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Excerpt
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
By Lee Iacocca with
Catherine Whitney
I
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.
Excerpted from
Where Have All the Leaders
Gone?. Copyright © 2007 by
Lee Iacocca. All rights reserved.
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