a powerful drive to protect ourselves, to pull inward, to barricade our homes and our minds against real and potential danger, and against the flood of information, often contradictory, often terrifying, that comes rushing out of the media that we have invited into our homes.  Those of us who take this position may assume a reclusive life, shuttering ourselves in our homes.  We choose to have less contact with people and information, and hope that this all passes as quickly as possible.

Passivity. Passivity is a close cousin to playing defense.  We say that “it’s all too much.”  The days seem long and lonely.  We wonder how we will fill them.  We even try to shut out the loneliness by turning off our minds as much as possible, through TV and comfort novels or by cleaning our closets many times over. Of course, this attitude may be the one most available to older, retired people and those who live alone and are out of work—people who have no one depending on their daily efforts.

A philosophical point of view.  A slight but more dignified variation on passivity is taking a philosophical point of view. “The universe is impossible to predict,” we say.  “I’m not in a position of power.  So there’s nothing I can do.  Maybe it’s always been this way, and these crises simply make it clear.  I’ll roll with the punches.  I’m just being realistic.”

The world is complex.  This is another “reasonable” and distancing perspective, but with a slightly positive cast.  “It’s good, it’s bad,” we say of our turbulent world.  “We can have a small impact here and there–though not in a big way.  But there are many—many—good things about the world, too.  My family is relatively healthy.  We still have a home.  There seem to be good people, like the protesters, making as much if not more noise than the bad people.  If we can hold all of this complexity in our mind at once, we’ll know how to respond to each individual thing, without feeling deceived by trends that don’t go our way.  And we might feel a little wise.”

Fear and anxiety.  Some of us are mainly frightened and anxious in the midst of the chaos.  Often, we don’t exactly know why we have reacted this way.  We don’t know what to do.  So we hunker down.  We find a bunker in our homes, in our minds.  We may be inclined to medicate ourselves with prescription drugs, street drugs, or alcohol.  Maybe with infinite hours of TV.  We want to be rescued but we doubt it will happen.

Optimism.  There are people I know—myself, for instance—who live in a defiantly optimistic universe.  This is an attitude born of the idea that you can talk the talk until you can walk the walk.  We say that crises, however dangerous, present opportunities.  We imagine the Democrats taking the Presidency and both houses of Congress, primed with a more-than-usual progressive agenda, ready to take on the pandemic, racism, and disparities of wealth.  And Ruth Bader Ginsberg holds on until the election is settled.

Tending our own garden.  Some of us say that we don’t and can’t know what will happen.  We can’t depend on the external world. We need to find a way within ourselves to feel alive.  We have things we like to do, and enough people to connect with.  We tend our own gardens and shut down worldly expectations.  Let the world pass us by because history will do so anyway.  Like Thoreau, we will find peace amidst the chaos and corruption of our society.

Rapt and ready attention.  Some of us are rapt with world events.  We say, for instance, “This is a world-changing moment. It’s difficult but exciting.  Maybe the most exciting moment in recent history.  I need to be a vigilant and intelligent observer. Maybe I’ll remain an observer but I may be called to do something of value.”

This brief list that I’ve compiled hardly exhausts the ways that we try to make sense of the world.  I can imagine others and you can too.  No doubt most of us can identify with some part of each of these attitudes.  I can.

Those of you who know me, though, know that I greatly prefer three: the optimistic one, the rapt one, and the self-centered one.  And, among the three, I prefer the optimistic one.  It simply makes me feel better and more like myself. What about you?