Only Dopes Need Leaders

At the end of the Clinton administration, Lewis Black said something on one of his specials that stuck with me. He said, “If the last eight years proves anything, it’s that we function pretty well without a leader.”

Several years later, political satirist Barry Crimmins would put a finer point on that sentiment. I interviewed him toward the beginning of the primary season, when the sheer breadth of lunacy was hard to imagine. “This thing is always called a search for leaders – ‘America wants a new leader,’” he said. “I don’t want any leader, I don’t need a leader. Dopes need leaders. I need a public servant.”

That’s a novel idea, that a leader is in some way beholden to the people he leads. After eight years of signing statements and “you’re either with us or you’re against us,” it’s an extremely useful idea. When a public servant is doing their job, they are engaged with a populace that is actively talking back.

The pretense of election day is that we are choosing a leader. There has been a lot of talk of three a.m. phone calls and foreign policy experience, who has been tested in a crisis, who will be tested in a crisis (thanks, Joe). It makes us feel comfortable, absolves from paying attention. If we elect someone we can trust, we can all go back to sleep.

Leadership is a big industry in America. It’s a value we don’t question. We read books on business leadership, in the Boy Scouts they teach us to be leaders. The people we admire are captains of industry or fashion leaders. It’s a romantic ideal, that among us there are people who can take us bravely into places we have not been before.

But inevitably, our leaders disappoint us. And the only feeling better than picking a leader is condemning an unworthy former leader caught at the height of their inadequacy. The more someone claims they want to lead us, the more they have to compromise to get to their goal.

You can compare John McCain ’08 to John McCain 2000 and find all the little pockets of compromise, the things that he found would have made a difference in that previous run if he had been more willing to budge. What could have been, if he were more willing to cave to the religious right in 2000, instead of calling them “agents of intolerance?” He likes to talk about how “the surge is working” in Iraq, but in 2004, he was wholeheartedly stumping for the Bush crew, the architects of the shortsighted policies he now claims he railed bravely against. Ask him if he’s had a chuckle with the former Bush advisors who rescued his candidacy from the dead over the “McCain has a black baby” strategy from the 2000 Bush campaign they worked on.

Obama has had these problems, as well, albeit to a lesser degree. He has included offshore drilling in his plans, something both he and McCain had said wouldn’t help. He buckled on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to appear more moderate. His list is a bit shorter, but still worthy of note.

None of these actions seem terribly leader-like. And maybe that’s because leadership is an arbitrary ideal. It’s a big shiny symbol we can all gather around and warm ourselves from the more terrifying prospects – some manufactured, some real, mixed until we can’t tell the difference – of the world around us.

I spoke with former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the subject, and told him Crimmins statement, “Dopes need leaders. I need a public servant.”

“I don’t disagree,” said Ritter. “Again, when we say ‘we need leaders,’ basically we’re saying, ‘we need messiahs, we need Stalins, Lenins, Maos.’ We don’t need that. We need people who are committed to a system of beliefs and values. That’s why I’m a Constitutionalist, I believe in the Constitution. And we need people to believe in that. Now, within that, you need leaders. But we don’t need people to come in and say, ‘Follow me, I am the solution.’ We need people to say, ‘Hey, let me remind you, we’ve got this thing called the Constitution and we need to start adhering to this. We need to make sure that that which it espouses is being followed through. We need people to commit and invest.’”

Ritter has some experience in an environment where leadership is an important issue. He has served in the U.S. Army and as an intelligence officer in the Marines, in which capacity he was an advisor in the first Gulf War. For the past decade, Ritter has been an outspoken activist concerning U.S. and U.N. policy in Iraq, even producing a sort of instructional manual in last year’s Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement.” The book advocates informed citizen involvement and an adherence to the Constitution, which makes for a non-standard definition for leadership.

“A leader, I can come in and become a leader and get lemmings to march off a cliff. Is that leadership? The other thing about leadership is, the screamer, the yeller, get in the face, the intimidator – that’s not leadership, that’s an intimidator. A leader is somebody who gets a group of like-minded people together and works with that team, as part of the team. A leader is a member of a team. I mention in the book, you can’t be a good leader unless you’re a good follower, first. You have to understand the importance of give and take. A leader isn’t making decisions, a leader is simply facilitating the will of the collective. And that’s what we need – we need a collective that agrees upon what it stands for, and then we need facilitators. If you want to call them leaders then so be it.”

Fear, of course, negates the equation of which Ritter speaks. And fear can take just about any form these days. Fear of the gas pump. Fear of terrorism. Fear of radical ideas. Fear of losing your house, your stocks, your job, or whatever meager savings people have been able to put away. Leadership implies direction, which requires rational thought on the part of both the leader and the followers.

That’s where dissent comes in. Any healthy system provides for dissent, and no true leader is threatened by it. If you believe in anything only because you’re afraid of the alternative, you are no longer participating in a democratic process. And there is no leadership.

Author Steve Almond has been a sharp critic of the Bush administration and of what he calls the “cult of personality” of right wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity. He believes the faux patriotic rhetoric plays to an insecure population for whom confidence is more important than content.

“They need Big Poppa,” he says. “They need a big person who’s going to at least play the part of ‘invulnerable leader.’ That’s not moral leadership, it’s emotional leadership. But it’s a kind of twisted, bad parenting emotional leadership. And it says, ‘The world is simple, you just punch the other guy before he punches you.’ Kind of this brawling mentality.”

The election season is especially maddening for Almond, particularly watching the media coverage. “It’s too bad that the political system caters to the big macho, posturing, who’s going to have the best sound bite, who’s going to really knock who out in the debates, and you’re like, shut the fuck up you crazy, psychotic media idiots,” he says. “It’s not about that. It’s really about trying to solve the common problems of the state and its citizens, especially its disenfranchised citizens. It’s very sad to see that degraded day after day.”

What might also help is if people knew that there aren’t just two candidates running for president. Bob Barr is on the ticket for the Libertarians, Ralph Nader is running as an independent, Chuck Baldwin with the Constitution Party, Cynthia McKinney with the Green Party, Brian Moore from the Socialist Party, and numerous others. The fact that you didn’t see any of them in the nationally televised debates means that some significant voices and ideas were left out of the spotlight, partly because the main two choices didn’t want to share.

Of those two – Obama and McCain – one will get the job they want today. Both of them want to be your leader. Hopefully, neither of them will be, at least the way the term has been defined lately. Hopefully, one of them will be a public servant, and you know what direction you want to go.

“I don’t need a leader to tell me I need health care,” says Barry Crimmins. “I’ve got a pain in my side that tells me that.”

OC-ed: The Experience Issue

Hillary Clinton's supposed turnaround last week hung on her asking the rhetorical question, when the phone rings in the White House at 3am, who do you want to answer? Although that seems more like a qualification for Accoutemps than president, Clinton's point was that Barack Obama just doesn't have the experience to be president. Apparently, four more years in Congress really makes all the difference between two laywers who want to rule the free world.

As usual, Barry Crimmins offers a whip-smart perspective on the issue.

OC-Ed: Talkin' Hillary

Last night, I was watching results from the New Hampshire primary on MSNBC somewhat bleary-eyed while working late on writing assignments. It was entertaining enough to watch the speculation, the most amusing of which was the “weather theory” – the warm weather helped get all the old people who support Hillary Clinton and who are generally afraid of a fifteen degree temperature change out to the polls. This was either an overlooked “not so sturdy” demographic or somewhere in the halls of research that pundits use to analyze the habits of primary voters, there’s a big folder marked “what happens if it’s sixty degrees” that finally came into play.

After 66% of the vote was in, Clinton was ahead 39% to 36%, which made MSNBC comfortable in projecting Clinton the winner. Apparently, 34% of the vote couldn’t make a 3% difference, but then again, I’m the kind of guy who watches the last second of every football game even if the team I’m rooting for is down by three touchdowns.

After this projection was made, Keith Olbermann interviewed Jay Carson, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign. Carson was ecstatic with the win (at some point in the evening, someone called it the greatest comeback in American political history), and said the people of New Hampshire had answered the questions “who can be the best president” and “who can win in November” with “a resounding Hillary Clinton.”

Just as I was pondering what a “resounding Hillary Clinton” translates into in real world terms, Carson offered the following:

“She got out there, she made the case that the American people and people of New Hampshire need talk and not just action and the people responded. We’re gonna have a great night, and we’re gonna go on. We’re going to keep on fighting, we’re gonna fight all the way through February fifth, and we feel the whole country is going to respond to that message.”

I laughed out loud at the gaffe, which Carson didn’t notice. For a moment, I was pondering whether Clinton had suddenly turned honest about her campaign rhetoric. Then Carson almost said it a second time, but finally caught himself, “People want talk – people want action, not just talk after seven years of George Bush.”

Honesty is often inadvertent. This election, the American people truly need talk and not just action. They should be well sated by November.

OC-Ed: He Sells Sanctuary

If you think the word “sanctuary” is scary, Mitt Romney is your candidate. Every election cycle, politicians destroy little bits and pieces of our language by trying to co-opt words they can use to attach to an opponent like lead shoes and watch them sink. It’s easier than all that thinking stuff – and they’d rather you didn’t do much thinking either. This is how the wonderfully distortion of Aristotelian logic works:

my opponent = this word
this word = bad
my opponent = bad

No one is better at this than Mitt Romney, an inveterate hypocrite who, when campaigning for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, stood in front of a wrecked car on which he had painted (or, more likely, had hired an illegal immigrant to paint) the words “Beacon Hill Mess” in bright yellow letters and pretended to work on it with a “wrench of reform,” and then told people he didn’t like campaign gimmicks.

Watch the language of the Romney campaign. He’s trying to coin terms like “Hillary Care 2.0” and to label anyone who thinks George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” is overblown rhetoric at best and destructive utter horseshit at worst as “foreign policy elitists.” He may be smiling under that hair and talking smooth, but his logic is Tarzan simple, and his motives as Machiavellian as can be. Me, good, others, bad. Me make fear, win big prize.

Romney has said that he believes some immigration is good – if, for example, you’re building robots. But if you don’t have time to learn how to build a robot because you’re running for your life from economic or political persecution, fuck off. Back across the river with you. America wasn’t founded with sanctuary as a basic principle – it was just a capital land acquisition by a small, aggressive foreign start-up that was successful in eliminating the competition from marketplace (see “Trail of Tears”).

I’ve posted a few quotes below demonizing the word “sanctuary.” I can’t believe people fall for this crap.

(And as an aside, can we stop talking about the goddam Olympics? Romney helped bring money into the Olympics by selling corporate sponsorship and making the games look like a NASCAR. Maybe he’ll solve the national debt, but get ready to see the Lincoln Monument wearing a Staples T-shirt and banner ads flashing across the White House lawn. Maybe he’ll even do Alpo commercials during the State of the Union like Johnny Carson used to do on “The Tonight Show”).

“Today's statement by Mayor Giuliani that his sanctuary policies toward illegal aliens created an 'orderly' and 'lawful' society turns logic on its head. You don't promote a lawful society by condoning illegality. As governor, I opposed driver's licenses for illegals, vetoed tuition breaks for illegals and combatted sanctuary city policies by authorizing the state police to enforce federal immigration law. As president, I will secure the border and reject sanctuary policies by cities, states or the federal government." – MittRomney.com, Nov 19, 2007.

“If you have a city like Mayor Giuliani's city, New York City, that says that it's a sanctuary city, they're going to provide benefits to people that come here illegally, you say, we're going to cut back on federal funding to those cities as well. We can end the magnets that draw people here illegally – illegal employment by having an employment verification system, the sanctuary state of mind which you see in sanctuary cities, sanctuary tuition breaks, sanctuary driver's licenses. All these things are bad ideas and the American people are going to speak so loud and clear on this issue it's going to get done." – MittRomney.com, Nov 14, 2007.

“There is a sanctuary state of mind in this country, and it's not just Democrats, it's also Republicans. You had a mayor of New York that said we're going to give sanctuary status to any illegal. They got welcomed to New York City. I think that's a mistake. You had, in the case of Governor Huckabee of Arkansas, a governor who said let's give tuition breaks to illegals living in our state so that you have the children of illegals getting a lower tuition rate than the children of citizens from the other 49 states. That kind of sanctuary state of mind has got to end." – MittRomney.com, Nov 14, 2007.

"I think he's found himself having to stand up and explain why it is that we ought to make him the nominee when he's very much like Hillary Clinton. He's pro-choice like Hillary Clinton. He's pro-gay civil union like Hillary Clinton. He's pro-sanctuary cities like she is." – MittRomney.com on Rudolph Giuliani, citing Fox News Radio's "Brian And The Judge," Nov 26, 2007.

OC-Ed: Random Thoughts

I try to stay away from random thoughts on this blog, but here are a couple of things I’ve been thinking about the past week.

If I have the story straight, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey isn’t sure that waterboarding is illegal torture. That seems dumb enough on the face of it – the worlds are mutually inclusive – but it gets worse.

President Bush and others in the Republican camp don’t think it’s fair to grill Mukasey about it because he hasn’t been briefed about it, so he can’t know if it’s torture or not. So, to sum up the administration’s official position on waterboarding and torture in general:

1. We’re not torturing anyone.
2. Only people with high level clearance can be briefed on whether or not waterboarding is torture. By the way, we’re not doing it, but only people with high level clearance to official U.S. policy will have access to the specifics of how waterboarding is done.
3. In other words, we know it’s torture, but Mukasey can’t possibly know until we tell him what we’ve (not) been doing and he reads how it’s (not) been done in great detail in the official record, so it’s unfair to ask him about it.

There you have it, clear as day. Stop asking Mukasey about waterboarding.

On a completely different note, I heard something during Game Three of the World Series that amused and puzzled me. I’m a fan of Warren Zevon’s music – the dark sense of humor, the grasp of history, the baritone to falsetto dripping with sarcasm. So anytime I happen upon a Zevon song in an unexpected place, it’s a pleasant surprise. His words are important. He was good at words, had a folkie’s appreciation for them and paid attention to them.

But I’m convinced no one has ever listened to the words of “Excitable Boy,” seemingly one of the more popular tunes marketers and programmers have taken out of context to use as background music. I’ve heard it as musak. I’ve heard it as incidental music. And during the Series, it was outro music behind a quick interview on the way to a commercial, conveniently cutting out before the vocals started. So before it winds up in a Burger King commercial, here are the lyrics, for your consideration:

Excitable Boy
Warren Zevon & LeRoy P. Marinell

Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best
Excitable boy, they all said
And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest
Excitable boy, they all said

He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark
Excitable boy, they all said
And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark
Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy

He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom
Excitable boy, they all said
And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home
Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy

After ten long years they let him out of the home
Excitable boy, they all said
And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones
Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy