Media Makes Ordinary: De Gaulle used to say that leadership and authority demands a certain amount of mystique. That's hard to do in today's 24/7, we-see-everything media world. In highly centralized leadership structures -- China, North Korea, even Russia -- that's possible. But no longer in democracies. Nicholas Sarkozy is caught blasting Bibi Netanyahu on an open mic; Reagan is caught dozing; Bush 43 mangling the English language; Bill Clinton and the blue dress. Had the media that covers American presidents today been around back then, the likes of FDR, Churchill, and Kennedy would surely have been taken down a notch or two.
When the media isn't intruding and exposing vulnerabilities, it's functioning as a challenge to leaders and regimes alike. Social media's role in the Arab Spring may be overstated, but it gives to ordinary people -- not to mention activists -- a new power to organize, mobilize, and communicate. And this can't help but trivialize and undermine any hope of the kind of distance and detachment that's required to maintain authority -- even dignity. This whole process serves to bring leaders down a level and even them out with their publics. Last year, President Obama held the first-ever presidential Twitter conference. Smart politics, maybe, but somehow using the word "Twitter" -- with its 140-character form of communication -- in the same sentence with an American president seems somehow ... well, not very presidential.
It's Just Too Complicated: The world's smaller and more connected, and the challenges of the modern era make governing -- let alone good or great governance -- much harder. Even monumental challenges such as the U.S. civil war were essentially limited to one continent. (Clearly, the world wars were exceptions, though the dire nature of the threats focused the minds of the democracies in ways no other events have since.) Now, a leader's political viability and the country's economic health is linked to global events beyond his or her control, be it debt in Greece or a currency meltdown in Thailand. A country's security -- even while protected by two oceans and massive conventional and unconventional military power -- can be rocked by transnational terror.
The nature of the problems that need to be addressed, particularly in a democracy, are systemic and require solutions driven by process and compromise. America's five deadly Ds -- dysfunctional politics; debt; deficit; dependence on hydrocarbons, and decaying infrastructure -- are slow bleeds that demand a political consensus seemingly beyond the control of a single leader.
Still, look on the bright side. Clearly, the fewer caudillos, Dear Leaders, and supreme ayatollahs there are, the better. And perhaps even the passing of the great democratic heroes will be good, too. Nations, the experts tell us, fail primarily because they lack inclusive institutions. I'd trade a few great men for some of those, particularly in the Arab world. The idea of the great leader also tends to infantilize the public and create an expectation that people are waiting to be rescued. And who knows -- maybe if we stop yearning for the ONE, we'll start taking our own civic responsibilities more seriously.
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