THE DISSENT

[Arrow335]

Subject: Lee Iacocca's excerpt from "Where Have All The Leaders Gone:
>Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:48:32 -0700
>
>

>
>Excerpt from the book Where Have all the Leaders Gone,
>
>By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney
>
>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 i s 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! Souther ner, 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.
>
>
>
>