Couldn't agree more. Worth reading. Valid for all socalled leaders

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17516.htm

Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

American Empire | Books 

Excerpt: Where Have All the Leaders Gone? 

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

04/11/07 "ICH" -- -- -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.

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? <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->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. <!--[endif]-->

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 

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