Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan is one of the few standouts. He's presided over an economic boom, increased Turkey's regional influence, and is trying -- fairly successfully -- to balance Islam, modernity, and democracy. But he does have some asterisks on human rights and press freedoms, as well as a personal penchant for inflating his own role and Turkey's without a lot of "there there."
I give up. What's going on here? Where have all the enlightened, wise, effective, charismatic leaders gone, not to mention the truly great ones? I recently briefed some military officers and asked them: Who was the last American figure you'd describe as great? Silence. When I offered up my candidate, Martin Luther King, Jr, one guy exclaimed: "But he died in 1968." Exactly, I replied. Next year we will have gone the longest stretch in our history without an undeniably great president -- Washington ... Lincoln ... FDR ... ?
I wouldn't presume to offer a comprehensive explanation as to why we have a leadership deficit on a global scale. There probably isn't one -- certainly not a one-size-fits-all answer. We tend to romanticize the performance of some of the great leaders of yore. The world's gotten a great deal more complicated over the years, and then again leaders can always appear at the most unexpected of times and in the most unusual circumstances.
So why don't we have great leaders anymore? I'd welcome some suggestions. But here are a few thoughts to get us started.
Greatness Is Rare: By definition, incomparable and unsurpassed achievement in any field or aspect of the human enterprise is rare. And it's rarer still in politics and governance. Unlike with great artists, musicians, or even athletes, politics has many moving parts. There's a dependence and contingency that complicates success at any level, let alone extraordinary achievement.
My definition of greatness encompasses a leader's overcoming some truly national crisis and trauma, converting that exigency into some transformational legacy in a way that alters the nation forever for the better, or breaking out in some new direction that isn't just successful but transformational, too. (See Mustafa Kemal's preservation of Turkey's sovereignty and national identity; Churchill's leadership during the dark, lonely days of 1940-1941; FDR's presidency from 1941-1945; Sadat's visit to Jerusalem; Kennedy's leadership during the Cuban missile crisis; or LBJ's after Kennedy's assassination and passage of historic civil rights legislation.)
Been There Done That: Nations pass through foundational trials and crises that generate their myths and narratives and provide opportunities for heroic action by their leaders. The successful nations never pass that way again because the founders and early leaders have already addressed the existential questions. As a result, later national leaders deal not with whether the nation will be, but instead what kind of country it will be. These challenges are no less important, but they're more systemic and in many ways more complex. Big accomplishments like creating a democratic nation, saving it from its enemies, preserving a union, or guiding it through economic catastrophe lend themselves to bold words and deeds if the right leader is up to it. And the nation and the political system is more apt to follow.
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